Jess in Peru

I have a granddaughter in Peru.

She is 16, the apple of her fathers (and grandfathers) eye and she is on a help project in the back country of Peru. She will be there a week and a half or so.

That is a long way from home and we are all a bit nervous (the child's mom especially)! But she will be fine and will come back with a bucket of stories of places and things. With any degree of luck she will also gain an appreciation of how privileged we are here in the US of A.

I have been on a few similar trips, though my trips were to Mexico and Belize. I have seen kids transformed by seeing the poverty and yet the happiness of the people. It hard for us to put those two ideas in one sentence, but that is what I observed.

The limiting factor is language. You can talk through an interpreter, but I so often wished I could just sit down and visit with the people as easily as we do it here. My spanish is so limited.

Jessica is a good girl, she will do well and we are all very proud of her. It is a bit scary as well, not for her danger as much as the realization that she is on the edge of being a full fledged adult.

Grandpa is not ready for that quite yet, but Jess is!