(Jen, David, Joy, Jordan, Saulo and Edgar)

David had a dream this week that “[he] was looking down on a chessboard. Rocks started to fall on all of the squares, except on the squares where we were standing.” When he asked God for the interpretation of the dream later, he said that our staff team was “unified and complete”.

Saulo is a friend from Tuesday Night Prayer For the City. He did his DTS in Brisbane and is also a dentist. He was working at a non-profit clinic in Cusco, but then felt like God was telling him to do something else. We told him to pray about joining our staff and he did. He is also a downhill mountain bike enthusiast, who has his national downhill race next weekend on the mountain behind our neighborhood.

Edgar is from a few hours away in Juliaca, Peru (close to Puno and Lake Titicaca). He is a Pastor of a church and did his DTS in Iquitos, Peru. He has also worked with the YWAM base in Pichilemu, Chile. A few months ago we were praying for more staff (the Allens and us) and we asked God to give us the names of people who were to join us. The name that I felt like God was giving me was “Edgar”.  I asked if anyone knew an Edgar in Peru. Jordan immediately thought of this guy and called him. We actually forgot about him in the next few months that followed because we knew he was pastoring a church and thought his delay in responding was a “no”. Yet, he called Jordan 2 days before staff training and said he was moving to Cusco to join us on staff!

This week, We, the YWAM Cusco staff have been seeking the Lord so much about our upcoming DTS. A month ago, we weren’t really sure if it would still come together. A month ago, we only had 1 accepted student and we had to tell him that if the budget didn’t work out with the number of students we need to run the school, we might have to cancel. The last month has been a time of God taking every opportunity to remind us that the DTS is going to happen, but on His terms and by His grace and provision. We certainly have faced a lot of opposition and moments where we weren’t sure if anything was going to work out, but God always shows up to take care of us. He wanted to communicate to us that no matter the amount of striving and worrying that we weren’t going to be able to do this on our own strength.

Fast-forward to today, August 16th. Today marks the “soft deadline” for students to apply to our DTS. Today was the day to pray, do we move forward with this, or do we cancel? Truthfully, we have accepted 2 students to our school (4 if you count that we feel good about 2 more but are waiting on some of their forms to arrive). The American-administrator in me wants to say “ok, we are done. If you missed the deadline, you’ve missed the deadline.” But if God acted that way towards us in extending grace we would be in trouble. So we prayed and heard God say to run the school for September 18th and he reminded us (in so many ways about how he is faithful when we obey) and that He can provide “the more”:
1. We have the budget for the school even with small numbers
2. We have Saulo and potentially 1 more Peruvian on staff with us
3. Even though we didn’t see all the money come in on our HopeMob campaign, The Lord helped us crunch the budget
4. He is bringing the right students to us for the right time
5. in one week we had 3 applications come in

Staff training starts on Monday for the next 2 weeks and we are very excited to get going now that we are officially going ahead with the school! David and I are so excited to start discipling these guys!

Our surprise guests this week at Tuesday Night Prayer was the Outreach team from YWAM Iquique (Chile). They have been serving the past month at different churches in Cusco. David said that they led worship for the Pastor’s meeting last Wednesday and it was awesome to witness and be a part of. Picture a group of five 18-20 year olds were leading worship and commanding the presence of the Holy Spirit to come invade a room of thirty 50-70 year old men. And The Lord showed up.

They came Tuesday night, cooked us a fabulous Chilean meal and led worship and prayer for our city. They encouraged us as pioneers and shared experiences from their DTS. They are wonderful friends that we hope we can visit on our outreach next year.

This week we had some of our amazing friends from Charleston who used to be a part of our small group, David and Ryan Strauss, come and stay with us for a few days as they were “passing through” Bolivia and doing the Inka Trail/Machu Picchu. It was so great to see them and catch up. They blessed us tremendously with a wheel of cheddar cheese from La Paz. You should ask David Strauss how he got to feed a llama and what happened to his eye on the trail….and then you should check out Ryan Graudin Strauss’ new book “All That Glows” coming out in February.
That being said, you are most welcome to visit us in Cusco! (Now that they did it and it wasn’t so scary….)

Prayer Points:
1.We are still praying for our DTS students to apply! We have many inquiries, but we want to see commitment in applications and references to come in on time. Our deadline is August 16th (coming up very soon).
2.Also praying for a Latina to join on staff.
3. Our house

Praise: An update on how faithful God is to his words, a few months ago He gave us the name “Edgar” when we asked for names of staff. Jordan knows an Edgar in Juliaca who is a pastor but had a previos commitment to his church. Honestly, we had forgotten about him because he was unsure if someone could fill in for him. Edgar called Jordan personally this week to say that he would like to apply to be on staff with us! even though he’s not “official” yet, it has been really neat to see God call someone by name and then fulfill his promise months later!

Praise: a team from the YWAM Iquitos base came last week and we were super encouraged by the base director, our friend, Joe. We took him out for dinner and 4 hours later we came out with some awesome words of wisdom for pioneering, for our DTS, for life and plenty of great stories. Thanks Joe!

Do you ever have one of those weeks when everything seems to be falling apart? Those weeks when somehow you missed out on the rainbows, sunshine and roses. The past week has been one of those weeks for us. BUT, in the middle of chaos, stress and “why is this happening to me, right now?” God’s unending grace is still poured out for us. Over and over again.

He teaches us to have grace and somewhat of an understanding for others. He teaches us to forgive and to move past things. Something that we are so thankful for is the season of grace over our heads while in Cusco (for the past 9 months). We’re certainly not perfect, but God is using people and circumstances to reveal the favor of extending and receiving forgiveness in our first year in Peru. We hear some things about how rough the race is going for others here and it makes us very thankful for what God has given us and what he has done through us. We have to keep going back to “what did God really say?” and keep reminding ourselves of the truth. The truth is that He loves us as a son and a daughter. The truth is that we are called to Cusco for a time to learn how to pioneer and to submit. The truth is that we have a really good Father who has given us all confidence and authority of heaven to bring Kingdom mindsets to Cusco by loving others through relationships.

Something that God highlighted to us this week has been to keep going.  “But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.” Sometimes it’s really hard to keep being motivated to keep pressing on toward  goals; even the short-term ones seem like they are taking forever to get here. Yet, God is ever faithful and ALWAYS good–this I’m sure of. And it will be nothing short of a miracle for our upcoming DTS to happen this September! When every aspect of human striving for it is taken away, it provides God an opportunity to move.

It is such a privilege and an honor to be running this race with God!

Keep going friend. Keep pressing onward!

Congratulations Cusco! You had the honor of hosting Jen’s quarter-of-a-century, her 25th birthday! A huge thank you to family and friends who made her day so special with prayers, notes and emails. She feels very loved! We had fun going to Maestro (an equivalent to Lowes), she picked out our new clothes hangers and calking gun, we went to dinner (and ate deliciously tender alpaca steaks and tapas) and ended the night at Starbucks.

A huge testimony to the favor of the Lord of her birthday, we also splurged on the nicest mattress in Cusco and our man, Jorge, also gave us a discounted price, plus free pillows and a mattress pad! Thanks Lord!!! The first thing we did was take a 2 hour nap on it and Jen was so happy 🙂

The previous week has been spent with the addition of David’s parents, David and Cathy, exploring and rekindling our love for the city of Cusco! Don’t get us wrong, we thoroughly enjoyed our sweet time at home in SC, but we were also ready to get back to Peru. We saw so much of the Lord’s favor on us through the trip back! Not only did we have a lot of peace about us; all of our crazy luggage made it back with us. (That’s 3 giant rollies, a large green duffel, carry-ons for 4, and 1 guitar and a banjo for those that really want to know). The Delta guy at the counter even waved a bag for us that was 7 lbs. over (after we agreed to take out 2 pairs of shoes). Glorious.

We celebrated July 4th in Cusco after mild symptoms of the altitude adjustment. It was about 50* down here for the fourth. The Cusqueñas do not joke, June/July are the coldest months here! Although we felt very silly with all of our winter gear in the Atlanta airport, we are so blessed to have it now. Thanks to our friends, Eric, Jen and their new intern–Jess, we combined forces and grilled out pimento cheese burgers, cole slaw, sweet tea and baked beans…all in SC fashion for the 4th.

Dave’s parents graciously offered us a rental car for 2 days so we took advantage of a mini road trip with them to the nearby town of Pisac and to the sanctuary of Señor de Huanca. David enjoyed driving and navigating around very much. The last night we had the car, we drove up the mountain to Cristo Blanco to “look for UFOs” (in the words of my father in law). I went for the hot tea and locating stars with Google Sky View (shout out to the Barrier Island astronomy class). Orien’s Belt is not visible in the Southern Hemisphere, but we did spot Sagittarius and Saturn. Pluto couldn’t be made out with our eyes, but Google Sky View could pin-point it.

As far as an update with our bilingual DTS this fall, we have accepted our first student this week! Please continue to pray for the students that are applying (Jordan gets phone calls every day from Peruvians asking for more info.) And please be praying for 2 more Latino staff (1 guy and 1 girl). We have some leads, but want them to respond to what God is telling them to do, not what we want them to do 🙂 Still a lot of behind the scenes work to do, but praise God for all that he is doing already!! We have 2 confirmed teachers (1 American and 1 Colombian) ready to lecture at our school in the fall!
So many things to be thankful for, folks! Thank you for your continued prayers, support and encouragement. We would not be as motivated to press on without you guys!

Stay tuned for another family update from Machu Picchu over the weekend!…

“The Three Little Pigs and the Big Bad Wolf” (Los Tres Chanchitos y El Grande Malo Lobo)

5 Little Monkeys swinging from a tree, teasing Mr. alligator ‘cant catch me’. …

5 Little ducks went out one day, over the hills and far away. Mother duck salid ‘quack, quack, quack, quack’ ….