Baptisms November 2011

We’ve been really busy recently hence the lack of postings. We have many exciting things to post in the next few weeks including our church Christmas party tomorrow (Sunday), our Christmas outreach event on the 18^th in San Genaro 2 a poorer area than Pacifico, Christmas, as well as our 2 week mission trip to Pucallpa.

We were very honoured on the 20^th November to baptise 6 people and dedicate 10 babies and children. It was an exciting and emotional time for all those present, especially the families involved in the baptisms and dedications. We baptised Felipe (10), Daniela (11), Santino (17), Paola (18), Ana (28), and Bertha (32). We look forward to our next baptism and dedication service in March when we will hopefully still be in the summer.

All those who were dedicated and their families.

Worship on the beach.

Praying for the babies and children being dedicated.

Dedicating Jefferson and praying for his teenage parents Paola (who was baptised) and Tito

Kids playing by the beach

Santino giving his testimony

Rosa in the Sunday School on the beach

Ines and granson Tiago listening

Felipe after being 'dunked'

Please let me up!!!

Please click here to see all the photos.

Bonfire night in Peru!

It's November. Those of you who are in the northern hemisphere are wrapped up warm and those in the UK especially, resenting the short days and the adverts for Christmas already on the television. Here it is Spring and getting warmer by the day. But we couldn't resist the invitation from some expat friends to celebrate Bonfire Night on Sunday!

(For those who are not from Britain, Bonfire Night (aka Guy Fawkes Night, Fifth of November) is a very strange British celebration where we have fireworks, bonfires, and burn 'Guys' made of newspaper-stuffed clothes to celebrate the fact that Guy Fawkes and his friends failed to blow up the Houses of Parliment in 1605. Wikipedia will tell you more, but let's just say it is a British excuse to have a party after the depressing arrival of shorter days after the clocks go back!)

Anyway, requirement for entry into the party spirit in the 20'C/70´F warmth was to wear a woolly hat and bring gloves for the kids to use sparklers!!

Daniel and Joel have fun with Sparklers for the first time!

Toasting marshmellows on the 'bonfire'!

Bonfire night has such fun memories for Mark and I, but it was Daniel, Joel and Kaleb's first one, so we had to teach them what to do. Daniel and Joel were very keen to wear their 'costumes' (hats and scarfs!) on the way to the party, but they lasted about 5 minutes when they got there because it was too warm!!)

Okay, okay, so I have no good photos of the fireworks! But Daniel said they were his favourite bit of the party, so I can't leave them out! Joel, however, was very keen to go home when all the banging started!

It was great fun and after 5 years of not celebrating Bonfire Night, brought back some happy tradition memories! Thanks Dillon and Claire! You did a great job!

A sample of what we eat

The main meal here in Peru is at lunch time. We have 5 adults currently living in our house, plus Shaun and Amanda are often around for lunch, and guests come and go too – so there are often many around the table! 5 adults is a small day!

So we have to come up with meals which are reasonable priced to cook for large numbers and that aren’t too fiddly, otherwise it would take all morning! Here in Peru there is not the availability of pre-prepared foods like there is in the UK or US, and what there is, is very expensive so not possible for large numbers. So most of the food is prepared from scratch.

Being an international community, we cook a mixture of native and non-native dishes. Most of the international dishes have to have rice cooked with them too, especially for Ronald and Rosa who don’t feel it is a proper meal without rice (a bit like Mark not feeling it is a proper meal without meat!)

Tuesday

Meal: Chicken in a cream and tomato sauce, with rice and salad

Cooked by: Anna and Rosa

Number eaten: 9 adults, 3 children

Wednesday

Meal: Arroz con Pollo - traditional Peruvian chicken and rice in coriander, with onion and tomato salad and fresh salad

Cooked by: Rosa and Lili

Number eaten: 9 adults, 2 children

Thursday

Meal: Spicy spaghetti Bolognese and salad

Cooked by: Amanda

Number eaten: 9 adults, 2 children

Friday

Meal: Ají de gallina – shredded chicken in a bread-chili-milk sauce with hardboiled eggs, potatoes, rice and salad.

Cooked by: Rosa

Number eaten: 6 adults, 2 children

Saturday (Day off)

Meal: Barbequed Hamburgers with cheese

Cooked by: Shaun

Number eaten: 4 adults, 2 children.

Sunday

Meal: Pollo a la Brasa – rotisserie chicken, chips and salad (and homecooked rice for those who need extra carbs!)

Cooked by: Noone – bought in from supermarket because Anna too sick to cook L

Number eaten: 6 adults, 2 children

Monday

Meal: Estofado – chicken stew with potatoes, rice and salad

Cooked by: Rosa

Number eaten: 7 adults, 2 children

Tuesday

Meal: Curry with rice and salad (Pataks sauce brought into Peru from Mark’s last trip to England!)

Cooked by: Mark

Number eaten: 5 adults, 3 children (children had tuna pasta!)

Wednesday

Meal: Spagetti carbonara with chorizo sausage and salad

Cooked by: Rosa (with instructions from Anna as first time she had made the dish)

Number eaten: 5 adults, 2 children

Thursday

Meal: Meatloaf, mash potato, green beans (and rice for those who need rice!) with gravy (imported from USA!)

Cooked by: Amanda (& Shaun)

Number eaten: 7 adults, 2 children

Friday

Meal: Beer battered fish, rice and salad

Cooked by: Anna

Number eaten: 5 adults, 2 children

Who's who, October 2011

Things have changed a lot in the last few months, but our current leadership team feels a lot more stable and long term and we wanted to introduce you to the people who we regularly share our lives with and work alongside. For those of you who don’t know us very well, I have also included a description of our family too!

Mark:

As Mark is nearing his mid-thirties, he is beginning to realize how much having kids has made him more introverted! With a rapid pace of life, he has actually begun to enjoy his own company and likes to sit and watch a good film. He still loves getting out and playing sport or hanging out with friends though, and hates the idea of spending our day off in the house. He is always looking for new places to go and loves adventure. He is team leader of our team and is responsible for overseeing all that is going on. Being apostolic in nature, he is constantly looking for new ways to develop or improve things. He loves the fact that every day is different and there are constantly new challenges and people around.

Anna:

After being pregnant for what seemed like ages (I was pregnant for 5 months with Solomon who we lost and then very quickly pregnant with Kaleb, who was born 3 months ago), I finally feel ‘normal’ again and able to partake wholeheartedly in life again! I am loving being a mother and spending time with the boys, and also loving spending time with our community. I feel so privileged to always have people around to help me out with the house, the cooking and the boys as needed, and although life is exhausting, it is also incredibly enjoyable! My role on the team is to support Mark and the other leaders, and so that often means having lots of conversations and praying with people as I get moments throughout the day, and supporting Karina in her role as head of children’s work in Pacifico.

Daniel:

Daniel is turning 5 at the end of November and is a very helpful and kind boy. He is currently into making raceworlds for his ‘Kerwizz’ cars and loves racing them around the different tracks he makes. He still loves reading and making inventions (tennis rackets stuck to cars to make them fly, or stuck to his arms to be a bird – unfortunately discovered on that occasion that he couldn’t fly!). He is a natural leader and likes to organize his Peruvian friends and Joel (his gringo (American and British) friends are no so willing to be bossed around!)

Joel:

Joel (3) is a smiler and is affectionately called ‘Joely’ by most people here – he even refers to himself as ‘Joely’. He is now a complete chatterbox when he gets a chance to be and loves to be outside or doing things all the time. He is an all or nothing boy, and he shows all of his emotions on his face – he can go from a huge grin to pouty disappointment in a second (usually when his 100^th request of the day for more bread is refused!). Oh, and he loves to eat, although he is currently refusing to eat his lunch most days (which increases the requests for bread in the two hours after lunch he is not allowed to eat if he hasn’t eaten his lunch!) He is very sociable and loves to be with people and making friends with anyone he meets. He has a collection of soft toys, which he affectionately calls his ‘kids’ and they all have to be tucked in at night!

Kaleb:

Kaleb (3 months) is a very relaxed character, but also very alert – I think he is going to be very bright! He has some gorgeous smiles and is beginning to giggle (sometimes at no one in particular!) which brings a smile to us all! He currently has an amazing ability to sleep in a kitchen full of people!

Haseena

Hassena is our current intern from our Sheffield, UK church. She has been with us since August and is going to be with us until the end of January. She is a trained medical doctor and is hoping to specialize in psychiatry when she returns home. Here she has been learning Spanish and focusing on working with the children in Pacifico. She has been supporting the Sunday school leaders and has been visiting various children in the Sunday school to teach them about ways God talks to us. This all began when a few of the children started receiving visions and dreams, and Haseena has been recording them and helping the children make sense of them. It is very exciting and encouraging and I will write about it in another post soon. She is also in charge of the Christmas Nativity play and has already cast the play and started organizing people to make costumes. We are looking forward to seeing Shaun as the star of the play (literally!).

Rosa

Rosa is 18 and has been living with us since June this year and is from a Shipibo tribe in Pucallpa in the Amazon Jungle. We invited her to come and with live us so she can study at university here for three years. She has chosen to study nursing and is studying Monday to Friday in the evenings. During the day, she spends time studying and doing practicals (so far just visiting the Morgue, which was an eye-opening experience for us all as she told us about it afterwards – lets just say that there are not the same rules in the UK as in Peru!)- she also loves to cuddle Kaleb and has a gift for getting him to sleep, as well as being the most regular chef in our house! She has a good sense of humour and is always joking around, although she can also be very mature and sincere when she needs to be.

Karina, Lili and Ronald

Lili:

Lili (30) has been living with us for 3.5 years now (except for a 4 month return to her parents’ house). She is one of our small group leaders and Sunday school teachers and spends most afternoons doing pastoral visits and is in charge of Nido en Casa(Nursery at home) which is run for preschoolers of missionary children on a Tuesday and Thursday morning, (which Joel attends). The other mornings she spends time individually with Daniel and Joel doing Spanish classes with them which are always lots of fun. Lili is learning English and is very caring and practical and loves to cook when she gets a chance!

Ronald:

Ronald (27) is Lili’s brother and he is our full term Peruvian intern. As well as being a small group leader, he is also involved in worship and the pre-teenagers and teenagers group. He spends much of his week visiting people and helping out with practical things that need to be done. He sleeps with in our next door neighbour´s house, but spends much of the day at our house when not out, either playing the guitar or listening to new songs on Youtube (or both!). He is a very encouraging, patient and sincere guy and always willing to lend a hand.

Karina:

Karina is a young, bubbly grandmother in her early forties. She recommitted her life to the Lord last year and under Anna’s support, she is heading up the Children’s ministry. She makes jewellery and festive crafts to sell in her spare time. Always up for a giggle, she is a great encourager and although she has some difficult family circumstances, she keeps persevering.

Angela

Angela is Karina’s sister and is as bubbly as her sister, often joking and having fun. She lives with her four children (and often Karina too), in an apartment opposite our house which she likes to keep meticulously clean, I’m told, often to the detriment of her punctuality! She also recommitted her life to the Lord last year and is one of our small group leaders.

Shaun and Amanda

Shaun:

Shaun (28) and his wife Amanda have recently moved into a house nearby to be part of our team. Shaun is from Maryland and loves junk food and fizzy drinks (although manages to stay very thin on it) but hates sea food (to Mark’s approval!). He joins Mark in a love of Rugby and has even named their dog after the passion. Shaun has just taken over the church small groups and is in charge of writing the questions for the groups each week and making sure the leaders are supported in their roles. He is also a great Bible teacher and takes turns with Mark to share in the various meetings. He is determined to teach our boys American English and has already taught Daniel to wiggle his bottom and make raspberry noises when he comes into the room. Shaun and Daniel have also gone into business together, buying and selling fish on his phone application – they are currently saving up for a shark!

Amanda:

Amanda (26) is from Texas. She is very friendly and lots of fun and adds many smiles to our team. She regularly treats us to her baking and is learning to play her new guitar which she was miraculously donated. She is helping Ronald with the worship group (she sings beautifully) and is also spending time each week visiting the women in Pacifico and at Krochet Kids. She loves children, babies and animals and can often be found playing with Daniel or Joel (or smothered under a cushion Joel has covered her with!). Amanda has a pastoral heart and will no doubt come alongside many of the women in the church as time goes on. She also recently gave her take on our community, which you can read about here.

You can read Amanda and Shaun's blogs at:

www.amandalaura.blogspot.com

www.shaunwissmann.wordpress.com

and see their website here

Community

I am hoping to write a few blog posts in the next few weeks to give you a better idea of what life is like for us personally here in Peru. If you ever come and stay with us, one of the things you will notice straight away is how many people live in and are around our house every day (and how many people eat together every day!) Because we are passionate about discipleship, and the importance of modeling life to others, we try to welcome people into our every day life. Like Jesus did with his disciples, and we see the early church doing in Acts, we eat together and try and fellowship with one another throughout the week. But it has not always been that way...

Ever since we have lived in Peru (now 4 years), I have wanted to live in a community and to create community too in our house.

Our house is large by UK standards (5 bedrooms), and God provided it for us miraculously back in 2009. Nearly two years on, I am so amazed and humbled by how God has answered our prayers for community.

When we first lived in Peru, God provided us with a rented house in a nice part of town. So nice, that the neighbours didn’t talk to one another, and as much as we tried, the only people we got to know in the community were the watchmen. It was the perfect house for the time we were there, but I always craved living in a community and doing ministry in and around the community.

Los Cedros - our street now.

Where we live now is an emerging community, called Los Cedros, existing for only around 40 years (50 years ago, it was all farmland), where everybody knows one another and is in and out of everybody’s business! We know not just our next door neighbours, but all the people who live on our street, at least to say ‘hello’ too. We have shared meals with 5 different families, and have regular visits in and out of the houses of three of our neighbours. In our ‘ministry’ community, we currently have 11 adults regularly eating lunch together, all of us living within 3 minutes of each other (5 of them under our roof).

A normal lunchtime

I am just loving living in community!

I love that so many generations are connected – and all look out for one another.

Haseena, our current intern from Sheffield, UK, plays with Joel after lunch
Sunday evening after meeting together in Los Cedros, people often hang out in the kitchen

But yet I know that it was something that has taken a lot of prayer, work, selflessness for all those involved and commitment (and it is not without its difficulties for sure!) It seems so strange for me now to imagine how most families in the Western world now have only 3 or 4 people at most in general around a table to eat (if in fact they do eat together.) For me, it is weird on days we only have 6 adults around the table!

This week, our community has been under attack. Most of us have been sick, and there have been many attacks on our sleep too. But all of this is an encouragement to us of how God is at work in our community. At the moment I am so impressed by the love and commitment to one another I have seen. The lack of need for a washing up rota, the stopping and praying for one another, the love and care for one another when one is sick or in need of something from the shops.

Our sitting room often looks like this!Amanda showing off our weekly timetable, to try and keep track of our 11 leaders!

At the moment it feels a bit like Acts 2, where the disciples ate together and had all things in common, but although the temptation is to remain comfortable, we are all being challenged to be radical in our love to others, and with the love I have personally received from the people around me at the moment, I am really excited to see what God is doing and going to do!

Krochet Kids Update

See this short video about Krochet Kids Peru, just released on their website.

Krochet Kids Peru

Please see another link to Amanda's website which talks about another venture that we are now involved with here in Peru. Thanks Amanda for writing it better than I (Mark) could ever write it.

See Amanda's link here

Shaun and Amanda

Amanda and Shaun Wissmann, Americans from Texas (and other parts if you talk to Shaun) are now part of our team.

Please see the link to Amanda's blog about her first thoughts about being part of our team here in Chorrillos. Shaun and Amanda are amazing and such an amazing addition and blessing to our team. We love you guys, and I am sure you'll be hearing much more from then.

Catch the Fire in Pucallpa

Astra showing how she loves the young ones no matter where she is.

The traditional dance and dress of the Shipibo women welcoming us.

After the ILSOM conference we went to the jungle with the Catch the Fire team. This was Mark's eighth visit to the jungle, and third to the Shipibo village of Nuevo san Juan where we are supporting the church. We had an amazing time there even though we arrived Sunday night and returned to Lima on the Wednesday morning. Pucallpa's weather welcomed us on Monday as it rained like only happens in tropical climates until about 2-3pm.

Angela, part of our church leadership, being the joker that she is.

Following the rain the blessings began. Our intern Haseena, who is a doctor, when not in Peru was able to visit some of the houses in the village.

Haseena with a small proportion of the kids in the village.

We also had a few of the team praying for the people who received medical attention. In this first house we saw our first healing, as the founding pastor's wife, who was partially deaf in one ear, and completely deaf in the other was able to hear better than some of the Catch the Fire team who were testing that this lady wasn't just trying to make us feel better, and was really supernaturally healed. God is good.

Praying for the church members and visitors, just before we left.

We also were able to give out 6 suitcases of donations that the team had brought with them, shoes, clothes, toys, and toiletries. This took nearly 2 hours to finish doing, and again was a real blessing to me, seeing kids without shoes, having shoes for the first time.

Tuesday was also an amazing day of blessing, as we were able to serve food to the whole village. Over 450 people were present. Some people had a stable meal for that day. Also we saw over 250 people when we set up our makeshift medical clinic. Photos to follow.

We also finished with an amazing church service with over 200 people present and many recommitting their lives to God and the church. We also got to pray for every person in the church.

I am already awaiting my 9th visit which are going to do just after Christmas.

It is such a blessing to work with people who are so hungry and needy.

Catch the Fire Visit

CATCH THE FIRE VISIT SEPT 2011

Left to right: Capucine, Alexandra, John, Debbie, Astra and Rosa (missing Robert and Daniel)

We have had the blessing of a short term team led by our friends John and Alexandra Tanyan, pastors of the catch the fire church, Ajax. A team of 8 people came for 3 reasons; to do an ILSOM, an international school of ministry, to bless our church in Pacifico, and to do outreach in the church we work with in the jungle.

Astra from the CTF team with Tiago from Pacifico.

The team arrived Saturday night and Sunday morning the team recovered from culture shock and ministered in Pacifico.

John and Alexandra our friends, leaders of the team, and the pastors of Catch the Fire Ajax

One of the main reasons they came however was to minister at the ILSOM, a week long intensive pastor and leaders school, where leaders are ministered to, and helped to deal with life's hurts, and then leave better equipped for ministry.

Students from the school; from Chiclayo, Pucallpa, and Lima.

Mark was head coordinator and he managed to gather pastors and leaders from several churches in Lima, 2 churches in Pucallpa, and a church from Chiclayo, a northern desert city.

Capucine talking about father types and Mark translating.

The week was an amazing success and everyone was blessed by them and God, and we look forward to the possibility of them coming again in future years.