Random Days and photos from Easter Day

The Great Easter Day Egg Hunt

There are days in Peru that are more random than most now and again. Saturday the 17^th April was certainly one of these. Joel has had a cold and had a runny nose for sometime now and his eyes were very gummed up. We therefore took him to the doctors, and thought we’d try the one down the road as it looked as it was a reasonably large medical practice and had many specialists. Well Anna went into investigate and find out what was going on and we all went in and sat in the waiting room. No problems at this point. The smell of the waiting room was a little odd, but it could have just been musty! Anyway the doctor came out and he had his rip curl t-shirt and jeans on, with his doctor’s coat slung on. We found out later that this was his house as well as surgery. We also found out that all the specialists were him. There was also a dentist as well he informed us!!

Joanna with her very sucessful egg collection.

Anyway he checked Joel’s chest and said he had bronchitis and began to prepare syringe of antibiotics. In the moment we forgot to ask what it was, he also ‘forgot’ to ask Joel’s name and weight!!! Anyway I have started playing rugby and have sustained a couple of fairly strong bruises/breaks and I wasn’t sure what to do. Anna said there is nothing they can do without an x-ray, but this was before super doctor with his super powers, sorry super syringe He said no problem, and before I knew it he was preparing a muscle relaxant for me. He didn’t check my bruises or assess me at all, he just prepared his concoction! Anyway when I realized after my 30 second consultation he turns round and says oh do you want tablets instead. Anna says to me ‘he’s already prepared it'. So in about 2 minutes he has injected both Joel and I with unknown fluids. Sounds so stupid in hindsight, and outside of the situation, but in the moment you can be carried along with it all, well we can be, and were. All is well though and we both feel better. I just need to check what went into us yesterday when I return with Joel for his second injection.

Joel trying to a better job than our doctor friend!!

This was before the incident outside a friend’s house and Daniel needing a number 2!!

Daniel with the new member of the Burgess Family, Timmy the girl rabbit!!

The rest of the day was great and had a wonderful day off with good friends.

Life without Internet

Well not having internet has meant we have got behind on our updates, again.

As I (Mark) wrote on our last update we are in a season of new beginnings. We now have a very healthy mums and tots group which had 15 mums last week with far too many kids in the back garden, a great problem to have. More team is certainly needed!! Anna is continuing to teach the mums about loving their kids on purpose, and at the moment is helping design things for Peruvian Mother's Day, and I have started to teach the Alpha course with the mums, and we will finish by having a retreat, which I believe for all of them will be a first in their life.

We have also started a church service on a Sunday which is very exciting.

The mums at our first Sunday morning service

Watch this space for further details. This is slowly growing but will be a great support to the other work we are doing.

The most exciting thing at the moment is the deepening or relationships here. We are starting to do a lot of one to one discipleship and are already seeing the difference in the lives of the some of the mums, and the others we are discipling. Last week we took on 5 adults from a church where we are mentoring the pastor and they will be doing something like a secondment (internship for our American readers) with us till December, and then we will re-evaluate. They will be a support to us, but more than that they will be learning practically about mission and helping their church to be more outwards focused.

We are also starting to visit some of the mums at home as well as seeing them outside of the Tuesday meeting.

Melissa (a 19 year old single mum) and Tiago. Melissa is being discipled by Anna.

It is wonderful to live in a welcoming community, and feel that our house will be a centre, like a modern day abbey, or vicarage.

No I'm cooler than you!

Our house is such a blessing and work is well underway for the various visitors we will be having this year. We are getting to know our neighbours, and unlike in our last house (where we lived for 2 years) we know the names of several of them. Anna has even visited one of our neighbours 2 doors down and we have a couple of visitors from the neighbourhood here as well.

Daniel and Joel on retreat where I was speaking.

In summary things are healthy and fun, and exciting at the moment.

Daniel in a post church service activity. This activity has now been banned. No idea where he gets it from!