After weeks of preparing for DTS, staff training and getting student applications in 2 days before the DTS arrival on Wednesday, the Lord has pulled off a miracle and YWAM Cusco’s 1st bilingual DTS (discipleship training school) is under way! On Monday, we had our first student from Cusco apply (who was accepted Tuesday morning) and we had God use friends and YWAM partners from Holland, Canada, the US and Australia give over $1,250 towards DTS supplies and apartment furnishings that we still needed. There was even enough to buy a projector screen for our community to use for worship, movies and outreach! Such an answer to provision when we needed it!

Welcome Dinner for DTS Kick-off

(back left-right: Edgar, Nicolas, Maddie, Bailey, Logan and Saulo)

(front left-right: David, Jen, Alethia, Joy, Corbin, Micaiah, and Jordan)

not pictured: Leyla (she arrived the morning after)

In addition to our 6 staff, we have 5 students in total. Two are from Peru (Lima and Cusco) and 3 are from the States (TX, PA and FL). Thanks everyone for praying for these guys for the past several months! Their stories of how they became Christians and how they are hungry for God in this season of DTS and even how they got to Cusco are all incredible! God has wonderfully unique destinies spoken over each one of these guys and we are so excited to see what God is going to do through them over the next few months! Please continue to pray for them by name. Classes officially start Monday with Jordan teaching about “Hearing the Voice of God.”

Wednesday’s “Welcome Dinner” (which was a huge fiesta of roasted chicken and fries; completed by a chocolate cake and a Winnie the Pooh piñata for David’s birthday), we had a sweet time of worship, food and celebrating God with our Peruvian and missionary friends, some of the school lecturers, pastors and even Nicolas’ dad joined us.

Decorating for the Welcome Dinner

Then we had a “welcome retreat” at Tambo de Gozo (“Place of Joy”) which is a retreat center outside of Pisac. The couple that owns/operates it, Rudy and Lorraine Johnson, are amazing people! It was so good to “get away” (and only being an hour from our house) We had a great time with the students playing soccer and volleyball, sharing testimonies (by far my favorite part), building campfires and endless rounds of Uno. The Spanish/English barrier was broken within 48-hours of the retreat. At first the students were shy and used translators for everything, but now they are inter-mingling and are taking it on themselves to learn new vocabulary. Logan will probably be fluent in Spanish by the time he leaves DTS (living with 3 Peruvian guys). Nicolas, who knows no English whatsoever, ended the retreat knowing how to say “please pass the sugar” and he mastered his colors while he and Bailey tag-teamed washing dishes. Edgar came back with the nickname “Señor Fancy”. The Andean “boogeyman” legend, who is called “Pishtaco” (Google it) was also brought up (which is our neighbor, Eric’s new nickname). What happens on over retreat, stays on retreat. 🙂

The tree in the square in Pisac. Normally you can’t see the church or the tree because of the huge market tents covering the square, but Friday night, we had a good view of both when we went out for wood-fired pizza.