While in the Pausa area with the Westside team in September, I had a burden to return to San Sebastian and do some leadership training. Tania and Wilman live there, they are both teachers and they hold the church meetings in their home. I offered to return with a small team to do leadership training and they agreed to host the meetings.

When I got back to Arequipa, I started planning for the training, but nothing was working out as I had envisioned. I was about ready to cancel the whole trip until I found out that Pastor Antonio was inviting everyone from the other villages, and it looked like there was a lot of interest. God pulled it all together at the last minute and I emailed Cindy in Pausa to confirm that we would be there as scheduled. On Thursday morning, October 11^th, Santiago and Jeremias, two of the brothers from the Cotahuasi church, Maribel, from the Alianza church in Arequipa, and I left Cotahuasi at 7:40 am.

This was my first trip across the high plain in over two years, and the first time that I was able to drive from Cotahuasi to Pausa, now that I have a serious 4x4 vehicle. We took the road that goes from Cotahuasi to Oyolo for three hours, and then followed a faint road that heads off towards Pausa. It was even non-existent in one section, but it was an easy cross-country drive to where we could see it going up the next hill. From there the road was better than I remember it being before, and as it is dry season now, we didn't have any problems crossing the swampy high plain and the rivers.

However the downhill section to Tactanga seemed much worse than last time. It was very rough and rocky, and we really had to go slow. It was so bad that I had some concern that we might encounter problems trying to go up on the return. The downhill part looked short at first, but it was just to the bottom of the really steep switchbacks. Then it was still slow, and even rougher on the rest of the downhill, until we arrived in Tactanga. After that we had good road for the last two hours to San Sebastian. The whole trip took us almost nine hours, including a leisurely lunch after crossing the last river, at about 15,000 feet.

The next morning we went to Pausa to talk with Cindy and Pastor Antonio. When we arrived there, we found out that they had been on the bus we met on the way, so we turned around and went back to San Sebastian. When we got back there, Cindy asked me what provisions I had made for meals and lodging for those from other villages. She said that Pastor Antonio told her that because we were putting on a "conference", we were expected to feed and house the participants as well. I didn't know that was expected, so I had just brought enough food for the four of us. Thankfully Cindy provided money for the rest, and they had brought a bunch of food from Pausa. Tania and others prepared the food for everyone. She also provided housing for some of us, and the others stayed at the hostel a few blocks away. To make it even more interesting, we found out that they don't have regular running water in San Sebastian. They only receive water for an hour or so, early in the morning, and have to store it in barrels, large trashcans and buckets.

As is often the case here, the turnout for the training was less than expected, as a number of people who said they would be there didn't show up. And even though it was advertised as a Leadership Training time, only a few of the 15 or so people were leaders. I was expecting many non-leaders to be here, but was hoping for a better showing of leaders.

We started the sessions on Friday afternoon. Maribel and Jeremias played guitars for our worship time, and Pastor Antonio was the MC. I gave a lesson on the need for leaders to be servants and then Santiago taught the first three lessons of "New Life in Christ". As we were heading back to Tania's for dinner, I was told that one of the women needed a ride back to Pausa that evening because she needed to be there to take care of the irrigation for her fields during the night. The water is allocated for different fields 24 hours a day, and if you are not there to take care of your fields during your turn, you won't get any water until the next time your turn comes around, which might be up to two weeks away. I had thought there would be an evening session while we were gone, but I think everyone was too tired so they didn't have one.

Saturday morning I gave a lesson on prayer, again with Anibal translating, and Santiago continued with the basic doctrine series. By evening people were getting tired of sitting so there wasn't an after dinner session that night either. That left four lessons for Sunday morning, and we were trying to finish by noon so that people could catch a noon combi back to Pausa.

However that didn't happen – we finished about 12:30, then everyone had to have lunch, even though we had agreed not to provide lunch. By that time it was too late to catch a ride to Pausa. To complicate matters further, a young man showed up Sunday morning and said that he wanted to be baptized, so we had a baptismal service in the afternoon. I took as many as I could in my van, and the rest started walking, hoping to catch a ride somehow. I dropped off the first group at the river and went back and picked up those who were still walking.

We had a nice baptismal service, Wilman baptized and I assisted him. After that we relaxed in the hot springs for a while and then all went into Pausa for the evening church service at the radio station. There, Santiago preached and then Maribel gave her testimony. Thankfully they didn't have games afterwards like they sometimes do, so we visited a bit and then went back to Tania and Wilman's to sleep. It was quite a challenge at their house – 8 or 9 there at night and up to 20 during the day for meals, and no running water. Actually very little water at all, for some reason it didn't come on at all Saturday or Sunday mornings. There was a little Saturday night, but we had to haul some water in a very large cooking pot during the day. Cindy washed a lot of dishes; otherwise they were getting poorly washed in dirty water. It was a cultural learning experience, but we all survived, and I didn't hear of anyone getting sick.

We left San Sebastian Monday morning at 7:15 and headed back up to Tactanga, and then the steep climb back up to the high plain. It gave the van a good workout as the road is very bad – rough, rocky and steep, but we got to the top without any problems. There were a couple of scary moments when I put it in drive and we didn't move, it took a while to build up enough torque to climb up. One of the times we were in rocks and the other time was on a switchback. I had backed up to get around the very tight hairpin curve, and couldn't go back any farther. When I put it in Drive, we didn't move! I was afraid for a moment that we were stuck there, but then the van started moving and we continued to climb up.

Santiago and Jeremias wanted to fish for trout on the high plain so we were looking forward to fresh fried fish for lunch, but in spite of trying two different locations, they came up empty handed. We arrived in Cotahuasi at 6:00 pm, after thankfully one of the least adventuresome drives in recent trips.

Thursday afternoon, back in Arequipa, I decided that I better go to Chile that evening (I've gotten good at making last minute decisions like the Peruvians) to renew my visa. I had been planning on waiting until I could get my work visa but that is taking longer than expected. It was already 85 days overdue because of waiting to receive my new passport after mine was stolen. It is no problem if it is overdue; you just need to pay a dollar a day penalty. It all went smoothly and I got another 90 days when I re-entered Peru an hour later. Hopefully the 90 days will be enough time to get everything done for my work visa.

Thanks for your prayers for everything, God bless.

Vic