Day 2 in Pucallpa

First I'm going to start off stating some things I missed yesterday that are just general things about Peru and the Church we're staying at. This Sabado (Saturday), is Peru's first Día de Gracía (Day of Thanks). The churches started doing it years ago and proposed it to the officials as a National Holiday. Sabado will be the first and Iglesia Luz Divina is having over a hundred officials over (including Mayors, the Governor, etc) and all the Pastors from around the area over for their celebration (which consists of exactly an hour service of thanks, music, etc).

Also, tomorrow is Peru's independence day. I don't know as much about that.

Today we got up and cleaned an outdoor projector screen (which refused to roll up properly). We also demolished a small hut (a thatched roof on 4 posts) and I have pictures of that below.

*Side note: there are quite a few cockroaches here (see pics below), but they like to stay hidden in the cracks and trees. You won't see them unless you are doing a project like ours and demolishing their habitat.

Then we had breakfast (same as yesterday but this time, of course, with bananas). We were also given a taste of capybara (the largest rodent in the world. Looks like a large brown guinea pig. Large as in small dog). We were told that they're hunted at night and shot. We found evidence of this because there were at least two small pieces of metal shot (like from a shotgun) in the meat.

While we were inside, a couple large machines (see pictures below) and a steamroller had showed up to smooth out the dirt roads. Jenny said that she has been talking to the mayor and that he sent his tractors to fix the roads and put gravel on them. They worked all day (in fact, the steamroller is still sitting outside the church right now).

We then washed a bunch of chairs and tables for the Día de Gracía with Ulysses.

We went to visit a piece of land that the Iglesia is thinking about buying (these are the shots below of the "countryside-like" views).

Lunch was at a wedding reception for a friend of Jenny's. We had sopa de pollo y yucca (chicken and yucca soup. Yucca is a plant that closely resembles a potato). The second course was pollo, yucca, onions, olives, y boiled egg (see picture below). Pardon my Spanglish.

We then visited the "slums" of Pucallpa. This is the area where the houses are so close to the river that they flood, even when they are on stilts (see the picture below. The line on the house is where it floods to).

For dinner we went downtown and had a fish that is commonly about 15 feet long. The scales of this fish are about an inch in radius and are used to make necklaces. It was really good and a lot more flavorful than most fish.

*Also below is a picture of the inside of the Iglesia. You can see the beautiful rainforest mural on the back wall.