Christmas and Early January

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January 4, 2006

I had a wonderful Christmas and New Year's. On Christmas Eve, Susanna and I went downtown to a special annual market where you can buy all kinds of unique things. It was wall to wall people in the Plaza de Armas and we spent a few hours looking at everything and doing some shopping. That night, we had dinner over at another missionary family's home with about 25 people. We had plenty of traditional American food, but we ate at 11pm since the Peruvians are accustomed to Christmas dinner at midnight. They also shoot off fireworks here at Midnight, so we enjoyed those for a while, and then resented them a bit while we tried to go to sleep! We had church on Christmas Day and it was great. It was such a unique Christmas and it was really humbling to be here for it.

On New Years Eve, we went to the church youth group meeting to announce a special event we have coming up on Thursday, January 5th to kickoff a youth club similar to scouting programs or Awana clubs in the States. Then we went to the home of a fellow missionary up in the mountains and had dinner with about 8 girls total. We had a great time cooking and chatting, and before we knew it, we were enjoying fireworks from the third floor window! This was a beautiful log home with tons of windows, set way up above the city, so the view was amazing!

I've continued going up to Palpanccay every Tuesday and Friday. We have a faithful group of about 13 children coming. We color and play games and they listen to Bible stories. Please pray that this can turn into something a little deeper and more structured. These kids love to come and are really open to the Gospel. And ultimately, they will hopefully be a part of the boys/girls club we are kicking off with the older kids this week, which is geared more toward discipleship for young people in the church. God has faithfully provided a few helpers to accompany me to and from Palpanccay, as it's a bit of a journey, and that has been a great gift. Please pray that He'll take these budding programs in the direction HE wants them to go.

Daniel, me and Veronica.

















Me and Jhon.








Andrew, the guy next to me, had his family visiting for two weeks. We enjoyed hanging out with them and his sister, Ali, came with us on New Year's for a great girls' night.









Me and Jhon (like Johann), he's 3 and he is a mess. He likes to shout back and forth "your feet smell" in Quechua, so that's the only phrase I know! (Quechua is the Indian language in Peru - it's the other official language besides Spanish.)














All of us with the new swingset.








This is Daniel. He's 4 and goes to a bilingual school, so he can say adorable things in English like "Push me please." (on the swing).









This one is from our gift exchange a few weeks ago. (we all had a blast, it's just not that customary to smile big in pictures here!)