Contrasting the Rich and the Poor

This week has been an interesting week. On Saturday we had the pleasure of being able to go to The Arequipa International Club which is an exclusive leisure complex in the city with some missionary friends from the language institute (they have a little boy of a similar age to Sarah). It was beautiful, and a real nice change to be able to allow Sarah the freedom to run around outside and enjoy the grass and all the outside play equipment like slides, swings and much more (Unfortunately Arequipa has very few green areas and certainly not many play parks that we know of). Sarah had a real ball and had it not been that she was so tired we would have kept her there all day. Just before we left the Club we took Sarah for a dip in the swimming pool (something she has not done since Christmas as none of the public pools here are heated or particularly clean). We were glad to be able to splash out on this little treat for Sarah as she enjoyed it so much. It was actually something we had planned to do for her birthday but never got around to it.

On Wednesday of this week the language institute took a group to a school in on the outscrirts of the city of Arequipa in quite a poor area. It was interesting to see how little the school had in terms of resources.

The purpose of the visit was twofold, to give us an opportunity to speak in Spanish and to encourage the students in the school of the value of education. Each of us were required to share a little bit about our country and then explain the education system in our country. As the whole concept was to encourage the students many of us then talked about the value of education and the possibilities that it creates. Although the school is a state school and therefore Catholic we were given freedom to talk about what we wanted. In two of the sessions we were involved in the young people were told that they need not look up to foreigners like idols as we were no better than them. They were told that there was no one more valuable to God than them and no one less valuable, no matter how they felt about themselves.

It was certainly an interesting week. A week on contrast where we began with a visit to the International Club where we were likely mixing it with some of Arequipa's more wealthy individuals to visiting this school where they did not even have a map of the world never mind decent computers!

On Friday 1st June (tomorrow) we plan to fly to Tacna for field meetings. We will then travel across to Ilo with the Morrows for the weekend. We look forward to spending some time with them and to seeing many of the believers in Ilo once again. We also trust that it will be a nice break for us and take our minds off the studying just for a couple of days. We feel that after three months of intense studying we are now due a "wee break."