This week has been hard. David and I have been in charge all week while the Allen’s have gone to Lima to get the kid’s residencies finalized (I think they did it! I think ALL of their kids now are Peruvian residents! YAY!) and meanwhile back here it seems that at every turn things happen that are out of our control. The Lord has pulled through for us yet again and reminded us of all of our blessings and His goodness. So I’m going to write about His goodness, instead of focusing on our problems:

1. He managed to bring a fun-tastic group of Brits and Americans together for a dinner party in a broken down VW van on the side of a roundabout in the rain. We talked about Cusco, and home, the Spice Girls, what the Lord is doing now and all things “chav”.

2. We met a nice, new mechanic named Corneilio who after having the VW for 2 days fixes the gear box for an amount that was cheaper than expected and that we had in the team ministry money account. His wife thought David was a well respected man (because of his beard) and C. equated me with Jennifer Lopez (because of my name and good looks of course).

3. The team hiked up Mt. Pikol while I was sick. Didn’t know at the time, but as I was sick one of the team members hurt his knee on the trail and couldn’t walk. So they carried this person down, but because of the slow-going, someone in the group (not on the team, but hiking alongside) alerted the Volunteer Fire and Rescue squad. Eric and I got to rescue the rescue squad (twice) because of a lack of gasoline in their van. Yes, they drive a mini-van…up mountains. After a 10-hour ordeal everyone came off the mountain and is ok. Even the team member with their knee will be ok after a few days of rest and some medicine. My sickness disappeared as I was driving with Eric up to the base of the mountain.

4. We had amazing worship this morning as we watched a worship session from Bethel Church  (on iBethel.tv) and got ready to do a treasure hunt at Cristo Blanco. Well the VW broke down again and the team managed to get to the top of the lookout by taxi. A few hours later Corneilio came and helped David and even in the pouring rain, I got to have an inner-healing prayer session with one of the girls on the team. Hooray for releasing the Kingdom and Jesus releasing freedom and forgiveness. In my opinion, it was totally worth the rain.

5. Valentines-Day with David was very nice. After a chaotic day of feeling sick and skipping Spanish lessons, to my surprise, my tutor Amauta LOVES me. She and David came back to the house (with cake) and our assignment was to create V-day cards in Spanish for one another. After a day of driving people around and translating at doctor’s offices and running errands, we were able to have a nice dinner at home (homemade pasta with MEAT sauce) and he bought me a whole sleeve of Twix (which I’m sure cost more than it should have).

(David Writing)

6. Even though things have been tough we have been learning amazing things. I was able to add several new spanish vocabulary words (all dealing with cars and automotive things), namely the word for tow-truck, clutch, gear box and “start the car”. All-in-all not a week I would want to re-live but I feel accomplished and re-assured that God gave the wisdom to make decisions and the ability to communicate well enough to work through the many problems. Our life is not always easy or simple, but it’s never boring. We feel so privileged to be serving God here and wouldn’t want to be doing anything else.