The Awesome people at the Parish, Santisimo Sacramento, Piura, Peru

The people on my trip that have influenced me the most aren't the people that I help everyday, but rather the people that assisted me through all my stay here at Piura, Peru. These people are kind, caring, funny, and extremely hardworking. Everyday, they stay up late to help us to plan for the next day's mission. They are always ready in the morning to serve us and bring us to our project site. They never complain about their long hours and they truly love what they do! Here are some pictures of the people that I work with and love!

Fanni, the school principal of Madre del buen Consejo

Fanni is awesome and has provided us valuable insight into the school Madre del buen Consejo! She has a great sense of humor and knows a lot about everything, really!

With Juan Carlos

Juan Carlos helps to manage the wireless networks in the parish, and also helps out the missionaries' daily activities such as purchasing supplies for people, bringing people to different places, and managing the electronics at the school.  He's a great guy to hang around with and definitely cares about his work.

With Johnny

Johnny is the multitalented electrician at the parish. He wired all the routers here. I've been working with him for the past couple of days to improve the system installed here at the parish. He learns extremely quick and has taught me many things about wiring and electronics as well! In addition to all of these talents, he also plays the guitar with great mastery and often plays it during mass!

Kitchen staff,  Fatia, and I peeling carrots

 Everyday, the kitchen staff work extremely hard to prepare enough food for 72 missionaries as well as the staff at the parish! They're really kind, and they make delicious meals! Fatia, student nurse from Marquette University is multi-talented and extremely good at cooking as well!

From left to right: Edith, Reyna, Karina and Ginet 

Edith, Reyna, and Karina are all amazing social workers that somehow remember a humongous list of families and manage groups of missionaries! They're all amazing and they love the work that they do. I'm very grateful for their dedication and hard work. They really connect the families that we provide services to us. They explain concepts very clearly, and never hesitate to help others!

Last but not least is Ginet, the mastermind of the whole operation! She call me nachito!. Ginet plans the missionaries' activities for the day. She also coordinates with the families and other places such as the school, boy's and girl's orphanages, and makes sure that everything is working smoothly. In addition to all of these responsibilities, she has to pick up missionaries from the airport and drop them off there as well! Still, she finds time to be funny, amazing, and talks to us missionaries often to make sure that we have a fulfilling experience. Ginet's the key that makes the whole missionary program run, and without her expertise, I'm sure that the parish would go into some kind of chaos!

I'm very grateful for all the work that these people have put into the parish! Without them, this trip would definitely not have been the same, and their hard work ensures that everyone has a good time and that the parish runs smoothly! I haven't covered all the people at the parish yet; I just haven't gotten their pictures! I'll update this post when I have their pictures later! (Missing: Alcira, Victor, and a whole bunch of people!)

Broken Glasses and More Deliveries to La Legua and La Piedra

Today, my glasses broke. However, I was extremely lucky that the 'Eye Mission' from Oklahoma was present, because one of them, Jim, managed to fix the screw of my glasses. Unfortunately, that soon popped out when we fixed the next segment of my glasses, so I had to wait for either super glue or a wire that I could tie tight around the screw hole. Thanks Jim! I would have definitely been visually impaired for the next couple of days had I not gotten amazing advice from you.

Luckily, Johnny had spare ethernet cable that I could use. I stripped one of the wires, pulled a copper section out, and then finally wound the strip tightly around the screw hole. Fortunately, it was tight enough that it fit, and hasn't caused my glasses to spontaneously fall apart since!

The ethernet cable and me holding a part that I separated out

The wire, pliers, screwdrivers, and FIXED glasses!

Jim's most insightful advice didn't come from his knowledge of how to fix glasses though. He reminded me of Saul's inspiration that he gained while he was blind. This bit of knowledge really got me thinking about my purpose here in Peru. If I really had no way to fix my glasses again, what would I have done for the next few days? Doing every day's work here in Peru really need glasses.  If I needed to fix a couple more computers for the missionaries here, I definitely could just hold the screen closer to my face or just close one eye. Having broken glasses is a huge handicapped and I learned that having perfect sight is a privilege. This experience also made me extremely thankful for the doctors and nurses on the eye mission. They decided to make other people's lives better by improving their vision.

After I resolved the broken glasses incident and gained some valuable insight on life, I went to deliver food packages to families in La Legua with Megan and Isabel! I felt that this trip of delivering food packages was even more meaningful because we added a prayer with each family, which made each family visit extremely special. Some of the families we visited were near the school Madre del buen Consejo, and the parents were attending the church nearby so only the kids were present. Their maturity was definitely amazing and I loved talking to the kids.

Pictures with the family (no parents!)

During this trip, I got a better glimpse of the family's life than I did before. Those that live closer to town opened stores to make extra income to support their family. The children stated that they helped to run the stores and watched the house in general when the parents are away. Again, all of them expressed that they loved receiving food and that the food really helps them both financially and emotionally (LESS WORRIES).

Bringing food into a family's house

Another picture with everyone!

Delivering food to villagers at San Jacinto village!

Other than working at the schools and parish, I have the opportunity to interact with the Peruvian family by delivering food to villagers. It is an amazing experience and is extremely fun! Each Peruvian family that is sponsored by a United States family will receive food monthly.  To ensure that everything is correct, the mother of the Peruvian family had to provide a picture ID and acknowledged through her signature that she had in fact received the food. One of the social worker from Santisimo Sacramento will always that photos of us making the delivery.

Typical ration: two bottles of oil,  2 lbs of beans, one bag of floor and two packages of noodles, and six packets of oat meal.

12 bowls of rice and 12 cans of milk

Delivering supplies to one of the Peruvian family with "Math teacher" , from St. Anne's, Texas.

I absolutely loved delivering supplies to all of the families. They were extremely grateful, fun loving and kind. Each of them gave us a tour of their home and expounded on how they loved having us here and how much they were grateful for having us deliver food to their houses. They also explained that because we give them food (which is worth $25 USD), they can use the money to buy other materials and improve the quality of their life!!

Unloading the supplies

Three packages of supply per family.

The packages are color coded: Blue, Orange and White

Photo op with the Peruvian family.

We were given a tour of the house and they share their stories with us.

Giving Manuel some Math hints on how to do multiplication quickly.

Mass!

As I am staying in a Catholic parish, mass obviously plays an important role in my everyday life here. Every day at 7 PM, all of the missionaries attend mass. Mass is held 4 times a day by Piura's very own enthusiastic Father Joe.  Our dinner is always after the Mass. Except, on Wednesday, we had early dinner before Mass because there is a fiesta at one of the villages. 

Me, Father Joe, and one of the dogs, Boutina. We had dinner together after Mass. 

Father Joe and the other dog, Beethoven

The people of Piura are extremely religious and every day, the church is filled with many residents from Piura. We missionaries sit on the left side from the entrance.

The church just before mass. 

Announcements: Wedding, birth, baptism,etc......

 During mass, Father Joe fills his teachings with extremely relatable anecdotes, and makes sure to translate his words into both Spanish and English so that everyone understands. I daresay that his stories are even more interesting than those we here in the States. The entire mass is filled with singing and clapping, and is a great experience.

Receiving Eucharist is also done differently here in Piura. Everyone gets bread but not wine. Although mass may seem confusing during the first day, one soon gets used to the rhythm and really understands what its all about. Its definitely a great time to reflect upon one's day and think about tomorrow!

The following are pictures taken during mass.

Father Joe quoting from the bible.

Enhancing the wifi and buying more parts

Yesterday I fixed the choke points in the parish wifi network.  Today involved more diagnostics, improving, and enhancing the deployed router configuration. Johnny and I went around the parish looking at the wifi speed at various point (router/access point) of the Wifi network.  When I previously instructed Johnny to put the routers on different channels, I did not take into account the wifi signals from other sources that would be present around the parish. Reconfiguring the parish routers to broadcast on a less busy channel would make the wifi connection to the router more optimum. 

Looking at the speed in the lounge 

Looking at the internet speeds from the secretary's office

Therefore, I downloaded the free version of inSSIDer on Johnny's computer so that I could look at the different channels that the routers broadcast on. I then told Johnny that for the routers to work more efficiently, each router should broadcast on a different channel so that it does not overlap with the signals from the other routers and become less strong. We switched the channels of the two main routers that the missionaries used so that the signals would be stronger and the internet would be more consistent. Below is a picture of the tool inSSIDer and all the wifi signals in the parish (click to enlarge)!

using inSSIDer, a tool that diagnoses the channels of surrounding wifi

 I also tested out some old routers that Johnny had. I checked to see if they are still functional, but I couldn't get them to work because they are either unresponsive to a reset toa  factory settings or they reboot itself randomly. It would be nice if these routers function so that Johnny can use them as replacement if the deployed routers failed in the future in the hot and dusty Piura weather.

Repurposing and testing out the old routers

I went with Johnny to downtown Piura to buy some new equipment for the parish. Downtown Piura was absolutely amazing. They're definitely more technology and food based, because in the 2 blocks that we walked, we passed through 6 different chinese restaurants and 5 shops selling computer equipment. While we went through every shop, I found out that the prices compared to the prices of the equipment from the US were definitely more expensive.

However, while looking through the stores, we found the cheapest prices at a store that Johnny's friend runs, which was great!

At Johnny's friend's store

Taking a taxi! One sols takes us back to the parish.

Chinese Restaurant in Piura, Peru

One of many Chinese Restaurants in downtown Piura

 One of the menu which was posted outside the restaurant.

This is the entrance of the Chinese restaurant.

Here I come.....

Wonton soup (Sopa Wanton) and roast duck (Pato Asado). Popular  Cantonese food.

It is very delicious and fresh.

Chinese restaurant are very popular in Piura, Peru. Just in a short perimeter of the town, there are more than 6 chinese restaurants called chifa. It’s name literally means eat rice in Mandarin. Even though they have the Cantonese and Hakka influence, most of the dishes are very much infused with Peruvian taste. I managed to look at some of the menu and here are some of the translations (from Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chifa#Typical_chifa_dishes)
We had Chinese food on the 2nd Thursday while we were here. It is a nice treat and quite an experience to have Chinese food in Piura, Peru. The roast duck is just amazing. it is moist and succulent.

Reconfiguring the wifi network in the parish

Right now the parish has 10 routers. However, the bandwidth provided by these routers is very low. Since everything is connected ad hoc, so I had to rewire and reconfigure them to make them more efficient. Although the internet works now, the current configuration is only a temporary solution and not very efficient. 

One of the fixes I performed today was replacing an old router with a newer one. The change definitely helped since before, the old Belkin router linked the main router to 3 other access points. Since the router was old, IP packets could not pass quickly through these access points no matter how they were reconfigured. Therefore, once this bottleneck was fixed, the internet ran much faster, reaching the speed of 1.5 Mbps for download instead of the previous 0.12, a humongous improvement.

Testing out a new router

Replacing the old router with a new one

 I then instructed Johnny on a possible future plan to execute when the parish got more supplies. This plan would definitely sustain a large amount of missionaries using the internet at the same time. By giving the missionaries 3 access points, the parish would be able to maintain relatively fast internet speeds while having a lot of missionaries (about 60 missionaries; 20 connections per router. These older routers can't handle more than 20 connections before crashing) using the wifi for any purpose.

Instructing Johnny on how to link the routers together with proper subnet-ing each router as access point

Partial diagram of linked routers with a unmanaged switch

Star configuration from the main router

 Finally, I configured the routers for the clinic so that the nurses and doctors could use it consistently without any issues. Although they are linked to the main routers, they still need to be routinely reset so that they are not overloaded with the amount of users that use them. Hopefully, these routers will now work regularly and facilitate the doctors' work!

Reseting "SantisimoClinica" router to factory default settings.

Reconfiguring "SantisimoClinica"

Fixing and testing the wifi in the enfermeria.

Finally, I walked around looking for computers with a defective ip address that was issued by the Trendnet router. Since this router is used mainly by administrators, giving the administrators a static ip address would be a temporary fix until new equipment is brought in!! Nevertheless, the internet works fantastic now, and I'm sure the internet at the school will function just as well, if not better.

Power cycle the access point in the secretaria office.

Speed testing the network connection using Speedtest.net application and servers from Lima. We are getting close to 1.5 Mbps download bandwidth instead of the previous 0.12 Mbps.