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Goshen College

Service visits in Cuzco: Emily, Maddie and Alex

November 10, 2016

Monday – Wednesday, Oct. 31 – Nov. 2

After desert with Emily's host mother and 3 siblings, Yadeli, Johan, y Jonathon.
After desert with Emily’s host mother and 3 siblings, Yadeli, Johan, y Jonathon.

Cuzco, the high Andean city where the group’s journey to Machu Picchu began, is also the service location for three students.  We began our visit with the service location of Emily, an American Sign Language major who is assisting teachers in classes for deaf children.  Her school, Don Jose de Martin, was built only 2 years ago and has the best facilities of any school in Peru for deaf students.  Emily alternates between teaching 2 different classrooms of students, one of elementary-aged students and one of students aged 10-14.  Later we visited Emily’s home, where she lives with Gloria (a nurse), Mauricio, and their 3 children on one of the hillside communities at the edge of the Cuzco valley.

On Monday we had lunch with Maddie and her family, which includes her parents, Francisca and Rolando, and their adult son Cristian.  They work with missionaries and have a wood-working shop in their home.  Later we saw Maddie’s work at the local office of World Vision.  They have a well-known child sponsorship program, which includes sponsors sending letters in English to sponsored children in the Cuzco area.  Each day Maddie translates those letters – lots of those letters – from English to Spanish.

The third student working in Cuzco is Alex, with whom we had a wonderful breakfast of banana pancakes on Tuesday at the home of his parents, Margarita and Cesar, and their two children, Ana and Agustin.  This was on the national holiday El Dia de los Muertos, so we could stay and chat a long time.  The next day we visited Alex’s service location, the private Mennonite school La Promesa.  Alex teaches music (the recorder) and English classes to several different grades.  Mennonite families we stayed with earlier in Lucre and Huarcarpay send their children to this school in Cuzco.

Emily’s sign language class.
This day the children were dressed as vampires for Halloween.
Emily with her brood of vampiritos.
The new school was built only 2 years ago.
After desert with Emily’s host mother and 3 siblings, Yadeli, Johan, y Jonathon.
Emily’s father, Mauricio, came later after his evening law school classes.
Emily with her host parents in front of their home.
Our delicious lunch with Maddie’s host family.
Maddie’s father takes her to the woodshop, for a lesson in making wood shavings. The small box/house in the background …
… will become a pizza delivery box like this.
At her desk at World Vision, translating a sponsor letter.
The stack of letters at left will take about 2 hours to translate.
In the past 3 weeks Maddie has translated all the letters in these 2 boxes.
Maddie with her co-workers in the office.
Our pancake breakfast with Alex’s family and an aunt.
Alex with his family in their front yard.
Alex’s music class, where he patiently teaches the recorder.
He said it is hard for the littlest students to get their fingers to cover all the holes.
The virtuoso plays harmony with 2 recorders at the same time; students spontaneous dance with joy.
The street entrance to the Promesa Mennonite school where Alex teaches.