Dear friends and family!
We hope you're doing great these days! Wanted to send you a note to let you know how grateful we are for you and for your interest and support of our journey here in Peru! Life, as always, is an adventure. From highs and lows in ministry to crazy jungle diseases, our adventure here has and continues to be full of memories.
By way of update, we are doing pretty well. Many of you know I had a nasty bout with malary and leptospirosis (look it up...its gross) a few months ago but, thank the Lord, I'm finally doing well. It was a crazy, crazy ride but, amazingly, with many blessings. God took care of us in tremendous ways and we were blessed to witness loving Christian community at its best. As for our family, we are moving right along. Sofia and Maddox and Liam are hands down the perfect kids for us! Lots and lots of work but with precious smiles, spunky attitudes, and lots of fun we thoroughly enjoy getting to be their parents. Sofi is now in 3rd grade and still surfing. Maddox is in kindergarden and is just now starting his 2nd season of baseball. Last be not least, Liam is not far from 4 years old and is a star in his class at school. Steph, too, is doing well. With lots going on from ministry to her bootcamp classes, she is always on the go touching lives right and left. And, as for me, well, like I said, thank the Lord, I am world's better. My last few months have been beastly. Ministry is good, though, admittedly, difficult at times. Still amazes me how the irony of that is so true. Ups and downs are so common. People get excited and wonderful things happen and then things slow down, people are unsure of their budding faith. Through it all though, I am still so impressed with the strength of the faith community. Growing up in a small church I experienced wonderful Christian community. Thankfully, only 3 years into this work we enjoy deep community here too. People want to be with one another. They want to know how you are and, beautifully so, our paths contiually cross on so many days besides Sunday. This is one of those things we had hoped for early on and are now so grateful to get to see.
There are a number of exciting things we want to share with you. To name a few, a recent retreat our youth from church put on for 60 high school aged kids at a public school was awesome. Guys and gals...in all honesty, it was amazing! The teachers raved about the job our church did and the students themselves were very complimentary. We spent 4.5 hours with these teenagers doing activities and talking about the importance of being leaders in our context, whether school, job, home, wherever. We were blessed by the school to be able to talk about Christian leadership and what that looks like. This invitation we have is incredible and we love getting to work with these precioius people that have become such dear friends. To date, we've been involved with this school for a little more than 3 years and have been able to do numerous workshops for parents about social issues their kids face. This year we'll be doing leadership retreats for the students. Our work here is a great opportunity for us to be able to meet some tremendous needs while openly teaching the example of Christ and the values he taught.
Other cools things happening...
- The church has a new home! We are now renting a location on Sunday mornings. Drop by if you're ever in town!!! We'd love to have you.
- We've got a group of Aggies coming to visit in July that will be helping with our 2nd retreat at the school as well as helping put on a retreat for our young adults group.
- Our church is currently putting on a once a month marriage workshop that has been an interest to quite a few people and has helped us to meet some real relational needs both inside and outside the church.
- We're excited to again host a group from ACU that will be here in October. This study abroad group came last year for the 1st time and will return this year for short course on Peruvian/Inca culture and to help us in our ministry needs.
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