Culture Shock

So they tell you it´s gonna happen... This week and last I´ve been going through it but I think it´s more of a culture ¨mood¨ and part of me wants to debate if it has anything to do with the culture! When your teacher asks what has been the biggest ¨choque¨ or, crash, with the culture- it begs a few tears- remember who you´re dealing with here! Well, Pedro didn´t know that... I´t´s my first week with him. He´s the language school director and happens to be a pastor of a church many of us go to, as well as Peruvians. At first, these two careers seem like a lot on one person´s plate- and it is! But it also makes a lot of sense. Especially in this case. I answered it was that there is no 8-5 job description and then you can enjoy yourself like at home... but it came out in Spanish through an event of this week. A friend of one of the language school students died the day before. He was serving in Lima with LatinLink. He´s about my age and is from England( pray for his family who do not understand why he was in Peru). In someways this triggered my thoughts, but they have been brewing for a while! Mostly I´ve been missing material things from the states- sadly. (Well, my sister has been super at sending me pics and videos of my new nephew so I feel a part!) So what is this choque about? well, it´s mostly that I want to be doing what God sent me down here to do- minister His gospel! But I can´t minister well if I don´t understand the gospel well or the culture here. Right now I´m to be learning the language and the culture and I can enjoy it!- I realized I was taking a verse and changing it- that we aren´t guranteed tomorrow ¨ was what I was thinking (Matt.6:34 I guess is what I was thinking of I´m not really sure if this idea is even in the Bible actually!) Pedro was sweet to listen to me and to share his own struggles with contentedness and enjoying what God has given him today. He gave me Ecclesiastes 3:11-13 ¨He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men, yet they cannot fathom what God has done from the beginning to end. I know that there is nothing better for men to be happy and do good while they live. That everyone may eat and drink and find satisfaction in all his toil-this is the gift of God. 14 is good too ¨I know that everything God does will endure forever, nothing can be added to it and nothing taken from it. God does it so that men will revere him.¨ I hope that encourages you! It does me! If anyone finds a New Testament agreement with that I´d be interested- I´m looking too. Thanks for your prayers and being the conduits of so many of the things I am thankful to God for!