More Peru Pictures!

John took a lot of great Peru pictures and has posted them on his picasa site - take a look right here!

You can see the rest of the Peru Pictures I took by clicking here (or just look and the embedded slideshow below).

Back from Peru

What follows is my best attempt at condensing a week long missions trip in Lima Peru into a short blog post written over a few minutes of my lunch break.

I'll start with a few basic facts. John and I joined my church (Fountain of Grace) and another Christian Missionary Alliance church (Elizabethton Alliance Church in Tennessee). Our team of 27 people traveled out on Sunday morning to join the Alliance Churches in San Jaun de Lurigancho, a district of Lima Peru of about 1 million people. The Alliance church is thriving. They have a large church and then many smaller sector churches that meet throughout that area.

Our team was involved in several different ministries during this trip: children's vbs, medical, eye and dental clinics, evangelistic meetings, gospel presentations at local schools, drama presentations, ladies meetings, youth meeting, and Bible training seminars for church leaders put on by three of the pastors that came.

This was my second time to be a part of a trip so I wasn't surprised at the poverty, but it still was a reminder of how little some people have. But as Amanda who was on the trip with me said so well, what the people there really need is not the stuff we have, but the Savior. This world is temporary. I think sometimes we get to liking our lives here a bit too much.

One ministry that I was privileged to have a closer look at on this trip was the medical ministry. On two of the mornings, John and I were able to hang out taking pictures and video of the medical, dental and vision ministry.
Seeing people receive glasses and better sight was a joy. But the more exciting part was seeing the care at which the local church volunteers took in sharing Christ with the people that were coming to the clinics.

I don't have all the pictures I'd like to post yet. And I don't have enough time to talk about my upcoming move to Ohio on Sunday, but more will come eventually.

DVD conversions

If you've ever tried to upload video from a dvd to youtube or tried to modify movie clips with .vob files in microsoft movie maker, you probably have run into the same problems I've had this week. Most free software out there that converts .vob files will only work for the first 5 minutes of a file (unless you pay for the full version). On Thursday, Elijah and I found a cool piece of free software called AutoGK that will not only convert the files, but also allows you to set the maximum file size of the new file. This way you can set the video to be under the 100Mb that youtube requires and sill have the best quality possible. Here are the two weeks of Peru videos taken by the Lima Peru church for Fountain of Grace's mission trip.

Picasa and Peru Pictures

It's amazing what one click can do to improve a picture. Picasa2 is a great free program that is great for editing picture colors and removing red-eye. Other programs are more expensive and perfect for more technical or detailed changes, but Picasa is wonderful for quick amazing picture updates! There is a cool button called "I'm feeling lucky" which changed the picture from dull to vibrant. This is one of the pictures the Peru team took on their way to Huarez this year. It's such an amazing change that I've spent the last two or three hours modifying most of the 800+ pictures that a couple of the people took. Tomorrow after work we hope to finish the slide show. I hope the slideshow falls together easily tomorrow.