(Pray for: Meghan, Gert, Glenn, Danielle, Laurinda, Bethany and Idun while they are here until Jan. 1st)

Praises: it’s official. YWAM Brisbane outreach team comes in 2 days.  Pretty excited to have 7 people (including the wonderful Laurinda Rapp) coming and ready to impact Cusco! Our buddy Eric was granted his residency this week and will be moving in next week underneath us.  Jordan also comes back from his time in the States in a few days as well (with our camera cable! yes!).  We are moving on in language school from grammatical things to conversation practice.  We treated Amauta to Starbucks this week and acted out our homework (which was to act out a parable from the Bible using the subjunctive tense) so David and I got our “Jonas y la Ballena/Jonah and the Whale” on in front of fifty or so people. Hilarious.  We explained to Jimmy (in Spanish) how to play “Pictionary” and he is now a raving fan.  Today, we are going to a kid’s festival at Corason that is a fundraiser for a Christian after-school program.  There is a rumor that cuy (guinea pig) is on the menu…we will see.  Then tonight we are having Jimmy, his girlfriend and his son over for dinner (Southern breakfast!) and a Disney movie.  Below is a picture of our new friends Amauta and her husband, Jesus. We have had dinner with them twice and privileged to know them.

I, Jen, appreciate all of your prayers as after a week, my sinus infection/cough thing has gone away! Hooray for not being sick! The Lord was definitely teaching me over the past two weeks that “it’s not about me” (because often I am caught up in the lie that I need to “work harder, or that I need to do a good job at everything” (which by the way is impossible) for things to function as a wife, friend, leader, ect.  So humbled this week to be doted upon by David (got me Vitamin C, cooked, and forced me to stay home from school for 2 days).  To be honest, I really struggled with skipping school for 2 days (yes, I was and still am a nerd when it comes to academia), but I felt as if language school is our only agenda and I can’t even do that well…and Daddy God sat me down for many conversations that went something like this: “Beloved, I love you. You’ve been sick for a week and have to lean on me.  What if you were sick for a month or a year? Would you still believe in healing and trusting that in me, you are enough? Don’t you think that you mean more to me just existing? I love what you can do and even more what you can’t do.” Wow. Thanks Daddy. Needed lots of that, to be honest, I was a grouch last week and the Lord really dealt with a lot of things in both me and David to realize that it’s not about us.  God is constantly working despite our feelings or actions.  We don’t need to strive for good works or the “perfect day.”  It’s a blessing to be here and that God would even consider using us for Peru. But he did and he does because we asked for this.  And we are thrilled to have asked because of his generosity to bless us with more than we asked for.  Not because we are “super-religiously-special”, but because I’m his kid.  We’re his kids.  I think I’m misquoting this from the movie, “Father of LIghts”, but I was reminded of how parents don’t look for anything past love from their kids.  They are happy with an “I love you.” and everything else falls short of being and receiving love.  That’s what I was reminded of this week: “Beloved, you are loved. I love you.” and saying those words back to my Father is all He wants.

Shining Bright, The Carters