This week has felt very busy with the anticipation of Christmas. The team came back from hiking the Inca Trail to Macchu Picchu and had an adventure of their own. They were able to talk to about 20 other hikers of all different nationalities (2 were from SC, hooray!) about what God has been doing in their lives and encouraged people. A bunch of the other hikers had a bad image of Christians/Christianity before this trip and the team said that “seeds were planted in so many conversations that changed people’s outlooks and lead them closer to accepting Christ.” Praise the Lord! They invited the whole group for Christmas dinner and 5 gave them a “maybe”, so perhaps some will come to Larapa for a Christmas meal away from home.

Meanwhile, in the city, panetons (Christmas fruit bread) replaces the entire cereal/oatmeal/quinoa aisle at the grocery stores. People are making stock-piles of fireworks for Christmas Eve. Our phones keep text-messaging us about special Christmas offers from Claro. This time of year is also a great opportunity for many churches, Catholic and Evangelical alike to host “chocolatadas” or hot chocolate socials for the communities surrounding Cusco and the homeless. These functions provide a wonderful opportunity to share the Gospel and love of Jesus to people who might not otherwise hear it. It keeps the “Christ” in “Christmas” from all the commercialism that believe it or not still exists in countries outside the US.

This past Saturday, we went to 2 chocolatadas with some of the team. The first one was with the Allen’s friends, Jose Luis and Samuel and their church in the village of Mishkiunu (in Quechua, it means “Sweet Water”) which is “just over the hill from Cusco.” The team played some games with the kids, sang songs and performed a skit. Turns out another church had planned a chocolatada for this town on the same day, same time so we just combined into one big party. We set up a distribution center in an abobe room for the community to hand out clothes for all the men, women and children. Lots of mud in this village which has mining construction next door to mine gravel. But today, there was much joy on the faces of kids who were receiving bread, hot chocolate, and presents. More importantly, the love of Christ was definitely displayed. We had to leave this event early to catch our friend Eric for chocolatada #2 in Pucamarca with the Quechua.

When we arrived in Pucamarca we had an hour of play time with the kids to attract people to the chocolatada. It’s so funny how kids in pretty much every culture, but especially this kids were entranced with balloons, or in Spanish “globos.” We could hardly tear them away to play soccer or tag. We did introduce to them what a “Scream Race” was. What was neat was aside from us playing with the kids, Eric put the Quechua in charge: cooking, serving bread and hot chocolate, sharing the Gospel and giving testimonies. It was really awesome to see the Quechua hungry to spread the Gospel in their own village and it wasn’t “just the white people coming in to hand out free stuff”. The pastor that helps Eric with his Wednesday night discipleship group in Pucamarca (that we went to this week and it was awesome. We started with 3 people and ended with 15) handed out “Jesus loves You” hats and t-shirts. The kids were so happy and we really enjoyed it. David and I also got a chance to translate (more or less, interpret) for the team and speak to the Quechua that knew Spanish. It made almost 3 months of language school so worth it to understand and speak it all day long. PRAISE GOD!

Please pray for the Christmas Eve outreach we have tomorrow night where we will go downtown and pass out sandwiches, hot chocolate and blankets to the homeless of Cusco. Many people sleep in the plazas who are from the country villages who have come to sell their goods at the Christmas Eve day markets. Pray for God-encounters in conversations and that we would be able to bring hope and love to people this Christmas.