Saturday, Jessica stayed with her kids at Mom's house while her husband went to some birthday party. We had a good time talking and visiting, and later on we walked to a commercial street called Lope de Vega (a famous Spanish writer) to look for a red coat she wanted to buy. She found one. On the way back, her husband found us walking and picked us up in his car and brought us home. We watched "Eclipse" with twenty interruptions from the kids, but we watched it. Where the movie came from is a mystery for me, since it is still in the theaters.... right, I am in South America.
Sunday I went to church to Asamblea Cristiana again. It was raining, so my mother took me there. It was a great service. The music was very moving, and the speaker was a peruvian pastor that used to be a "sendero luminoso" terrorist militant. Sendero luminoso was or is, I don't know, the marxist extremist group that killed people in the name of the revolution in Peru. This particular person was a leader during the Fujimori government. His name was Jorge. Couldn't get his last name. But he was captured and imprisoned and his penalty for being a high rank leader was being shot. They needed a judge order though. During his isolated confinement, he was visited by a blind pastor that told him the gospel. Jorge wanted to kill him for even talking to him, his marxist convictions were so deep. But one of his marxist dogmas was that you can't kill the lame, the mute, deaf or blind. So he couldn't touch the pastor. When the day of his execution arrived, Jorge decided to turn his life to God. He was blindfolded and taken to a police station where he was kept for three days. At the end of those three days, he was released. Free to go. His papers had mysteriously vanished and there were no proof of his terrorist activities, so they couldn't execute him. There were also a group of human rights visiting Peru and the government couldn't risk the international exposure of executing a prisoner without solid proof. Jorge couldn't believe it. He went and found the blind pastor and accepted Jesus in his life. He has dedicated his life to minister to all kinds of people in need. He has been living in Argentina, in the very cold south, for 20 years. He was blessed with a fruitful ministry and a wife and two little daughters. After ministering in the north of the country for three straight months, he and his family were returning in a bus to their home when the bus was hit by a truck. His year and a half year old daughter died instantly. His wife was in a comma. While he was buring his daughter he told God that he couldn't understand what was happening, Scripture about protection and God's care for His people kept coming to his mind to accuse him. Finally he told God that nothing could stop him from preaching and asked God for his wife to be healed. She recovered. That was 12 years ago. Jorge still today ministers and preaches all over the country. Wow, it was such a powerful testimony.
After church we went to a small music festival at my old high school organized by a choir. I know the choir director, Ines. She was my music teacher in high school. She isn't that much older than me really. Her husband Alberto used to be my psychologist when I was doing group therapy in the 90s. So we went to my high school and there had some tables set up and there was a guy with a guitar that could play anything you wanted and we did some karaoke. The choir sang beautifully many songs, and some people sang folkloric melodies, tangoes, and some other popular songs. We ate some empanadas, cake and sodas. I had a very good time. I sang one song with the lyrics in my hand because I couldn't remember anything to sing. I remembered a thousand songs that night though. Funny how your mind can play some tricks on you.
The kids walked all over the high school with my mother. They enjoyed getting into the classrooms and writing on the blackboards. For me it was so weird to walk into the school. It's been over 20 years. A lot of memories were brought back by walking the hallways. Now the school is for both boys and girls, but it used to be a girls only school when I attended.
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