A recap of what WE (YOU, included) have seen God do over the past year of partnering with us in Cusco, Peru:

1. Our first day in Cusco (Oct. 3rd, 2012) we started off like this:

NOW, (since Oct. 9, 2013): we feel so blessed to have moved into a furnished ready-to-move-in house! The Lord is so good at providing our new family a house to rent (2 blocks up and 1 block over from the YWAM apartments). Stay tuned for a house tour…

2. Then, from October 2012 – January 2013 we were blessed to be paired up with these guys to learn Spanish:

Amauta and Jimmy

NOW: Thanks to their long hours of practicing with us, having grace for our mistakes in language learning, and taking us on some crazy adventures around the city, we have a pretty good understanding of Spanish. Both Amauta and Jimmy continue to be amazing friends of ours and have blessed us with their friendship as well as being our Spanish tutors. We can now interpret Spanish for outreach teams/our DTS school.

3. Last year, before coming to Peru, we prayed for a lot of things. One of those requests was for an honest landlord. We got this guy: Roque Milton Vasquez Medrano (who has been a God-send and an answer to prayer!)

(and we also met Dave Snyder who was equally cool to meet).

4. We also prayed for community. God also let us rekindle friendships with old friends. Pictured here is the beautiful, Laurinda Rapp. We worked with her at Camp St. Christopher in 2010-2011. Then she went off and did her DTS in Australia while we went off to do ours in Thailand. Then she emails us to say that she’s staffing another DTS outreach and we get to host her—crazy. Never thought we’d see her again, but we got to live in the same building again for 2 months! God’s humor is funny that way.

5. Our purpose for coming to Peru a year ago was to “learn how to pioneer something from the ground, up”. God partnered us to work with the Allens–Jordan and Joy. Our original plan was to be here 1 year, but we are so thankful that in December 2012 that God gave us discernment that we would be here longer. Jordan and Joy are great leaders to learn from!

NOW: We prayed for more YWAM Cusco staff to join us, and Saulo and Edgar came too! Now, we are a team of 6.

6. We had no idea 1 year ago, that God would pioneer a DTS in September 2013 in Cusco (after almost 20 years without a YWAM presence in the city)…

NOW: But God is faithful to his promises and He delivers what He has ordered. Now we are discipling Maddie, Nicolas, Bailey and Logan in our first bilingual DTS and it is going so well! God is growing their faith in so many ways. We honored to staff such an awesome group of people!

7. We were able to make a trip home and see family and friends:

(photo credits: The Haldeman’s and Jen’s parents)

AND THEN, some family and friends came to visit us in Cusco:

(David’s parents and the Strauss’)

8. We have been praying for a baby and God heard our prayers and blessed us with one!

NOW: We can’t wait to see what God has in store for our amazing, little family of three! No matter where we go in the world, we are going together.

We love each and every one of you! Thank you so much for your prayers, encouragement, financial gifts and commitment to partner with us over this past year! We really could not be here without the support of an amazing team behind us. Look what WE did, together, with the Lord!! Here’s to year #2–ready to keep dreaming BIG with God and see him do even many more awesome things in Cusco!