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Sara has three daughters and two sons; ages 15, 13, 10, 6, and 4.  At about 11:00 AM on Good Friday two of her daughters showed up at our house.  We all piled in our car and they directed us to their house.  Manchay is the kind of district that reminds Wes and I of a small country town.  It is quiet, pretty small, and just outside of the big city.  Only it is desert country, so don’t imagine grass and horses.  More like dirt and dogs.  It took us about 30-40 minutes to get there.  We passed through the main part of town and kept going.  Pretty soon the only kinds of houses we were seeing were shacks.  My stomach just kind of dropped as it occurred to me where exactly we were going.  We got off the main road and passed through a valley.  No more roads, just dirt paths.  And lots and lots of wooden shacks that look like the outhouses you see in Western movies.  The sun that day was strong and hot.  It was a beautiful day.  But there was little beauty outside our windows.

When we arrived at their house we were going to park outside, but then we saw Sara open her gate made of tin and motioned for us to pull inside.  We literally parked in their living room.  But it was a dirt floor, and there was no furniture, and most of the ceiling was missing.  We found out later that the wind blew it away.

There was a small area that was a concrete slab.  She had two small dining tables on that part and that’s where we ate our meal.  They had two bedrooms and one bathroom without a door.  One side of the house had a brick wall.  And they have a small area where they keep some ducks.  (Jake and Derek were looking forward to seeing the ducks.)

In the kitchen was a stove, a small counter space, and a small cabinet that held their dishes and other things. Later I noticed that the two barrels outside their house were full of water.  There is a water truck that comes by every day to fill them up with water.  They use that water for everything–drinking, cooking, cleaning, flushing the toliet, feeding the ducks, etc.  Though most of the floors are made of dirt, we could tell she takes care of their home, because it was clean and organized.

The sink.

Well, she prepared a FEAST for us.  It is tradition here that everyone eats fish during Holy Week.  When she was at our house she was asking me what we liked to eat.  She made ceviche for Wes.  And I told her I don’t like fish very much, but that I do like fried fish.  Of course, I was talking about the fried fish you get from Luby’s.  It never occured to me that her version of fried fish is to put the whole fish in oil and fry it in the pan–head, tail, eyeballs and all.  Sure enough, there it was.  An entire bowl of fried fish staring back at me.  All I could think was, “Oh, Lord, help me!  I have to eat this!”  Along with the fish she prepared corn on the cob, rice, green peas and potatoes.  And lucky for Wes he had a side of seaweed with his ceviche.  Everything was made on her gas stovetop.  We were absolutely blown away by her generosity!  We found out she left at 4 in the morning to take a 2 hour bus ride to the fish market to buy the fish that morning, and then another two hour ride back home.

Derek, Stacy, Sara.

Our boys had a great time playing with the kids and playing in the dirt, of course.  I think the highlight of Jake’s visit there was the fish on the table.  He was so curious and amazed at the fish and all its bones.  He wanted to know what was inside the heads, too.  We asked Sara, “Can you tell that he doesn’t eat fish often?”  She was hilarious, because Jake was sitting next to her, practically sitting in her lap trying to see the fish on her plate.  So she picked up her fish head and opened it’s mouth and made the fish talk to Jake saying, “Hola, Jakob.  Como estas?”  (Which means, “Hi, Jakob.  How are you?”) I wish we had a picture of Jake’s expression, because it was priceless.  He was elated and laughed so hard!

After lunch we sat around and talked.  I was amazed at how comfortable it was to be there.  She and her family were so welcoming and totally at ease with us being there, which made it easy for us to relax.  Wes brought a Bible for her to have and he briefly explained the outline of it and the order of how it’s written and how there are different versions.  He suggested that she start reading Mark and they planned on picking up there the next time they met together.  We also met one of her neighbors while we were there, who invited us over to see her brand new baby puppies.  We were there for at least four hours and the only reason we left was because Derek was exhausted as it was well past his nap time, and he’s been fighting a cold.  So after taking a bunch of pictures we headed back home.

I had the rest of the afternoon and evening at home to take it all in.  I thought about how Sara barely even knew us, but invited us into her home and gave us more than she could probably afford.  I thought about how I couldn’t think of the last time I showed such an act of kindness and sacrifice like that.  And I thought about all the people we’ve been meeting and wondered what kind of Easter weekend they were having.  God used Sara that day to humble me and teach me what kind of person He wants me to me for His people.  I told Wes that we should try and invite as many people as we could over for Easter lunch and have an egg hunt with the kids in our backyard.  I told him that at like, 10:00 at night on Friday.  So we had one whole day to invite people and prepare everything.  We didn’t know who or what to expect.

I love the way God works.  We’ll tell you about it in our next post!

(See all the pics here.)