Often, when we are at school, Amauta and Jimmy will decide to take us on walking field trips to get acquainted with more of the city or to practice more vocabulary with our Spanish.  Tuesday’s field trip was to her former university’s zoo! It had your typical monkeys (monos), foxes (zorros), bears (osos), condors (cóndores), an ostrich (avestruz), rabbits (conejos), a puma (puma), ocelots (tigrellos), owls (búhos), parrots (loros), a peacock (pavo real), a deer (venado), an alpaca/horse (alpaca/caballo) and a warthog (chancho).  And now you have your Spanish fix for the weekend.

Some of the animals we saw:

David has been sick some of this week with the same “out of it” feeling that I had awhile ago.  He’s better, but I went by myself to school on Thursday and Friday.  Amauta and I went and got our haircuts on Friday for “school” because we wanted some girl time (and I really needed a haircut).  I was able to carry on a conversation with the girl cutting my hair and then later Amauta and I had a deep conversation over cake (she’s a fan of going out for carrot cake verses coffee and frankly, I’m ok with that).  It was so cool to be able to understand and hear some of her past and how the Lord was teaching her a lot about where I had been in the past as well.  It felt so good to have a friendship on a deeper level here and to communicate all of it in Spanish! Thanks Lord!!  (and David is feeling better this weekend)

This is the cute hole-in-the-wall place we like to go for good coffee and desserts:

Clark Barnard, the national director/leader of YWAM Peru came up from Lima for Saturday and left Sunday morning specifically (in his words) “just to say ‘hi’ and officially welcome you to Peru.”  What an awesome guy!  If you remember, we had a divine encounter with Clark where we met him the first time at the YWAM DNA Conference in Chiang Rai, Thailand.  He had a neat follow-up story after that conference when he flew out on the same plane as Loren & Darlene Cunningham (founders of YWAM) and the rest of the conference speakers.  Loren was so encouraged and impressed to see Clark come all the way to Thailand from Peru just to hear the original vision of YWAM come from the founders that Loren invites Clark to sit on the plane with him.  When Loren asks Clark what the mission is for YWAM Peru and whatnot Clark said that “It wouldn’t be my place for me to tell you the vision for all of Peru. I could make a strategic 5 year or 10 year plan for the future with our national board, but if it’s alright to say so, you would have to ask each of the pioneering people and families.  It’s my vision to see this grassroots movement of individuals and families fulfilling the specific calling that God gave each of them to do.  It’s about hearing those things from God and watching people fulfill dreams.”  (Loren Cunningham smiled and told Clark not to change a thing about this vision).  We spent Saturday and Sunday morning with Clark soaking in a lot of wisdom and hearing lots of stories and we were so encouraged by his visit.  He’s a lot like us. He considers relationships to be very important.

This is a picture of Clark (on the right) when we last saw him at the DNA Conference (with David Hamilton one of the first YWAM pioneers in Peru and Chile):

We also have all of our travel information in line and ready to go for the JUCUM Regional Conference.  We’re excited (God seems to do lots of stuff in us over conferences we’ve noticed) so we will make the trip from Cusco to Lima, from Lima to Iquitos where we will travel with Clark by boat to Leticia.  Please pray for amazing worship, relationships to be built and for us to be open to what God is saying and speaking over the Northern Cone of South America from Dec. 6-15th.  The actual conference is the 8th-12th.

Thanks guys for your prayers and encouragement! Let us know how you are doing! Love, The Carters

The week has been busier than usual, with the team arriving and Jordan coming back.  Praise the Lord for peanut butter and the camera cable (you may have noticed the dramatic increase in photos)! Our Thanksgiving was very good. We took off from school that day and cooked up a feast (including: green bean casserole  baked chicken, mashed potatoes, sweet potato casserole  cooked carrots, salad, apple cider, bread, and for dessert included apple pie, peach pie, cupcakes, pumpkin pie, ice-cream and candy corn.)  We also celebrated an international day of thanks with Canadians, Americans, a Peruvian (Corbin Allen), a Norwegian and a Dutchman. This Thanksgiving we are especially thankful for not only good food and friends that made it like family, but for each and every one of you guys! We were able to Skype our families too, which was lovely.

We found out that there is a YWAM conference in Leticia, Colombia in 2 weeks that our leaders wanted us to pray about attending.  It is the regional conference for YWAM Peru, Venezuela, Colombia and Ecuador and is focusing on “Transforming Families to Impact Generations.”  We have thought about it and want to talk to Clark Barnard (our national YWAM director for Peru) about logistics when he comes next Saturday. So far we haven’t felt God telling us “no” so as of now, we are in! The conference is scheduled for Dec. 8-12th.

Today was a fun filled day of adventure with our tutor, Jimmy and his family.  His entire family rented a bus and invited us to visit Senor de Huanca (a holy site visited annually by Peruvian Catholics).  It is the place people visit to have their mode of transportation blessed. It was about an hour away from Cusco in the mountains and it was gorgeous!  Picture stepping into “The Sound of Music.” We got a chance to tour the grounds, attend a mass and have lunch by a river.  Jimmy has a lovely family and we are so grateful to have spent a perfect Sunday morning/afternoon with them.

A photo of the mountains on the way…

 

 

 

David and I at Senor de Huanca

(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

This week, the Lord has been giving me (Jen) a lot of awesome, but crazy dreams and the interpretations of them, so that’s been really neat to dive into this week.  Spent “Prayer for the City” (PFC) night doing what we do best, praying for the city and worshipping together.  It seemed way appropriate since we forgot that Wednesday was Halloween (until we got out of language school and the Plaza was filled with little kids trick-or-treating at the tourist stores).  It made us miss trick-or-treating as kids, but then later one of our missionary friends that came to PFC (who has been a missionary kid in the jungles of Peru her whole life) informed us of what really happens in Peru on the 3-day festival of Halloween, Day of the Living and Day of the Dead. In a nutshell, we heard of lot of creepy things of the enemy that happen (which isn’t worth repeating here) and instead we wanted to give God all of the glory (since he has dominion over these days anyway)! As we worshipped, an incredible peace filled the house almost to the point of all of us falling asleep (YES!).  Most of you will be familiar with this because of the email that we sent out and now we’re going to tell you how God answered those prayers. So get ready to exercise your faith muscles and enjoy!

On Thursday (the day after Halloween) David and another person on staff, David Snyder, went on a faith adventure because God wanted them to try and find a boy and a family in a village that David S. went to last year. They had a general idea of where the village was but not the name of the village or even the boys name.  All they had was a cell phone picture of the boy and a general idea of where the village was (near the airport).  They took a taxi part-way past the airport  and walked up into mountains, through brush on a winding trail over hills and through villages leaving the city behind, praying the whole time for God to show them the right place and asking many along the way if they recognized the boy.

After a light rain and 3 hours of walking, they came to the village of Willcarpay (sounds like “will-co-pie”) and asked a group of boys if they knew the kid and they said, “Yeah, that’s the kid in the house over there.” They found the house, David S. got nipped by a dog but the same kid and his twin sister recognized David S. immediately and ran up to him.

They played with him (Anderson) and his sister, Jackie. God rewarded their faithfulness with an incredible adventure and an amazing lunch of cooked corn and beans in a chili sauce and a tour of the families cui (guinea pig) farm. People like these are often time the most affected by the horrific things that go on as a result of the Kingdom of Darkness. Based in relationship (really big for us), this demonstrates that in situations where there are those willing to walk in faith and be obedient there is no such thing as small impact.

Shining Bright, Team Carter

The Lord has shown us so many encounters this week!

 

On Tuesday at language school, we asked our language tutor, Jimmy, about his soccer game the night before.  He said they tied, but the real loss was that he got kicked above the ankle and it hurt him to walk on it. We kept talking and I was like, “Jimmy, can we pray for your ankle?” “Yeah, you can pray” “No, but I mean can we pray right now?” “Sure, you can pray…..in Spanish.” (Great.)  So David and I prayed (limited Spanish, mostly English) over his ankle/shin area and afterwards he brushed it off with a “Thanks.” When we asked if it felt better, he said “Yes, what did you do? Is that magic?” “Um, nope. It’s  the Lord!” : )

 

Then on Thursday, we had dinner at Amauta and Jesus’.  It was so wonderful and just what we had prayed for! Before coming to Peru we had prayed to make Peruvian friends and for our new friends to make us a home-cooked Peruvian meal. What we got was a night laughing, worshiping, singing, and eating the most delicious lomo saltado (rice, boiled then fried potatoes, and beef sautéed with onions and tomatoes = crazy delicious) and they thoroughly enjoyed my banana-chocolate chip bread.  Turns out Jesus knows English (from living in the States for 2 years) and we got to share some of our wedding photos and got to see their wedding video and talk about all things married. We jammed out to Hillsong (in Spanish) and David got to bond with Jesus and Amauta in a jam sesh with a cajon and guitars.  The Lord invaded that night with such joy and conversation and we are so thrilled to have them as our new friends! We hope to invite them over to our place soon for some Southern cookin’ soon!

 

 

On Friday, David and I were at Starbucks hanging out for a few hours before class. After awhile a group of hippie-hipster girls walked in and sat down near us. The Lord kept telling me, “pray for her…” The “her” He was referring to was a girl with dreds who looked like she was either tired, sick or on something.  Honestly I was like, “Lord, not now. These girls are intimidating.” And he kept saying, “It’s her, and I love her, go tell her how much I love her.” 30 minutes went by and I was debating the right time to go over and honestly I was eavesdropping on their conversation how she got sick but missed all of her antibiotics and got sick again…blah blah blah. So I made a deal with God, “Ok, make it an easy transition to talk to her.” God said, “watch me.” (Within 5 minutes, the loud German couple on the couch across from us got up and left and the girl’s 2 friends she was with got up and went to the bar). So I find myself getting up to talk to “her.”  After a brief introduction, I find myself telling her (her name’s Bracie) about how Jimmy got healed 2 days before and that the Lord wanted to heal her. I got a chance to pray for her before her friend’s came back and she went from being this sick/out of it looking person in the Starbucks booth to there being such light in her eyes.  Her reaction was, “Thanks, that was great. You’re very connected.” (whatever that means, yeah, connected to the Lord!)  She doesn’t know how long she’s in Cusco, just hanging out for an undetermined part of time, but I truly believe that the Lord was healing her and I told her that Daddy God must love her A LOT. Enough for Him to tell me about it and I’m a total stranger getting my vanilla latte on.  Thanks Lord! Yeah, it was awkward at first, but obedience is totally worth it!

 

Other PRAISES: 

1. Jordan was granted his residency! 

2. Our friend, Eric Lovin, is going to be our new neighbor mid-November in the apartment below us! Hello community!! 

3. David built me a shelf for the hallway and a bookcase out of some scrap wood in the yard today!

4. We enjoyed some McDonald’s on Saturday night and then hiked a mountain (in a neighborhood, but a mountain nevertheless) and sat at the foot of the Cristo Blanco statue (that overlooks the whole city) and prayed over the city with David Snyder.

This week, for whatever reason seemed very hurried along and busy for us.  We had a couple join us from JUCUM (Spanish abbrev. for YWAM) Panama to scout out Cusco as a possible outreach or place to continue to build relationships with. Although we only got to hang out with them briefly, Kenneth and Elaine, you guys are awesome! We hope to see you at the YWAM Americas Conference in 2013!

Language school keeps us on the go mentally and physically. Praise God that we are finishing with Level 1 (is that normal to complete an 80-something page book in 7 days?) and this week we with start Level 2! We are continuing to develop relationships with our tutors, Amauta and Jimmy. Tuesday night was a grand adventure for Jimmy, it was his first trip to Starbucks and although he said it was infiltrated with gringos, I think he rather enjoyed his first vanilla chai latte.  Lot’s of good conversation that night and got to share a little bit of my testimony with him and led him to open up about his faith (he’s Catholic). Then on Friday, he surprised us with our lessons while on a walkabout through the city.  We hiked through San Blas (the neighborhood north of the city) and sat outside the San Blas cathedral to view this:

and walked through lots of streets and alleyways that looked like this:

And on Tuesday of this week, we are having a home-cooked Peruvian meal with Amauta and her husband, Jesus.  Praying that our relationship with them would flourish!

PRAISES of the WEEK:

1. Joy got to Lima and back and was granted her residency card!

2. The Allen’s threw a joint birthday party for the kids (Aletheia is 4, Michaiah is 5 now!) and it was a huge fiesta success! Lots of sodas, arroz con leche (rice pudding that tastes like Christmas in a bowl), sugary treats, jello cups, pinatas, more chocolate, chocolate cakes and another missionary couple brought over homemade ice cream. Met lots of nice folks who have families and are here for long term.

3. After 2 weeks of waiting around the house every morning for the Moviestar internet hombre to come around, he did! So now, we have internet and Skype all day long…when we’re not in class…

4. We have been looking for a church the last few Sundays and this Sunday, we believe we have found our community….Voz de Victoria (The Voice of the Victorious).  It’s a smaller gathering that our friends’ Eric and Jen introduced us to that meets 3 blocks away from us at the university.  It’s a brain workout to pay attention when the sermon is in Spanish, but the worship was awesome and it’s a good mix of families, young and old.

5. Roque (found out Rocky is actually spelled Roque, which makes his cool points go up in our book), fixed our shower head so we don’t get zapped, and it’s easier to adjust the hot/cold water and the water pressure is now fabulous! He also liked our idea for a garden and supplied us with buckets and some flowers for our courtyard.

PRAYERS THIS WEEK:

-For Jordan to be granted residency when he leaves for Lima on Wednesday and also for him to have a restful and refreshing journey to the States for about a month.  Praying for doors to be opened up with finances and a breakthrough in people’s commitments through actions, not just in nice words. Pray for wisdom and authority over Joy, who will (with our help) have the kids while Jordan is away and for that transition to be a smooth as possible.

-Pray for love to deepen our relationships with Amauta/Jesus and Jimmy and that we can continue to improve our Spanish

-For the team from Australia that’s coming next month and for opportunities to serve them as they serve Cusco

Hey everyone! We are continuing to adjust to life in Cusco, but so far we love it! We’ve spent the past week getting the apartment settled, learning the combi/bus route to school and town, visiting markets and learning where stuff is.

For your entertainment, we will list a few situations that we have encountered so far that is a bit different than at home:

1. Latino culture is very laid-back (a plus for procrastinators) and relational.  You kiss everyone when you enter a room and kiss them again when you leave. “On-time” is what Americans would consider very late.  When in doubt, you can be 30 minutes late.  Sometimes, when the internet guy promises he will come at 10AM tomorrow, he may or may not come.  This week, he was a no-show, so perhaps next week we will have internet installed at our place.

2. Combis are a very cheap way to travel here (picture in your mind your mom’s mini-van but it can accommodate 26 people as opposed to the original “seats 12” design. For about $0.30, the ServicoRapido or the Batman can take you into town (45 min. by combi, 15 min. by taxi, hours if you walked).

3. This is a bargaining culture. You haggle pretty much every price (except at supermarket chains).

4. We saw a sign for a “LOST DOG”, which is pretty funny because ALL dogs here are lost.  Haven’t seen a “pet” yet.  The dogs are lazy around people and keep to themselves in packs.

5. The food here is very good! You will never run out of breads, eggs, fried chicken, rice and potatoes.  We are delighted to run into our old friends: Mr. Oreo, Mr. Ritz, Mr. Doritos and Mr. Pringles.

6. The warm water in our apartment is shocking….really! You have to flip the electric heater on (which is on top of the shower head while the water is running) and if we touch anything but the top part of it, it will shock you.  So much in fact, that if you aren’t quite fully awake in the mornings, it will jumpstart your morning. So we’ve learned to shower really fast because you either get zapped a lot, or the water is scalding hot.

In other news, we are spending a lot of our time, outside of our personal time with God, on Tuesday/Friday mornings/Wednesday nights praying and interceding for this city.  We joined the Allen’s and some other missionaries from different organizations on Wednesday night for dinner and praying for Cusco.  Jesus loves this city and this nation.  We are in agreement 100% with Jordan and Joy that YWAM Cusco should be rooted in prayer and worship.  God has set apart this city for his glory and is speaking Isaiah 61 over her.  It is clear that something will be birthed out of this valley and it is our job as the body of Christ to simply live love everyday. Whether it’s giving someone at the market flowers and telling them that God loves them, or buying them a drink, or praying for them, or simply asking “how are you, today?” we can love on people around us.

We went with our buddy, David Snyder, on a city outreach on Wednesday despite having quite a stressful morning with losing a debit card.  We wanted to freak out about it, but felt like we should stay to pray for people.  We watched a parade of school kids go by and they were for the empowerment of girls and against child abuse (a big, but unspoken injustice in Peru).  So we got to stand on the steps of the Palace of Justice (yes, that’s what it’s really called!) and pray out loud (because who can understand English here?) for God to raise up a generation of God-fearing and loving men and be the Daddy the protector of thousands of little girls.  Snyder prayed for a woman and because she couldn’t understand his Spanish or English, her brother could translate.  She said her back was in pain and after he prayed for her, she said she was 100% better! (YAY GOD!).  She told him he must be a priest and he was delighted to inform her that he was just an ordinary guy.  We walked to the Plaza de Armas and sat on the steps of a cathedral.  We met a young guy from California named Rob who approached us handing out flyers for a restaurant.  He told us his story about how he was volunteering with a social project in town and is taking the year off to volunteer around Latin and South America.  David asked if he could pray for him (the guy was not Christian and looked totally confused) so David starts speaking into his life and praying blessings over him and Rob becomes filled with joy.  He invited us out for drinks and even though we had another engagement that night, we want to try and meet up with him soon.

We also started language school on Thursday with two 2-hour sessions at MundoAntiguo School.  We seem to be cruising through our level 1 book (we know it won’t always be this easy, but THANK YOU for your prayers and keep them coming that God would give us the supernatural tongue of deep conversation in Spanish). Shout-out to Miss Katie Isaacson for all of your tutoring sessions. They are so helpful already!  Our teachers this week were Amauta and Jimmy.  Jimmy reminds us a lot of a Peruvian version of Zach Miller (super cool guy). We hope to form deeper relationships with both of our teachers, especially Amauta (who let us pray for her after class), who is a newlywed as well. We hope to double-date with her and her esposito, Jesús and get to know them better.

And, yes, we saw 2 llamas already (both downtown, drinking out of the water fountains!) next to Quechua families who want you to pay for a picture with them (or the llamas).

Hasta semana, amigos! Nosotrosteamamos! 

We made it safely with all the luggage from Miami to Lima. Going to pull an all-nighter at the Jorge Chávez International Airport then off to Cusco in the AM. thanks for the prayers amigos!!

Had so much of the Lord’s favor on us already! Praying for more!! (Got the exit rows…yay for leg room….that NEVER happens to us) and sat next to Larry on the flight over and had some great English conversation about Peru. Then a wonderful Peruvian hermano helped us find all of our luggage (which half of it was at another belt) and all of the security people are cheerful and in good spirits. David and I just had our first cup of REAL Peruvian coffee at one of the airport cafes and it is “potently-delicious”!

Buenos noches. More adventures tomorrow!