New Assignments For The Dimmocks

The Dimmock Family

This July, our missionaries Frank and Nancy Dimmock will move to Lusaka, Zambia, in Africa. Presbyterian World Missions has called Frank to be one of three “Catalysts” to address three Critical Global Issues:

• Poverty
• Evangelism
• Reconciliation

Frank will work 40% of his time in Louisville at the General Assembly and maintain a station in Zambia. Nancy will be the new Young Adult Volunteer Coordinator for Zambia.

They ask for our prayers as their family moves from Lesotho to their new assignments.

Mission Perú

2013 Perú Mission Team

Sara Armstrong {Lima, Perú}

Rusty Edmondson {Lima, Perú}

Rose Boelke {West Jefferson, North Carolina}

Connie Dale {Charlotte, North Carolina}

Brenda Paredes {Lima, Perú}

Diana Pardue {New York, New York}

Bev Vickrey {Charlotte, North Carolina}

Gary Geisel {Edgewater, Maryland}

Jim Hogan {Baltimore, Maryland}

Randy Ross {Charlotte, North Carolina}

Tom Skinner {Charlotte, North Carolina}

Van Dale {Charlotte, North Carolina}

• Saturday, July 6:
• Connie and Van travel to Lima.  They will visit the Paredes family and explore Lima.
• Friday, July 12:
• The majority of the team (Bev, Diana, Rose, Gary, Jim, Randy, & Tom) arrive in Lima.  Sara, Brenda, Connie, Rusty and Van meet arrivals at the Lima airport.
• Everyone spends the night in Lima.
• Saturday, July 13:
• Everyone departs Lima for Ayacucho in the afternoon.  In Ayacucho, we connect with the mission group from Port Orange Presbyterian Church, Port Orange, Florida.
• Sunday, July 14:
• The Lircay Team (Rusty, Diana, Gary, Jim, & Randy) departs Ayacucho for Lircay. The Huanta Team (Sara, Bev, Brenda, Connie, Rose, Tom & Van) depart Ayacucho for Huanta.
• The Presbytery of Huanta has asked that part of our team travel to the town of Lircay to help assemble benches to be used as pews in the churches of the Synod of Huancavelica. The other part of our team will travel to Huanta to help paint four (4) local churches.
• Gary and Jim have also graciously offered to share their many years of banking experience and are developing a curriculum on church and personal financial management to be presented to church leadership and members in both Lircay and Huanta.
• Wednesday, July 17:
• The Lircay team departs and travels to Huanta.
• Saturday, July 20:
• Everyone departs Hunata.
• Visit the artisan village of Quinua.
• Arrival in Ayacucho.
• Sunday, July 21:
• Everyone departs Ayacucho for an early morning flight to Lima.
• We will travel to Amen Church for morning worship and fellowship. In the afternoon, everyone will visit the Inca Market in Miraflores before having dinner and heading to the airport for our flights home.  
• Gary & Jim will remain in Lima and travel to Cusco after the mission trip to visit the Sacred Valley and Machu Picchu.

This will be Sharon Church’s sixth consecutive trip to Huanta. Each year I travel there becomes more special than the year before, in part, because I am in awe of the blessing of yet another opportunity to worship and work next to my Andean brothers and sisters.

I am looking forward to the time together with each of you and each of them, a time of faith, fellowship and service to Jesus Christ.

I wanted to share a recent note from Samuel Montes, current Secretary (and past President) of the Presbytery:
"I am filled with excitement and encouragement in organizing the work we will do together in Ayacucho, Lircay and Huanta. I treasure many aspects of the partnership that Sharon Church enjoys with the Presbytery. The most endearing aspect is how our partnership has enabled and empowered the Presbytery to reach out and minister to its neighbors. “…the mission is not ours, the real promoter is Jesus and God himself, the One who moves mountains and changes lives… and nothing will stop Him.”

Amen Samuel, Amen

A special thanks to each of you for joining this year’s trip to help bolster, deepen and move this partnership forward.

Grace and peace to each of you.
Randy

Coca Is Good For What Ails You - In Perú

Resource:  Vancourier

By Joanne Sasvari

Yes, coca leaves are the raw material for cocaine, but chewing the leaves or drinking coca tea when you’re in Cusco (altitude 3,400 metres) clears your throbbing head and lets you breath again. And it’s legal.

Things, as they say here in Cusco, go better with coca.

That’s because the Peruvian city and UNESCO World Heritage Site is perched vertiginously at 3,400 metres in elevation, and nothing combats the effects of altitude sickness quite as effectively as this leafy member of the plant family Erythroxylaceae.

You could also say that the combination of elevation and coca make this one of the highest cities in the world.

You feel the effects of the altitude within minutes of disembarking from your plane on the dusty tarmac of Alejandro Velasco Astete International Airport: shortness of breath, headache, dizziness and nausea. Then there are the hallucinations, which aren’t nearly as much fun as you might think. And, in extreme cases, altitude sickness can lead to death.

It makes you wonder what the Incas were thinking to establish the capital of their empire here back in the 13th century. Luckily, they knew all about the powers of coca.

So do the vendors who greet your flight. Most of them are descendants of the Quechua peoples who've long called this land home, and they come bearing plastic baggies of dried coca leaves, coca tea and coca candies.

Visitors greet their wares with both curiosity and trepidation. After all, coca is illegal everywhere on Earth except Peru, Bolivia and parts of Argentina. That’s because coca is generally best known for containing a psychoactive alkaloid called cocaine, the raw material for the drug snorted in nightclub bathrooms the world over.

However, the amount of cocaine in coca is minuscule, and the effects are quite different. Coca is a mild stimulant that combats thirst, hunger, pain and fatigue, without the euphoria and psychoactive effects of cocaine.

(And yes, coca is an ingredient in Coca Cola, but the version the soft drink giant uses today has been de-cocainized since the original recipe.)

Locals usually chew the dried leaves, adding more leaves throughout the day to a wad tucked in their cheeks. It’s the way they’ve done it here for 5,000 years; indeed, if you look closely at the paintings in Cusco’s cathedral, you’ll notice that all the saints have a suspicious bulge in one cheek.

Coca consumption also has a religious and cultural aspect. It was long a part of spiritual life among the Inca and, even today, locals bow to the mountain gods and offer a little incantation thanking them for this miraculous herb.

Visitors, too, might find themselves thanking the native gods when they finally break down and indulge after a day of panting and gasping as they explore Cusco’s historic streets with their pre-Columbian ruins, bustling markets, magnificent cathedrals and elegant shopping arcades.

Most hotels have urns in their lobbies dispensing coca tea. One sip and you’ll note that coca has a pleasant, delicately herbal flavour similar to green tea. A few more sips and your head clears, the throbbing subsides and you can breathe again.

It really is a miracle drug, you think. Just don’t be tempted to tuck a baggie of it in your luggage.

Ecuadorean Amazon Oil Slick Moving Closer To Perú

Oil In The Napo River

Resource:  The Guardian

By Jonathan Watts

Crude discharged after pipeline was ruptured by landslide has entered Napo river which flows across border.

An oil spill in the Ecuadorean Amazon is flowing downstream towards Peru and Brazil, heightening concerns about the impact of drilling in one of the world's last remaining wildernesses.

About 1.6m litres of crude was discharged into a tributary of the Amazon from the Trans-Ecuador pipeline, which was ruptured by a landslide on 31 May.

The slick contaminated the drinking supplies of Coca, a gateway city into the Amazon forest. Local media reported that 60,000 people had to rely on water brought in by 65 tankers.

Petroecuador, the pipeline operator, has hired the US clearup company Clean Caribbean & Americas, which was involved in the operation after the Gulf of Mexico spill.

Although the company and local authorities tried to contain the slick with a boom, some of the oil entered the Napo river, which flows across the border.

Last week Peru reported traces of the oil in its Amazon region of Loreto, prompting an apology from the Ecuadorean president, Rafael Correa.

The Peruvian environment minister, Manuel Pulgar Vidal, described the slick as a "very serious problem" and said Peru could seek compensation if the damage proved extensive.

Brazil, which is located many hundreds of miles downstream, has put its navy on alert and offered technical assistance.

Read more...

Pacha Soap Makers Plan Perú Trip

Hastings based Pacha Soap is heading to Peru in early June to hand-deliver soap, put on hand washing clinics for children and make a photo essay. Here, Nathan Mueller, Abi Burrows, Andrew Vrbas and Joe Ritzdorf pose on May 25 in Lincoln while selling soap at the Haymarket Farmers' Market

Resource:  Omaha.com

By Emily Nohr

The Pacha Soap crew is going to Peru.

In April, we wrote about the Hastings-based handmade soap company that is trying to “raise the bar” for business by using a buy-one, give-one model. And because Pacha Soap was inspired by a trip “Head Jaboñero” Andrew Vrbas took to Peru, their goal was to travel to the South American country to hand deliver soap, put on hand washing clinics for children and make a photo essay.

The company’s online crowdfunding campaign to raise money for the trip surpassed their expectations, earning nearly a thousand dollars more than their $4,500 goal. Pacha Soap is heading to Peru in early June.