May 2016: "The Georges in Peru"

As of today, I am the very proud father of four teenagers!  Actually, we found the ages 11 and 12 much more difficult than the teen years, which have generally been a breeze.  Happy Birthday, Paul!!

Our kids attend a school that requires community service hours to graduate.  No, it isn't an alternative school for those kicked out of regular schools!  This last week, Ben and 50 other students took a 14-hour bus ride to Umachulco to work in a highland community.  One of the first things Ben told me was that he was really thankful for the knife uncle Erik gave him for Christmas a year ago, because it worked well for sheering an alpaca!

During Amy's memorial service in Omaha, her dear friend, Caroline, shared memories of Amy.  She said that after Amy had been married a year, Caroline asked her what she had learned about herself and Amy said, "I realize how selfish I am."  If you knew Amy well, you would not come up with 'selfish' if asked to pick 10 adjectives to describe her.  I had to follow up with Caroline and ask if she could explain what Amy meant by that.

I've been advised by senior missionaries to not get started with ministry too quickly, but to take time to grieve.  This morning was a quick foray into ministry as we helped some other missionaries move and I saw patients at the La Merced church during their medical campaign.  It was invigorating to see some patients and to work with friends with whom I've colabored for the last 5 years.  

In our division of labors, Amy did the laundry 95% of the time.  But last night Ben had to resort to me.  At 6 pm he realized that he needed clothes for his week-long school trip to a remote Andean village to do a 'community service project'.  Luckily, we live in a desert where it is so dry the dew point is below freezing and you really can hang clothes at night on our rooftop clotheslines and they will be dry by morning.  In this case, they needed to be dry by 4:30 am, which is when Ben had to be at school with all of his stuff.

We are back in our home in Arequipa after an uneventful trip.  No one even asked me if I had the proper paperwork to travel with my children!  The memorial service went well.  I hesitate to say it was 'great' as I can't find 'great' or 'super' in my adjective box at the moment.  I decided that I don't like inflight movies much any more.  Either they are romantic or someone dies, difficult subjects to watch at the moment.  The Muppets Most Wanted didn't have either (Kermit and Miss Piggy didn't make me sigh) so it was the easiest to endure.

Peru goes to great effort to reduce child trafficking.  One of the rules they've instituted is that minor children not accompanied by both parents cannot leave the country without a notarized authorization from the parent that isn't traveling with them.  This is probably good to keep an angry spouse from taking the kids to some other country without telling the other parent.  What does one do if he is the only parent after the other one dies?  Our mission secretary told me that I would need to take the death certificate with me to the airport.  Check.

Despite being our first Mother's Day and Amy and my 23rd anniversary, yesterday wasn't a bad day.  If anything I felt that we could relax a bit, even though we needed to pack up for our trip back to the USA.  We decided to go to church last night, risking experiencing emotional Mother's Day tributes.  The pastor had all the mothers go up front and be recognized and they were each given a present.  Even more time was spent thanking Sarah for helping teach Sunday School kids for the last 3 months while she's been here.

I thought it was a pretty normal funeral.  Actually, everything went splendidly.  But it was quite different from a normal Peruvian funeral, so it took a lot of patient explaining that we were doing things the way we did.  In Peru, when someone dies, usually the body is left in the house and put on display ensconced in curtains and shiny pillars.  People come and visit, usually whispering quietly.

Amy's memorial service in Omaha will be on Saturday, May 14th at 11 am at Christ Community Church (404 S. 108th Ave).