CCV Update

After a long wait, a lot of prayer by all of you and us, we finally recieved news from our home church CCV. It is a long review process so it has taken some time. We were told that no missionaries will be cut in 2010, but will be reduced in financial support. Also, there will be a yearly review, and based on the review and the yearly budget we will be informed about further support.

This is good news. I think that the church is trying to make amends to their prior decision and I know God has used it to prepare us as missionaries to take financial support in perspective. While we hope to have supporters interested in our work and faithful in their support, we need to also understand that in any given moment we might lose financial support for no fault of our own. I know I had begun to be a little less informative than before, and this time also helped to encourage me to get back to informing all of you more.

Thank you for your constant emails and concern. Thank you for your prayers and encouragement. We love you all and God has used you greatly to help us day after day.

Talk about Embarrassing!!!

Have you ever just done something really stupid and couldn't do anything but laugh about it?

Today I was shaving, and as usual I was playing around with my beard and mustache. As I was finishing up showing Chiqui different "looks" I was having fun with, the battery began to run low. I decided to leave the shaver charging while we ate lunch and then shave off "the stache" afterwards. As life goes, we finished lunch and I washed the dishes and was hanging out the clothes to dry when we noticed we were running a couple minutes late. So we hurried out the door and went to church.

"What did you do to yourself?" was the first greeting I got at the door. Immediately, I lifted up my hand to "the stache" and said, "Awe man! I forgot to shave it off." The rest of the afternoon in the church was mostly filled with people laughing and me explaining my absent-mindedness. The best part is that almost no one said a thing until I mentioned it.

In all it made for a funny afternoon and a great story...and those of you who know me know that almost anything is worth a great story in the end.

The End!

Busy Weekend - Part 2 Nueva Jerusalen

October 11th we celebrated in Nueva Jerusalen. It was there 2nd Anniversary as a fully running church. The day before we had our 2nd OANSA championship (AWANA) and the home team won. Nueva Jerusalen took 1st and we took second in Ciudad Nueva.

Similiar to what we did in Ciudad Nueva on September 20th, this anniversary in Nueva Jerusalen was an all day event. The difference is that this was three church event.

In the morning we had a special service which including a typical Peruvian dance presented by the youth group from Ciudad Nueva (they are the ones dressed up in the 1st photo above). Afterwards we shared a plate of picante (the most typical dish from Tacna) and then off to finish off the last leg of a three-week soccer and volleyball tournament.

Busy Weekend - Part 1

The first part of the weekend was a party for the children. Since it would be crazy and impossible to have birthday parties for all the children during the year, we have one special day when we celebrate all of them. This year was very special. The kids from the youth group did a musical sketch to Chavo el 8, a famous and very popular Mexican comedy program. Also, for the first time ever we were able to get a clean payaso (clown). It was a great time with each of the kids from the church.

During the party the clown had me do the gorilla dance and put a mask on me. Aparently it is a well-known dance I never had heard of.

Weeds!!!

We are trying to imbed in the habits of the youth the importance of helping out and doing unselfish work for good. To encourage them with more than words we are organizing doing more things like we did a couple weeks ago. We went to the park in Nueva Jerusalen to help clean it up and pull out all the weeds. As a group of 13 we spent about 3 hours working the soil and it was fun. The last photo doesn't do justice, but the pile of weeds was about 7 feet long by 5 feet wide, and about 4 feet high...it was BIG!

The Sabbath

We asked for your prayers and we thank you for them. On September 20th we held a special service to get together as a church and just do what we should be doing, spending good time together. We had a service in the morning and then followed it up with a very good lunch.

After lunch there was a funny moment when a couple of kids from the youth group made a couple machista comments about it being a woman's job to wash the dishes. So we went ahead and made real men of 'em and put them on the dishwashing crew. A great lesson in life for the young guys. Hopefully it sticks with them and they become great helpful and humble husbands in the future.

From there we went down to the park and played volleyball and soccer for a couple hours.

In the end we were all very content to be able to spend the day in community, sharing his Word, sharing quality time, having fun and relaxing. It was a perfect example of a good sabbath day, which just happened to be the text for the day in the Hebrews series we are going through for 7 months.

Chiqui's Sister Got Married

Chiqui's sister is back in Tacna. She lived in the capital Lima since the year we got married, 2005. The family was once again reunited, but not for long because she got married a few weeks after her arrival on September 12th with her long time boyfriend of 11 years. It is about time!

ps - I love the sky in this picture...

pss - Stephanie, the camera does take some decent fotos, huh!