Navidad en Peru

It is probably safe to say that none of you are in the Christmas frame of mind now that it is three weeks after the fact but I will share with you a bit about our first Christmas here in Lima. To begin with, Christmas here is celebrated on the Eve of the 24th rather than on Christmas day. The typical celebration goes something like this. At some point in the later evening you gather with your family and snack on paneton with chocolate caliente (freshly prepared hot chocolate) while you are waiting for the main meal to be served. At midnight the family eats together and then they open the gifts early on in the morning. Afterwards some people then go to visit other relatives or friends, it can be close to an all night affair. Oh, and I forgot to mention the fireworks... at midnight the sky is completely lit with fireworks. No not organized displays like we have in the States, just random fireworks exploding everywhere. I did take a video to post because it was quite interesting but with the speed at which I am able to upload it might be next Christmas before you would be able to view it, so I think I will skip that.
We did things a bit in line with tradition but not quite exactly. Here is how our night went.

Before leaving the house I tried to get a couple of nice pictures of the kids by the tree. We normally do not have a tree but this year Eddy's brother lent us one with all the fixings so we put it up for the kids and to feel a bit more "homey" for the holidays.

This wasn't the kind of picture I was trying for but it is cute how they are looking at each other. "Why does she make us do this kind of stuff?"
"I don't know Josiah, I've been putting up with it for two and a half years now, just amuse her."

There we go, now this is what Mommy was after.
We went to Uncle Oscar and Patty's house around 4 PM to spend a little time with the family.

Finally, a nice family portrait.

Paris all decked out for the evening.

Hadassah couldn't wait for that paneton.

Yumm... Ricco!!

Some of the family...

Carlita, Gustavo, Kike, Oscar, Patty, Jesusa and Jacky.

Paris, Lisa and Eddy.

Falta una (missing one).

Eddy has four brothers and sisters, they are five altogther.

Eddy, Jesusa, Oscar and Kike.

After we ate the paneton Hadassah and Josiah were given gifts.

I was so happy to see the new baby for Hadassah as she had been asking for one for awhile. Josiah received another dump truck for his collection.

By this time it was around 7 PM so we headed to the church for the service there. Here are a couple of photos of the worship.

Worshipers.

I enjoyed hearing traditional Christmas songs sung in Spanish.

After the worship many people stayed in the church to have a meal together. We did not wait until midnight to partake however. We came home around 11:30 PM and watched the fireworks from outside our living room window. Since we needed to be up fairly early the next morning we retired to bed just after midnight... not quite a Peruvian celebration but close enough!

The children had their own table and Hadassah had a great time dining without Mommy and Daddy. She is getting to be such a big girl.

The cafe all decorated.

Pepe, the friend Eddy has been bringing to church for a few months now.

That brings me to a few prayer requests.

Pepe is not only coming to the church now but has been bringing along friends and relatives as well. We've really come to reevaluate just why we are here. For some time we just assumed that because Eddy works well with his hands that this is how he would serve the church here. As time progresses we see the Lord using him to witness and minister to many people outside of the church. Pastor Brian has suggested to him that we begin a home study for Pepe and his friends as they may feel a bit more comfortable in this type of setting (for those not comfortable coming to church as of yet). Eddy also has family in the area that have also expressed an interest if something like this were to begin. We sense the Lord is leading us in this direction and ask that you lift this up with us as well. I can not remember all of the names of the people Pepe has brought with him but there is one older man named "Lalo" that is actually attending the the weekly prayer meeting with Eddy and Pepe in this moment.

Josiah is also sick with a stomach infection. We had to take him to the doctor today and are waiting for the results of one last test to come in. So far he was positive (don't ask me for what exactly) for one test (he had a total of three) which means he will now be on antibiotics to clear whatever is causing him grief in his stomach. We feel for this poor little guy as he has been sick for the most part since shortly after we arrived and when he was not sick he was teething. It has definitely been a trying time for us dealing with all of the illnesses we have encountered thus far. This current one with Josiah was most likely caused from some bacteria in the water or fruits. We must now take even greater precaution (we thought we were extremely carefully as it is) with the kids to prevent this type of thing in the future. Translation, more work when it comes to the food preparation... sigh.

Four Months in Lima

So I know that I am weeks behind in bringing you all up to date with our most recent happenings but for now I am going to temporarily forget this piece of information and share what is in my heart for the night.

In stopping to think for a minute I've just realized that today we have been in Peru for four months. In such a short period of time our lives have changed so much, this place has become our home. We have settled in to a new church, made new friends and I have even acquired new family as well. Only the Lord knows where He would have us to be in the future but for the time being we are enjoying the blessed opportunity He has opened for us to serve here in Peru.

These past two days have been such a blessing for me. As most of you know Eddy has been away on the outreach trip to Ica. Yesterday a sister from church came over to teach me how to cook "green spaghetti." She and her girls spent the day with us and kept us company. The night went smoothly as well and I thank you all for your prayers. I really prefer not to be alone all night here but thanks be to God I had such a perfect peace! Today another girl phoned to ask if I wanted company for the day and so we met and took the kids out to Miraflores (she has a two year old son.) I had a great time getting to know her and listening to her testimony. She is from Russia and has lived here in Lima for 13 years now. What she went through in her first few years is just beyond belief, what an encouragement it was to me to hear of her struggles here and to see how she has made it through and met her Savior after so many years. We treated ourselves to a Mediterranean restaurant and afterwards to our favorite ice cream place. She and Joshua came back to our apartment for awhile and the boys became the best of buds.

Here are some pictures of the two bonding.

Getting to know each other.

Causing mischief in the chair.

Sharing a platino (banana.)

Joshua feeding Josiah his Jello.

Well, Eddy is now on his way back from Ica. I'm sorry I do not have any details of the outreach yet. He forgot the camera but hopefully we can borrow some pictures from someone else. I think there were around 25 people that went.

You can continue to pray for us for our time table here in Peru. We have made the decision to proceed with the process of changing our tickets until early June. We will try to do this next week and if all goes well we will stay here in Peru for an additional three months. If for some reason we are unable to change the tickets (it shouldn't be any problem) then we will be returning home in early March. Once the tickets are changed we need to plan to "border hop," this means that we must enter another country in order to reenter Peru and renew our visas. Eddy has obtained an updated Peruvian passport so he will not have any issues as he can return with this. Pray for us (myself and the kids) that we will be granted sufficient visas for our remaining time here. After that we plan to travel a bit and know other ministries here in Peru. We have a few places (not ministries) in mind but we are praying to discern the Lord's will in this area. Pray that the Lord puts us in touch with the ministries of His choosing throughout Peru. Pray for us to discover His will for us here in El Peru.

May God Bless His People and grow us in His grace and mercy, Amen!


PS... ICA NOTE... I see Pastor Brian has updated his blog with lots of information about the Ica trip. You can check it out by clicking on the link to the right hand side of our page or for those of you reading this via email you can click here: http://iglesiacristianakoinonia.blogspot.com/

Faces

A few weeks ago Denise organized a dinner for the couple in the church. Many of the singles in the church came together to entertain the kids downstairs while the grown-ups had a meal together upstairs at Pastor Brian and Betty's apartment. What a blessing it was to spend a little time in fellowship with the other couples. I took the opportunity to snap pictures of everyone so that we could introduce some of the people we fellowship with to you.

Lucho and Chipy

Marco and Tatiana

Luis and LiLi

Jorge and Blanca

Rebeca and Ivan
Awhile back we posted pictures of Rebeca's baptism, since then this couple as joined our congragation.

Ricardo and Pilar
Ricardo is the worship leader at church and his wife Pilar heads up the sunday school ministry. They have been a blessing to us and our children are very fond of Pilar.

Robin and Tracy

This is the other missinary couple who have been serving with Iglesia Cristiana Koinonia for over a year and a half now, they are also from the Unites States. They will be moving soon to Ica to begin a church as Robin has been traveling there every week for a home bible study.

Pastor Brian and Betty

We were laughing very hard in this picture...

Here is a picture of our plates minus the meats.

There was Choclo (it is corn on the cob except the kernels are huge and not very sweet) and papas (sliced potatoes that have been boiled) with Papa a la Huancaina sauce (my favorite).

Well, I know this post is short but we are so behind in our updates that I thought I would get up as much as I could. Tomorrow I will begin classes again and Hadassah will also go to register for the summer session in her school. Things will continue to remain very busy for us through out the week and Eddy will be leaving early Friday morning for the outreach in Ica. The kids and I will stay home, pray for us during this time as it will be our first time alone for more than a day.

Many more updates to come... one at a time or poco a poco (little by little) as they say here in Peru...