29th July 2010
Like yesterday, a national holiday, which meant a nice opportunity to catch up on sleep. In the afternoon we headed out to Hualhuas, a local village which specialises in woven products, and made a few purchases to send back with Nanna for my Mum to sell on her Christmas stall and, hopefully, make some money for the work of the Peru Children's Trust here in Huancayo.

28th July 2010
I trialled the introductory session of my new Basic Money Management course with a couple of the Peru Children's Trust families today and it seems to be going down well, though it is going to get tougher in future weeks.

27th July 2010
A lovely breakfast with the Americans from Sociedad Misionera (Mission Society), though I was the only one to go since Nanna was still dead to the world after all her travelling.
All in all, it was quite a relaxing day, with no study to prepare for the La Vina group in the evening, just lots of popcorn to go along with the filmnight!!
I also managed to have a really good chat with Manuel, my boss, and, as a consequence, we should be seeing a few changes over the coming weeks with regards to the way in which Peru Children's Trust works in Huancayo.

26th July 2010
Finally, Nanna arrived and it was lovely to see her!! We enjoyed another Starbucks at the airport before trying to hit the road. We should have left at 9am, but the combination of a clueless taxi driver and a change in the agreed price meant that we left at around 11:30am and so didn't arrive in Huancayo until nearly dark. Nanna hardly saw anything of the journey, being sound asleep for practically all of it, but she did manage to get out the car and pose (a little unsteadily!) for a photo as we were going over Ticlio, the highest point on the journey at 4,816m.

25th July 2010
Nanna's plane was delayed, so she missed her connection and while she spent 24 hours in New York, we enjoyed Starbucks!

24th July 2010
Had a lovely lunch (at the exclusive, seafront Yacht Club!!) and afternoon with my friends, Mauricio and Marina, whom I got to know whilst in Cambridge. They were keen to hear about our time in Chincha (for which they were very sorry to hear all that had happened to us) and what is happening in Huancayo. Mauricio, being a lawyer and working with charities, was able to give me some helpful advice about the future of the Peru Children's Trust's work, which I shall be passing on.

23rd July 2010
Off to Lima for the weekend to pick up Nanna, my sister-in-law, who is visiting us for a good couple of weeks. It turned out to be a very long journey, with an accident blocking our way at about 4000m up and then the traditional chaos of traffic in the capital further enhanced by roadworks and what may loosely be termed 'traffic management' by the local police!!

20th July 2010
Finished off the teaching tonight on how to forgive and it got more and more challenging for the La Vina group as the evening went on and each stage seemed more and more unfeasible given their current positions. Encouragingly though, there seems to be some resolve to deal with the past, with some people having said that they want to start the process even though they've been badly hurt by others in the past. More encouragingly still, is that some (non-Christians) are saying that they want to do it, but that they recognise that they can't do it without God!

17th July 2010
Went off, with David and Charito, to visit Warivilca (which means "sacred fountain") where a pre-Inca ruined temple remains. It hardly rivals Machu Picchu, but it was certainly worth a look and even Rachel showed a modicum of interest in something historical, which has to be a first!! It was a nice relaxing day with them, which also included lunch and a walk down by the main river that flows through the Valley.

16th July 2010
Possibly the most exhausting day of my life. I went (with a bunch of American visitors) to Huaytapallana (which means "place to gather small flowers"), the snow-capped peak that overlooks Huancayo. We drove up as far as 4,600m and then walked a path than took us past 3 glacial lakes, the second of which was stunningly beautiful, first dropping down to 4,400m and then reaching 5,000m at the foot of the glacier itself. That was the easy bit!! By the time I'd come back (having done 11 kilometres of high altitude walking by this point), the final 1 kilometre with its 200m climb was almost enough to finish me off!! To make matters worse, the weather came in making it cold to boot (it did snow a little while I was up there). I have now returned to Huancayo with a new found resolve to try and get involved in more sports and get fitter, though one of the people I was with did say that he equated it to running a marathon, which I guess I would find tiring no matter what condition I was in!!

13th July 2010
We had our La Vina meeting tonight at which I started a two-part series on how to forgive, which was certainly a challenge to many of the group, though I think they have at least left with the conviction that they need to forgive (which is not very cultural), so that is at least a start!

12th July 2010
Hot on the heels of the Mill study, I'm now also putting together a proposal to send to the government department responsible for care of the environment to ask them to make available a lot of wood to us for free. I have learnt that part of their role is to try and control logging in the rainforest and they confiscate illegal consignments of wood, which they then make available to charities and educational bodies and the like for free. We could definitely use some in order to make furniture for the families that we support through the Peru Children's Trust.

11th July 2010
We had our long-awaited and much anticipated Ministry Training morning with a fair few people from our La Vina group. It generally went well, though with people arriving late and having to cope with some broken promises to take care of some of the behind-the-scenes things, it meant we ended up teaching more than practising. Still, we now have a number of people who have been exposed to it, some of whom are now in a position where they will be able to minister to other people in the group. There were some interesting moments. One lady, for example, found that she just couldn't pray at all. The words just wouldn't come out, like she had a knot in her throat. I later found out that this is a Peruvian expression that is roughly equivalent to our "heart in mouth" phrase and speaks of a sense of fear. We might well have some follow-up to do with this particular lady.
After the training, we settled down to Peruvian roasted chicken and chips and the World Cup Final. The chicken was the best bit.

7th July 2010
So, landed myself with a large task for the next few weeks - a feasability study of the mill at the PCT Training Centre. Looking at all our many products and the infrastructure of the mill, what possible markets await the products and what investments will be needed in order to reach those markets. Fun, fun, fun, fun, fun!!

5th July 2010
We had a pastoral chat with a couple associated with our La Vina group this evening, in the hope that they might prove to be the key to some of the issues going on. It was disappointing, however, to find out that rather than being the key, they are more likely (in some senses) to be the source of the problems and they show very little willingness to listen. Some people have been hurt a lot.

4th July 2010
We had a nice, yet busy, day entertaining David, the Director of Education at the PCT Training Centre, and his wife, Charito, by treating them to a traditional Sunday lunch (as far as that is possible in Huancayo), which they were graciously very complimentary about despite it being something wholly new to them. Then, in the evening we ourselves were entertained, joining in with our American friends from Sociedad Misionera (Mission Society) to mark US Independence, though being Brits we couldn't do too much celebrating.

3rd July 2010
About 20 of us from our La Vina group headed into the hills outside of town for a walk and picnic. It was a good time, but had a somewhat surprising ending. We met someone on the hills who attached himself to our group and then proceeded to tell us that he was both demon-possessed and he had done some very bad things in his past. It's not really what you expect to encounter when you're out for a nice weekend walk, but we felt that we needed to do something for him, whilst bearing in mind that such matters would be likely to scare off many in the group. In the end, we withdrew to the side and ended up praying for him. Two members of our group had the same name come into their head, which they shared with him. It turns out that it was the name of an aunt who was a practising witch. I also felt that he was living under a curse. It was a challenging time for both Rachel and I, who being leaders were expected to take the lead. The greatest difficulty, however, was that he spoke in such a way that was fairly unintelligible and it was a struggle for the Peruvians to be able to catch what he was saying. That made ministering to him very difficult and, even though Peru is much more spiritually open than the UK, we realised that we don't know of any other leaders (Peruvians) in the city who have experience in this kind of ministry and phone-calls to those who might know came back blank.

2nd July 2010
Had coffee this morning with Ash McEuen from Sociedad Misionera (Mission Society) who work in various communities around Huancayo. Like me, he's interested in putting together a finance course to teach basic money management, having seen the need around him, so looks like we'll be working together on this one which will be great. Seeing as I've already made a start on putting the course together, I'm going to continue writing it myself and pass it on to him for feedback and to trial it and the same time that I'm trialling it with some of the Peru Children's Trust families, which should mean we can refine it and turn it into something really useful for the people we're working with.