Monday Mornings at PyE, Ayacucho

It is Monday morning here in Ayacucho so that means when I arrived at the Paz y Esperanza Office (8:30 a.m.), after a brisk busride across town and greeting Goofy, the office dog, at the door it was down to the usual routine. Monday´s seem to go like this...First, the PyE team gathers in the meeting room labeled the Salon de Terapia (the therapy room), and we have a round of singing Christian choros. They seem to be singing the same ones lately which is cool, becasue it gives me a chance to get to know them. Cuan Gran es El (How Great Thou Art), Cristo te Nececita (Christ Needs You), and Pescador de la Gente (You have Come to the Lakeshore or Fisher of People). They also try to sing one in Quechua too, becasue all of the speak spanish and quechua, and much of our work is billingual too. Their favorite seems to be Dios Taytallay which I think is God my pastor. It is the twenty third Psalm if you read the rest of the words. I am working on my Quechua.
After singing, with Henry and Felimon playing the guitar, we have a devotional. The team rotates who leads the devotional. I was two weeks ago with the Feeding of the 5,000 from John. Somehow I got roped into last week too by talking about my sermon I preached at a local church service on The Woman at the Well, becasue we were off Monday and Tuesday for national holidays. Today was Yanet, with the story of Job. So it is a time of praise and singing as well as biblical reflection around our work and themes. Next, the team goes around and all of the coordinators report on their activities for the past week and the coming week, as well as any other major things their group is work on. The departments are Access and Justice (the lawyers), Care and Development, Mental Health, Communications, Administration, and the Director. I share my time with communications and mental health. At the end our director Neri will report anything she has and then end by asking for what she needs. Then we all break up and go to work for the week.
Today we introduced a new member of the Mental Health team Ruth, and found out that Amanda is going to be leaving November 18th to work at the National Office in Lima for a year on a special project involving At Risk individuals. This is the second person that has been sent to the national office from our team this year. Carol, just left last Friday, to work on Disaster Preparation projects in communication. I am a mix of sad and mad at the ssame time, but I guess they would not get called to work and serve in the national office for a year if they were not spectactular at what they do. So there it is, Mondays @ PyE, Ayacucho.