Mothering Sunday and Oikos

Life is great here in Chorrillos, Lima. We are really busy, as well as being really happy, at what is going on in our lives as a family and also our ministry. The family are healthy as well as the extended family. Anna commented to me that she has cooked for at least 10 people every day this week. Our church is called Oikos, which is a Greek word from the Bible which means family, house, household or extended family, and I suppose you could stretch this to meaning community as well. Our house certainly feels like community and extended family at the moment. It is a real blessing to be able to share life with so many people that pass through our house, are working with us, or just pop in to our house, whether it is for discipleship (formal or informal), or any other query, at any point of the day. We certainly seem to have a full table at lunch time most days. Good we bought a big table!

The photo frames the mums have made in the mums and tots group

As part of Oikos we have a small service on a Sunday, started on Easter Day. We are slowly growing, and on Mother's Day (Peruvian Mother's Day that is) we had 20 adults and more than 14 kids. (It is always harder to count how many kids there are due to them constantly moving about!).

Walter cooking the cake to celebrate Mother's Day

This was a really special day, as many of the mums had received little or nothing from their children, and it was great to able to encourage them, and we also have a few males starting to come along, as well as young adults, which is our current prayer. Everyone stayed for cake, the majority for lunch, and we finally had a 'quiet' house at 4.30pm!! We then went out as a family (Daddy, Mummy, adopted aunt Lili, and sons Daniel and Joel) to Larco Mar a place we sometimes go on special occasions and had a afternoon snack and juice.

Daniel however got a temperature, and wasn't very happy, hence the massive smile!
It was a great day, and has been a great month.
2010 is looking and feeling great.

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!

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.

Oh Oklahoma

Well we finished our time outside of Peru with 5 days in the USA with our friends and mentors Hannah and Alex and their wonderful boys, Joel, Samuel and Isaac. We also got the privilege of speaking at the church where they are currently serving, Bridgeway church. We again had a great time there, and were amazingly blessed, thank you guys.
While we were in Oklahoma we visited a quaint town called Guthrie, went to several parks, went shopping and ate burgers, in true American style.
The best part however was spending with the Absalom family, talking through our time in Peru in 2009 and what 2010 may well look like. Thank you guys for your love laughter, and advice.

Below are some pictures of our time.Alex, Isaac and JoelThe Absalom family eating burgersJoel just wanted to cuddle Isaac!!Daniel in front of Samuel, Isaac and Alex.

Taronga Zoo and Sydney

Cool Uncle Ben and cooler nephew Daniel!

Granddad and youngest grandson

Well we had an amazing holiday in Sydney after the madness of the UK. The UK was an amazing time, seeing so many people, so many places and really being filled up again, but we were drained physically, following possibly the most stressful and busy month of our lives in December.Grandma Sue with her 2 grandsons.
It was great to see Anna's family and just to have the space to reflect on what had happened in 2009 and what 2010 may look like. We didn't do very much but we did visit Taronga Zoo in Sydney which was great fun. Los 2 amigos or brother in laws.

Back In Peru

We will update our trip around the world as soon as we get chance but I (Mark) just wanted to let you know about an amazing testimony that Alfredo told us today. Alfredo has recently decided to move to Ventanilla so that he can have a greater presence there among other reasons. Alfredo is also currently living in the school so it isn't robbed or vandalised, as the last caretaker decided to leave recently. Alfredo, his wife Rosa, and son Francis were staying in the school last week when an invasion happened in the next block. An invasion is when several hundred families move into an area overnight. This is officially classed as illegal here, but is the way that most shanty towns are planted. This is then followed by the local government selling the land to the people that have invaded, and then others buy this land, as Alfredo did. However there is a loophole in this very strange law, that if the people can be evicted within 24 hours they are illegal immigrants and have to move on. Alfredo's neighbours didn't want these people to live there and to move on as they had moved in on on land that is classed as park land for the future. (I am presuming much further in the future as all of Ventanilla is currently 100% sand!) Anyway the only way (according to locals) to evict these people is to do it by force. This could be described as a mob, as truncheons, pistols and stones are used to evict people. I have visions of Gangs of New York! (Alfredo told me that the women collect the stones to give to thier husbands to use, this is organised violence)
This mob was unsuccessful and so they had to return the next night with the police and these people were successfully evicted. Alfredo said they heard all of this and it was quite exciting!!! The story however doesn't end there however as many of these people were told there was space to buy land near the school, and some people did this. Others however saw the land owned by Alfredo's organisation and not yet being used by the school and made a decision to invade this.
Alfredo said to them, this is private land. I am however a pastor and will not use violence to kick you out, but as you will be on my land you will be giving me permission to preach to you night and day.
The next day Alfredo woke up and no one had invaded their land!
(All the pictures were taken last year in and around the school)

Perth what a lovely place and lovely people

Well our journey continued on from a very cold and windy London onto Perth via Singapore. I honestly think that we have never spent so little time in one country before. We arrived forty minutes late as we set off one and a half hours late from Heathrow due to the plane freezing!!! We literally walked off one plane and onto the other one and travelled the four hours arriving in Perth at 1am. We were staying with the Jarvis' who were amazing and very hospitable hosts. We had an amazing time with the TOM guys in Perth, and again realised we are so part of the right family of missionaries. Malcolm Potts the leader of TOM Perth said 'isn't this great we hardly know you guys yet we are talking like old friends'.

Perth is so beautiful as well. A few photos just to prove it. I (Mark) was in charge of the camera and I forgot to take photos of all the people. Sorry if you're not on there!! Daniel, Jude, Joel and Anna on the beautiful Cottosloe beach in Perth.

I love the sand and so many nutrients!

Final night barbecue with the TOM Perth guys. (right to left Dan, Daniel, Anna, Cheryl, Andy, Di, and Malcolm)

Malcolm, (and his Aussie beer), Di, Andy,(cooking fine meat on his barbie) Cheryl and Anna

Malcolm and Cheryl, leaders of TOM Perth. (awesome couple, so wise and so much authority, and the humility that they don't realise it).

Good old Aussie stubbie!

We really took these photos. We are so blessed.

'The Burgess Boys' on the beach.

Update on the missing Burgess Family not in Peru at the moment

Firstly apologies for the delay since our last posting, we have been in more than 10 cities and 3 countries since our last post, although Singapore doesn't really count as we walked off a plane from London and walked onto another bound for Perth.

Daniel with his new crocodile head bought from the natural history museum.
A fox that we photographed while on a farm in Surrey.
Big grins from all four at the natural history museum
Anna's grandad or GG (great grandad) with Anna, Daniel and Joel in Winchester
Joel wondering where the wheel went!

We were in England for 6 weeks and it was an amazingly busy, fruitful, freezing, rewarding, informative, relaxing and did I say freezing time.
We spent time with friends in Sheffield at our home church after Christmas with my (Mark) family in Newcastle. We then spent a relaxed week in Center Parcs and finished our time with the UK in a week down south. This involved 5 different beds in 5 nights, in 5 different cities, at one point!
Above are a few highlights of our time.