On Sunday mornings, traffic is not as bad as during the week. We were therefore able to make it across town for our morning service presentation in an hour. (With traffic, it could have been closer to 2 hours). We enjoyed the morning service and time of fellowship afterwards visiting with the Peruvians as well as a missionary family that works with children's homes in Lima.
Since we then had several hours before we needed to be at our evening service at a different church and since we needed something to eat, we headed into the main plaza of Lima to get something to eat and do a little sightseeing. While we were eating lunch, we watched the USA playing Brazil in a championship soccer game in South Africa. We were able to watch the USA take the lead in the first half with two goals. We only watched the first couple of minutes of the second half but enough to see Brazil start their comeback with a goal just 40 seconds into the second half. For many of you, you really don't care about soccer, but here in Peru it is followed closely. In fact, earlier in the tournament, the USA had lost to Brazil 3 to 0 and a couple of kids in a school made sure that we new that Brazil had beaten us. It is a good way to start conversations and relate to people as a witnessing tool. By the way, when we got back to the combi (our transportation) we turned on the radio just in time to hear that Brazil had completed the comeback to defeat the USA 3 to 2. Oh well.
Cerro San Cristobal is a hill that overlooks much of Lima. There is a lookout area at the top but during this time of year, it is cloudy and overcast much of the time. I have considered in years past to go up but the weather did not cooperate on the available days. I noticed that I could see the top of the hill from the plaza so we made our way to the top. The view all around and out to the ocean was amazing. We could see many people pursing different activities including bull fighting and soccer games, as well as a very large cemetery. The cemetery is made up of many above ground concrete buildings with holes just big enough for the caskets. Some of the holes are empty while others are filled and then sealed. The amount of souls that the cemetery represents as well as the live people and their homes that are visible from up here just increased my burden to return full-time as soon as possible to do our part of reaching this city for Christ.
We had one more presentation for this year. We headed to a church where we had been two years before. Emily Z. had the opportunity to play for the hymns as well as the offertory. She did a very good job as she was put on the spot since the church's regular piano player was not available. We ended well and then headed back home. We did stop by a grocery store to pick up some food for the last couple days including a rich chocolate cake which was greatly enjoyed.
