I'm a godmother!

Amador’s one year-old hadn’t had his hair cut since birth. The last day of our class together, he and his wife asked the Bensons and me to be the child’s godparents—the first ones to cut his hair! We sat out on the Bensons’ front lawn and took turns playing barber. This is made all the more tricky by the fact that traditionally the baby is breastfed during the “ceremony” so he’ll stay still! Be sure to aim your scissors correctly! (It's my turn as barber in the photo below.)

This godparent haircutting means we are now family to this beautiful baby. Godparents (madrinos) are an integral part of several events in a person's life: first haircut, dedication, first communion, graduations, a wedding. While I probably don't know exactly what I signed up for, I am honored to be one of this baby's godmothers!

The Class

What a blessing! My first week in Huanuco, Jan Benson and Amador Tucto, (far left) with whom I'll be making the dictionary, taught a class on Quechua grammer. The class was at a training center for young people who want to be involved in missions in the Andes! We spent several hours each day studying Quechua, learning about its grammer, its similarities and differences from other languages in the world, and how the different Quechua languages developed. It was great training for me!

I really enjoyed the other students, and we all loved the "grammer game" in the photo below. Quechua languages utilize really long words, compared to languages like English, and here we had to work together to combine our parts of words to make one Quechua word.

That looks like a really long word, but it's actually kinda small for a Quechua language!

I made it!

We took this picture of me at the highest point of the highest pass we crossed on our drive from Lima to Huanuco: 16,000 feet! (15,855 to be exact) That's about 1,000 feet higher than the tallest peak of the Colorado Rockies!

Trust me, in that thin air, I just barely made up the little incline to that sign! :) We traveled along at close to this heighth for about 90 min. Below are a few more pictures from the trip. I've put 20 in a photo album. If you'd like to see it click here: Photo Album. You have to put in an email address and password, but it's worth it. I recommend the slideshow!