Hermana Brittany Lowe : "South America, it's like America, but south"

hello family & friends!

It's February fourth? What the heck. Seems like September.

Here are my updates for this week:

We spent two days helping our dear pensionista move houses. The first day cleaning & the second day moving. She moved into her uncle's house, which is a lot bigger, cheaper, & closer to her work & now she doesn't have an annoying dueña! (Landlady/owner of her previous house). Her uncle only comes to sleep, basically, because he works so much, so it's basically her own house. The problem is, is it's dirty (well, was dirty) because he only came to sleep. Her uncle rented out one of the rooms to a guy in his 20's studying at the university. But for some reason, he left his room for months without returning with all his stuff in it. This room is now Delia & Renzo's (her 14-year old son) bedroom. We cleaned out this disgusting room & killed an innumberable amount of spiders. Imagine what you would find in the room of a worldly teenage/young adult boy. All I'm gonna say is: Gross. Anyway, we cleaned & moved all her things, with help from the Elders, & now she & Renzo are much happier with more space & more freedom. So we're happy, too! Delia, Renzo, & Pilar (her 12 y/o daughter who's in Lima right now) are the people I will miss the most when I leave Ayacucho.

Another crazy thing happened Friday night as we were walking home. There was a big metal frame thing, I don't know what to call it, but it's used to hang a huuge billboard. Anyway, it's over one of the main streets in my area. A woman had scaled it & was sitting on the very top, probably about 3 stories up. She was screaming & crying hysterically & tons of people & cars stopped to watch. Luckily, the firefighters (bomberos) came & got her down safely (not easily, but safely). She was gonna commit suicide. :( So that was crazy. I'm glad she is safe & hope she can get some help.

Ok, last story for this week. Yesterday, we had an appointment in the park with a 16 y/o kid. He had to leave part way through our lesson for something to do with his family, so we decided to find a family that lives on the far side of our area who didn't come to church. They're investigating the church (family of 7!) The problem was we had their address, but it's not on the map we have. So we went with faith. We just barely missed the bus & had to wait 20 minutes fo the next one. We got off in the general area of the place we were looking for & asked a couple & their daughter where we could find this place. They pointed us in the right direction & as we were saying thank you & about to walk away, the husband asked if we could visit him & his family in his casa & basically contacted us. Ha ha. We would not have found him if the kid in the parque cancelled a little bit earlier & if we had caught the first bus. Also, we found the family's house (porfin!) & have a scheduled appointment with them this week. Woohoo! Little miracles.

I hope you're all doing good & enjoying life wherever you are. Remember it's the little things.

Until next week,

Hermana Lowe

P.S. My subject line has nothing to do with this email (well, except for the fact that I'm living in South America). I just wanted to spice things up a little.

P.P.S. On Thursday, is my 6-month mark! See you all in one year!