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.