16th February 2009
This will be a short news email this time round - what a turn up for the books!

Could we please ask those who feel able to pray for us, to join us in praying especially over the next 3-4 weeks as we are considering making a few changes in what we do here. Some of these changes have the potential to be quite large, so we would really value your prayers in asking God to guide us in our decision-making, that He would make things clear to us and that He would also provide solutions to some problems that we face. Sorry for being so vague about it - but God knows! We'll keep you up to date with our decisions as we make them...

On a different note, we led the entire service at church together for the first time as our Pastor was elsewhere - Paul led worship and Rachel preached... everyone responded really positively to us and we were asked when we would be leading again!! So that is encouraging.

Peru is experiencing lots of tremors and earthquakes on the slightly larger side - please pray for protection for all of us out here, we have had two grade 6 and one 6.2 (thankfully only one of them was in our area, but the other two were where our architecht and engineer live) over the last few weeks and lots of small ones which are in our area.

6th February 2009
It has been a long while since we last wrote. We are sorry for such a gap of information, especially as we sort of left you all on a bit of a cliff-hanger: what did happen to the housing project meeting that was scheduled with our architect and engineer back at the beginning of December?!?! Well, it started off very difficult (they didn't turn up!), but when the engineer arrived the day after we expected, we felt we had a very fruitful and helpful time. We talked a lot of things over and felt we had taken a step forward in communication.
Since then, we haven't really made too much progress! But that is how things go in places like this. We have seen house plans, but we are yet to settle on plans that we are happy with. Lots more financial complications have risen to the surface making the whole thing quite stressful for us, we have even wondered if we can keep going with it. Please pray that solutions (miracles) can be found in order to raise up our 6 houses in the next few months and that we will have the strength and perseverence to keep going with it.

Christmas
We spent christmas in Arequipa with the Williamson family (also with BMS) where we realised just how stressed we were and didn't really feel very well for most of the time. However it was great to be with friends, read lots of children's story books, eat lots of good food, play basketball and tennis (Paul), pretend to be a llama (Rach)... and live in a proper house for a while (photos on website)! The not-so-good side was that Rachel's bag was stolen which contained two mobile phones essential for project communication and her Peru residency card, which we have just managed to replace (involving two very early morning journies to Lima... but... two very LOVELY visits to Starbucks!!!!!)
Since Christmas we enjoyed having Paul's brother's girlfriend, Katie, to stay for three weeks - brilliant company for us both. We made a second visit to Huacachina to go sandboarding where Rachel got heatstroke and broke her camera with the sand getting stuck where it shouldn't. Later our oven decided to go along the same lines (without any help from sand) and we have been awaiting a repairman to come for...er.... well... we await him!

English Classes
Rachel has started English classes at church for 3 days a week during the summer holidays. Although not as many people are coming as hoped, those who do come are enjoying themselves and it has helped us make contact with people from outside the church community. Please pray that we can maintain these new relationships.

Friendships
Paul has been making closer friends with a guy from a different church, a taxi driver called Daniel. They football together once or twice a week along with lots of taxi and mototaxi drivers, although Paul has had to temporarily forgo his footballing since injuring a muscle a couple of weeks ago. Daniel is gradually introducing us to his circle of friends (which is enormous!!) so we hope to get to know some people who we can relax with. Thankyou for your prayers regarding this friendship issue. Please continue praying about it, especially that Rachel will find someone she can relate to.

Church
Our homegroup (a small group that meets to study the Bible, pray and socialise together) is attracting at least one lady and a young lad on a consistant basis. There are a couple of others who attend on a more irregular basis and we all enjoy discussing passages from the Bible together.
On top of this, in church we are also both preaching regularly and are now responsible for managing meetings, welcoming, cleaning, helping with finances and leading the music (having been voted in for these during our absence over Christmas!)

Credit Crunch
Lastly, we are hoping to go to a course in Lima to train us up in teaching people how to manage their finances. The economic crisis has started to hit hard in these parts. Many people have been dismissed from their already irregular work, and most are worried about where their next meal will come from. The area around Chincha produces cotton and asparagus, industries which are suffering badly due to declining sales overseas. We are hoping that by offering a finance course, we will be responding to a very real need and give people the tools they need to make a positive way forward.

Earthquake!
And definitely lastly: we've had three tremors/quakes in the last couple of weeks, the latest one was a 5.8 just 25 kms from Chincha, the biggest we've had since we've been here!