I find myself once again at Cusco Coffee as I write what I will be my final post from Arequipa. At 1pm today we will be heading to the airport and we should get back to Jacksonville tomorrow around 12:00pm.

Yesterday was an incredible day. The culmination of months of preparation for Pastor Mike Sehon and his team, for Pastor Mike Pier, and a week of very hard work getting the church ready to open my our EDJ team and all who went down to help open it up.

All of it paid off yesterday as 262 people came to the first service. The atmosphere was electric from the second the worship started. Pastor Stovall came up afterwards and preached an incredible message of forgiveness. In his trademark fashion he had to come up with a great analogy to crack people up. In this case it had to do with the water. In Peru the default water is pretty much undrinkable, even taking great caution, most of us have gotten sick this week. So everyone drinks bottled water. In this case "AUGA CON GAS!" which is essentially seltzer water which virtually explodes every time you open the bottle. Or Auga SIN Gas – which is normal "FLAT" water. So pastor challenged them to live thier lives for God Con Gas – not flat.. It went over very well.

So after service it was fun time for the team. It happened to be the final day of Carnival in Peru so everyone was on the streets having a crazy time spraying people with liquid foam. Of course the Gringo’s had to get into the mix. It this case Clay looks to have been on the losing end of that particular battle.

As the night heated up things got even crazier and poor Sean ended up falling down into some metal spikes and pierced his hands and knees pretty bad. The picture on the left is Mike Pier digging into the holes with a q-tip and various medicines. Morgan is praying..

Of course you can’t be in Peru without getting something stolen. Apparently if things are not attached to you they will get stolen. So in this case Alex Tran had his camera stolen, and once again Morgan steps up in prayer..

So we are on out way home shortly. 2 more teams are coming between now and August. I have been invited back for the august trip to continue to do some more leadership development and training. The experience has been great. Challenging my faith. Reminding me that my problems are not nearly as big as they seem. Can you believe the average wage here is $100 US per month. Per month.. I feel spoiled. wow.. It really helps to put some stuff into perspective.

Mary Jo – I look forward to seeing you tomorrow.

at the beginning of the service. Pastor Mike Sehon translating.

This morning we officially launched the campus. 262 people attended. It was an awesome, awesome experience. We experienced many salvations this morning and it really was a Celebration Service..

I am still kind of tired, I will blog more later, and will do my best to upload pics, but right now we finally have some free time and are going to head out shopping.

Today you will get to see a room transform from being a room into being a Celebration Church Campus. As I write this, I am sitting in Cusco Coffee a place run by an American from California that is like a little slice of the US right in the middle of Arequipa. I will post pics of the place tonight or tomorrow. The mountain you see to the left is the view from the back of the church – not bad huh!

I am fairly emotional as I right this for a few reasons.  I may be getting slightly  homesick. Momma Jo, Matt, Molly, and Miranda – I miss you guys and love you dearly. I’m also 1/2 wiped out and in need of a second wind. Today should be another long one hooking up lights, sound, and preaching to the new church leaders on the concept of Team Building and volunteer development in the Celebration Church culture.

So back to yesterday. We woke up early and ventured out for some quick coffee, followed by our 7:30am prayer meeting, breakfast from 8-8:30 and off to the church. I made the call with both Pastor Mike’s approval to paint the place much like the campuses in the US. So, Johnny, myself, and Humberto went off on a run to get paint.

Now getting paint in Peru is not like going over to visit Matt B. at the Orange Park Color center. It was a great adventure that took 2.5 hours to get 5 gallons of mixed paint and 5 gallons of black paint, plus the needed supplies. They don’t have roller pans, try a 5 gallon oil bucket cut in half and you are closer to reality and no you can’t get your paint, and all your supplies like tape etc, in the same place, you have to go to atleast 3 places spread over maybe a mile..

When we returned pastor Stovall got there and we made the decision to go ahead and get lighting so out the door Stovall, Mike, Mike, and I went to find lighting.

Oh yes, we found lighting. Even a dimmer pack to control 6 lights that I will talk about later and yes, it too was a 2 hour plus adventure.

We returned and got to work on a late night journey of running wires and installing the dimmer pack. But don’t think that it was easy to cut the wires, and no wire nuts or anything like that are available so try electrical tape to do the trick.

Just before we were ready to get the lights fully operational a huge BOOM like explosion happened in the room. Sean Kelly one of the interns flew 3 feet into the air as he accidentally plugged the speaker plug which looks very much like an electric plug into the wall causing the SONIC Boom. Well both Johnny and I had electric wires in our hand, we looked at eachother in relief thinking we were both dead.

But as you can see, we pulled it off.

Amazing. Doesn’t it look a little like Celebration! I will take some more pics of the progress today.. We love you guys dearly!

Yesterday the girls at the orphanage performed a little dance for us. It was awesome.