Update from Peru

Howdy all.  John and Katie here, still doing well here in Trujillo, Peru.  Since we last wrote we have hosted our first mission team, from a Florida church, for about a week.  This mission team was great.  There were 8 adults, many of them from their church's Celebrate Recovery ministry.  One morning we spent a good hour hearing each of their testimonies, and they each had powerful stories of redemption and restoration.  Many were new to mission work but excited to learn about God, the culture, and us.  They worked hard, laughed a lot, and brought a lot of encouragement to us all.  Katie was one of the assigned leaders of the team, so she helped lead devotions, work projects, and debriefs.  She did a great job!

With the team, we got to experience a lot more ministries.  We got to see ELIM, the ministry outside the garbage dump, for the first time.  It's an exciting time with the kids and mothers.  We also got a peek inside the garbage dump itself, walking through the piled-up trash and giving out fruit and peanuts to the workers there.  They are pawing through the garbage, looking for "recyclables" - things they or their bosses can sell.  It's a tough life for them there.  I missed a couple events because I (John) sprained my ankle pretty badly one day, but the team also went out to a nearby neighborhood to put on a VBS and hiked into the sand hills to sandboard.

Katie and I are feeling well-settled in here in Trujillo.  We're more comfortable getting out just the two of us and getting places in town.  We're used to life here at the albergue, and have a special fondness for the three dogs here - an aging momma and her two 4-month old pups.  We try to take care of them, though mom has been pretty sick as of late.  We are still enjoying serving the team of interns - many of them look to us as the older ones and call us mom and dad.  We enjoy serving them in various ways, so we're quite okay with that!  Big changes and updates from our workplaces back home distract us somewhat, so we do ask for prayers that God would guide both of our workplaces and guide us as we stay updated from afar.  We need prayers on how, if at all, to serve our workplaces from here.

Cooking our own meals when the teams aren't here is a wonderful break for us right now.  Peruvians seem to have a thing about enormous meals - the plates of food are colossal sometimes.  Even I usually struggle to finish them.  The food is mostly pretty good (there was one meal that featured canned tuna...yuk), but it's just the portions that are massive!  This week, I tried a new one - chicken tortilla soup.  I used Katie's mom's recipe, more or less, and added beans.  It was fantastic!  Tonight I am doing migas with chorizo.  Hope they come out well!  A large team of Canadian high schoolers come in tomorrow morning, so that should keep us busy.  Thanks for your prayers and thoughts, we love and miss you all!