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!

New Beginnings

Well we have been back in Peru for a month now, One of the things we have been doing is trying to sort out the new house, putting hot water in, as well as trying to plan to build new rooms ,and sort out old rooms so our guests this year can be properly looked after. It is possible in the 1st week of July that we will have 14 people in the house!! We now know a few of our neigbours by name, have started to have conversations with many of them and feel very accepted in the neighbourhood. We have a much better relationship with our neigbours after one month than we did the whole of the 2 years in our last house. We have maintained our relationships with the mums in Pacifico de Villa and and we have started a new small discipleship group with these mums in our house. The mums and tots meeting in our front room.

We have contact with more than 10 of the mums that we had contact with last year. This is a new exciting stage as we begin to deepen relationships and begin discipling them. We also are starting a church in our house and this Sunday, Easter Sunday will be our 1st Sunday service. We are very excited about this.
Daniel and Joanna playing in the garden.
Joel doesn't understand who Darth Vader is.

The boys are thriving well in their new house and back to life in Peru Daniel's Spanish has returned although he prefers to speak English, and speaks Spanish when he needs to. Joel is beginning to talk and not just scream and point at things he wants. Latest words are shoees, twooo, (if you say one or uno he says twooo you say three or tres he says twooo), Mummy, and this morning he said Daddy. Bread, banana, milk and other such words are said on a regular basis as well. Anna and I are also well, but getting back into the rhythm of work and play, family time, couple time, sleep time and God time.