On-Going Humanitarian Projects and Scenes around Lima

2 April 2018

Easter week was a short week for us due to national holidays. We only had a few days in the office to complete a week's worth of work.

On-going Humanitarian Projects.

We are on final countdown - only 16 weeks left until we finish our mission. This has been a very intense experience over the past 14 months, and the rush is now on for us to finish as many of our projects as we can.

Here's a summary of the projects we have in works.

Clean-Water Wells: We have major initiatives in Piura (ordering for the 4 remaining large municipal wells) and in Pucallpa (finishing up final inspections for 50 wells installed last year). We are also trying to finish up the 18 wells for Monsefú, plus there are now 13 new wells approved for both Monsefú and Reque.

Saving Mothers and Babies: We have four US doctors and four Peruvian doctors who will present the life-saving courses in two cities in June. There is always a lot to coordinate for these courses that will be taught to 100 health care professionals in two different cities. As in-country coordinators, we handle all the travel arrangements within Peru for the instructors, we ship the hundreds of boxes of teaching materials and supplies, and we arrange for the meeting place (typically our chapels) plus food for everyone.

Vision Projects: We hope to finish a 3-year-old project in Pucallpa, which involves documenting the donation of medical equipment and analyzing the impact of the project. Another vision project, our latest in the jungle city of Iquitos, is moving along really well. Most of the donation of vision surgery equipment (surgical microscope, vision field analyzer, phoropter, etc.) is complete and the coordination for the US doctor visit in May is ready. We may also finish the measurement and donation of 1,750 glasses to poor children.

Multiple Other Projects: We have more than a half-dozen projects currently approved or pending in Lima, Arequipa, and Huancavelica to help schools (desks and chalk boards), health centers (ultrasound devices and fetal monitors to help mothers and babies survive), hospitals (donations of beds and wheelchairs in hospitals that serve the poor), and soup kitchens (providing pots, plates, blenders, etc., in places that provide one meal a day to poor families that otherwise would be suffering from malnutricion).

Our efforts are focused on completing all that we can to give our replacements a clean start when they arrive and begin their own humanitarian mission.

Time Off to Recover - Scenes around Lima

Since we had a few days off this week due to public holidays, we took some time to travel around Lima and visit some of our favorite spots.

Courtyard inside the Convent of Santo Domingo.

Colorful street scene along Jirón Trujillo north of Lima's downtown.

Billions of handmade bricks at the pyramid of Huaca Pucllana, surrounded by the buildings of Lima.

The ancient bricks at the Huaca Pucllana pyramid still show the hand prints of the people that made them long ago.

A cliffside view of Miraflores and the ocean.

Colorful walls at Parque de Amor (Love Park) in Miraflores.

Biking around Lima through a tunnel of trees on our day off. Our friend Beto in Miraflores has the best bikes in town. 

Pachacamac ruins, over 2,000 years old, south of Lima. This is a massive complex that includes 16 ancient temples.

The Bridge of Sighs at Barranco. Holding your breath while crossing the bridge supposedly brings good luck.

The Peruvian Presidential Palace, Lima

Tunnel of Love, Parque de la Reserva.

Magic Waters Circuit, Parque de la Reserva.

Sunset over the ocean at Miraflores.

And so our easy week ended and we are now back to work. They sent me to Pucallpa in the jungle to help evaluate the latest donation of 50 wells and review an upcoming project of 53 wells. Sandy stayed in Lima to continue working on the many projects we are juggling.

We are seldom bored on this mission!