Thursday in Piura

What a day: I did things all day that I never did before.

In the morning I learned the ins and outs of buying goats. We set out to buy (photo) and deliver ten goats, which I thought would be easy because I had seen goats given to families as a gift. After 4 hours we only had 9 goats and 3 delivered. We went to two places twice to find goats. The busiest place is along a highway where busses drop off goats to middlemen who resell them. Then there was the bargaining that when on for a price.

While delivering the goats I learned about the many sponsored families who live as squatters on public land. Since everyone else also thinks that the land is public, dump trucks full of broken bricks are dumped in the "front yard" of these families (photo).

In the afternoon. one of our St. Monica families paid to take 100 orphans, the staff, and other missionaries to a movie in a very nice movie theater. Wow, were these teen girls excited!

While taking Communion to the Hospice Center yesterday, I noticed that the first resident who I had visited often on other trips was no longer there. She died of breast cancer in March and I was very down for a while. Please pray for sweet Louisa.

Hasta luego!