Pre Teens

The boys playing football

The faithfuls

The pre-preteen girls

Johannah and Nicole

Gustavo

Alex, Frank and Arthur

One of the greatest pleasures of being an overseas missionary and church planter is seeing the next generation growing up. This is certainly the case with our pre teen (9-12 year olds) as Ronald has pioneered and runs this group along with Rosa (18) Oscar (16), and his brother Franco (14). It is wonderful to see the group growing in depth and numbers week by week. Luz, Alex´s mum has commented on the difference the group has made to Alex´s behaviour in both school and the home. It makes the work worthwhile!

Alex outside his home

Felipe

Kaleb update

Well in a few hours Kaleb will be a week old. It has gone very quickly! This has been the first opportunity I have had to upload some photos from our camera, so here are some highlights.

Both Daniel and Joel have been very cute with Kaleb. Joel calls him 'Kalem' as he can't say his name, and keeps asking when we are going to give him back to our friend Alison Thompson who has a daughter called 'Cailyn'!

Daniel composed his own lullaby for Kaleb, and after printing it out, takes it out of his pocket various times a day to sing it to him. His last request before he goes to bed each night is if he can sing Kaleb his lullaby. Below is a video of him singing it to Kaleb. The audio is not very good, but the lyrics are below.

Kaleb, Kaleb, you are cute,

Kaleb, Kaleb, you have a flute!

Kaleb, Kaleb, you are amazing,

Kaleb, Kaleb, you are not hazing!

Kaleb, Kaleb, this is the end

Kaleb, Kaleb, say “The End”!

So now we are five!

Kaleb Josiah Burgess

Kaleb Josiah Burgess 3 minutes old.

After a lot of pushing, pain and boredom Kaleb didn't want to be born yesterday and due to his breeched poisition and the cord around his neck, which after his birth we discovered was very short we took the correct decision that a caserean section was necessary.

Anyway at 23.40 we weren't sure if his birthday would be the 5th or 6th, but at 00.01 on the 6th Kaleb was born with a healthy weight of 3.3kg, 7.4 pounds.

Mum and baby are doing well. Anna reports that so far he is a quiet contented baby, Thank you God.

All scrubbed up

00.01 6th August Kaleb makes his appearance.

Mummy and son for the 1st time

Daddy and son for the 1st time

Mark, Anna, and Kaleb

My Mum

Last week Daniel and I (Mark)went to England for 5 days for a family emergency. The emergency was due to my mum´s state of health. My mum had been in hospital for over 4 months with a broken femur, which never healed correctly. The situation seemed to be stablising, although her health was up and down.

However two Sundays ago I received a phone call from my sister saying my mum had been admitted into intensive care and her situation was serious. We as a family took the decision to fly back and arrived on Friday the 22nd of July with Daniel. My mum with Anna and a very baby Daniel.

My mum died on Saturday 23rd July at 2.30pm UK time due to multiple organ failure. This has been a great shock to the family. Please pray for us at this time.

Christmas 2009 with my mum and dad.

However I do not wish to dwell on the negative that my mum is no longer with us but the positive that she is now in a place where there is no more pain, no more sickness, no more evil. More than this, she is with Jesus and his perfect presence.

I always want to dwell on my mum as the person she was before she went into hospital. She was very servant hearted, always willing to help out where she could. She was a person who loved her grandchildren dearly, and myself and Anna will always be grateful for the money sent through for toys, the Cbeebies magazines and of course the endless hours of Cbeebies recorded onto DVD.

I will always remember when as a child mum used to make wine in big demi johns and the adults who enjoyed this, sometimes in excess! (I remember one engagement party, and what I thought was a very jolly gardener!!) I also will remember her taking me endlesslessy to the Leeds General Infirmary hospital with various breakages and even concussion.

Also I will never forget the way she has looked after my dad for so many years and has served him.

Thank you mum for your life. You will be sorely missed.

We love you.

JEAN BURGESS 12 October 1946- 23rd July 2011.

Wedding!!!

A month ago I was given the chance to take my second wedding here in Peru. (The first was in the jungle) Both of them have been very different to my normal experience of weddings in the UK. Jaime and Belen who are both part of our church in Pacifico have lived together for 13 years but felt that it was the right time to get married. I had a dual role at the wedding as the official chauffeur and the presiding minister.

The happy couple who were acting as if in love which was great to see.

I arrived at 8.40pm to pick them up. It was supposed to be 8.00pm. When I arrived Jaime was still in his dressing gown. We left at 9.00 and then proceeded to drive around several attractive spots in Chorrillos, the area where we all live. Meanwhile Jaime and Belen were constantly on the phone trying to sort out the P.A for the wedding which hadn´t arrived, the food that hadn´t been sorted 100% and also checking about the DJ who was at that point presiding over a babyshower. I would have been stressed if it had been my wedding but they seemed to be very relaxed about the whole situation. Anyway 10 0 clock arrivedand we hadn´t arrived.We then hit major traffic as it was the anniversary of Chorrillos, and got delayed another 40 minutes. After that I thought it was just plain sailing and we could start the wedding!

Jaime repeating his vows after me.

The guys from the church who made the journey to the wedding.

How wrong I was. We then arrived 1 block from the wedding venue, we stopped at a very dodgy and dirty looking chinese restaurant and waited for the all clear that the DJ and the sound had arrived. Meanwhile Belen in her wedding dress went to the bathroom and bought some food. I was completely thrown by the whole event, but throughly enjoyed the whole event, even though it started at 11pm and when we left at 1.15 am we felt like the party poopers!!!!

The happy couple below!!! Jaime seems to have the Chandler curse and can´t seem to smile even though he is generally a happy guy!!

Baptisms and update

Last Sunday we had our 3rd baptism service in the last year, another great day of celebration. We were able to baptise 10 people a real honour and privilege. Many of these people were new time believers having been Christians less than 3 months, or those who had grown up as Christians and had begun again to follow JesusThe great thing is that many of these people are already involved in the church life. We are steadily, yet solidly growing as a church. Eating together

The church in Los cedros that meets in our house is also growing and the fruit is very obvious to see. I do love our work here although at times, not quite daily, we are tried and tested in new and original ways. It keeps your feet firmly on the ground, and solidly searching God, a good place to be.

See below for some of the baptisms.

New Floor

Oikos church continues to grow and this has presented a good problem, that of lack of space at our Sunday gatherings.

Belen, her sister Sara, and her sister in law Miriam

Since September we have been meeting in Jaime and Belen's house and their 22 metres squared front room has been great until recently as there has been no room at the inn.

The floor before we started the destruction!!

Ronald looking on at the end of Monday after we had levelled the floor.

Therefore we asked if we could bless the family and the church and extend the room in some way. Belen and Jaime have sacrificed bedroom and kitchen space and we have gone from 22 metres squared to 35 metres squared. (Apologies to our American readers, but I have no idea what this is in feet) We managed to destroy the false floor, level the floor (more or less) and also lay a concrete floor in 3 days. On Monday we destroyed the floor.

On Tuesday we levelled the floor and started to mix concrete and we laid about a sixth of the floor.

All the sand had to be carried down from the top of the hill.

On Wednesday we had an amazing blessing of a team from the USA who helped us do most of the back breaking work.

Thanks to Justin and Mark (part of the American missionary team whom we are friends with) who brought their 4 interns, and the 9 university students to help us completely lay the floor.

Belen and Jaime ran out of water so we had to get water from the local stream.
In addition to the American contingent we had Stuart an expat friend helping us, and varying amounts of Peruvians at different times

We also brightened up the front of their house with a nice blue paint.

We now have an extended area to meet and are starting the process to find a permanent building or plot of land where we can build a resource centre and have a meeting place on the second floor.