16th June 2010 - Headlines 16

Encouraging Church Developments (please see Paul's blog for more in-depth details)
Since moving our Vineyard meetings to our house we have had 5 meetings, all of which have been very encouraging and God has touched people.
Last week we had 28 people – 18 adults and 10 children- all squished in our living room/utility room (the latter for the children). The last people didn’t leave until gone 11pm (their kids were asleep on our sofas) as they has asked us for advice and prayer. That same night another girl asked us to help her with her relationship with her long-term partner. We have met with her twice, once on her own and another time with her partner.
Eli, our co-leader has since asked us to meet with her once a week to pray as she ‘feels so in need of it’. This in itself is an answer to prayer.
One other guy has asked to meet with Paul regularly to ‘learn more’.
We have also started to visit people during the week to build our relationships more, chat and pray.
Last night we had 29 people at our meeting with 5 potential regular people unable to come. We are having to look into buying more chairs and mugs for refreshments!
Please pray for the provision of Bibles as we only have 5 New Testaments between about 30 of us!

Health
Rachel put on weight for 4-5 days, then had a bit of a lull, then put on weight again, the we both got ill at the weekend from consuming bad milk! So she has had to start all over again with the weight gain. However, apart from that she is fine! Thanks for all your prayers.

Rachel is teaching again
Rachel started with two new classes last Thursday. This time in a nearby secondary school that has a partnership with Continental who has employed her. This means teaching 12-15 yr olds which isn’t her favourite age-group, but is has gone relatively fine so far.
Her approved contract arrived the other day, we are now just awaiting the separate piece of paper giving her permission to work which shouldn’t take long apparently (!?!?!?)

Paul, micro-enterprise and finance schemes
Paul will soon start teaching a course at the PCT Training Centre on running small businesses. This is to help those working at the PCT Training Centre to run the production side (the mill, our catering service and the sewing workshop) more effectively.
He is also, as part of his recent studies, taking on the challenge of teaching some families how to manage money and start up their own family business in order to increase income and promote economic self-sufficiency.

 

4th June 2010 - Headlines 15

WARNING: this contains quite a few spiritual elements!!!! Please feel free to ask any questions if you want to know more, don’t understand or feel confused. We have shared more on Paul’s blog so as not to bombard you all with too much weird and wonderful stuff here. Please see the links below to read further if you are interested (and want a giggle too!)

Healing once again!
Thank to those of you who have been praying. We have had some worrying weeks since getting rid of parasites where Rach’s weight started to increase for 2-3 days then she lost it all again.  We did begin to think that it was living at altitude that was causing her to lose weight – apparently it can particularly affect Caucasians (anyone tempted to visit as a part of a weight-loss program?). However, this last weekend the Pastors of the Vineyard Church in Lima came to visit us and upon spending time with our church group, discerned some spiritual problems amongst them. The spiritual world is far more evident in countries such as Peru than somewhere like Britain. British people tend to ignore spiritual realities – and may not even believe full stop. It is very different here, however.  It was decided that Rachel’s health issues were related to some spiritual influence that needed to be sorted and so they prayed for her on Saturday night. Saturday had been a particularly bad day as she had lost more weight despite all analysis results saying there was nothing left that could be wrong! She started to get depressed as a result, thinking that the doctors really didn’t know what to do.  Since praying for healing and against any (bad) spiritual influences, she has gained weight every day!  View full story here (particularly 29th & 30th May)

Visit to Lima
Wednesday we came to Lima for a few days. We originally planned the trip to do more medical investigations at a clinic as the doctor couldn’t do any more in Huancayo AND also attend a Vineyard conference. However, seeing as Rachel is now apparently gaining weight, we shall forgo the trip to the clinic unless it proves necessary once again.

Documents...
Rachel is due to go back to work Wednesday 10 June. She has been assured that she will have an approved contract for that day and that the official permission will follow quickly after that.... 

Other miracles…
In the last two weeks we have taken the decision to move our Tuesday evening church meetings to our house.  The house where we were meeting before was proving far too difficult as the family was experiencing many, many serious relationship problems and this interfered with our meetings.  When we brought up the subject of moving to the family, the idea was not received well. They didn’t want to make the sacrifice of going somewhere else. We fully expected to lose the majority as we knew their hearts weren’t in our meetings and they weren’t interested in seeking God.  However the same weekend Rachel was prayed for, the Lima Pastors also spent time with the family and prayed with them. God did amazing things and brought reconciliation, forgiveness and a renewed desire to seek God once more.  We had our second meeting in our house last night and God really touched people’s hearts again and did quite a bit of emotional healing. We know that only God could bring that about. We feel very encouraged. Also view the full story here (from 20th May onwards really!)
Please join us in thanking God for all these encouraging developments

 

19th May 2010 - Headlines 14

New Friends and Mad Coincidences
You may remember the course on micro-enterprises that Paul attended last month. This came about because Rachel had happened to find some Americans living in Huancayo and they were running this course. We have since met up a couple of times and we are enjoying knowing there are more like-minded, English-speaking friends near us for the first time in Peru!
What is more amazing is that Paul has been trying to get details about an oganisation who offer training in certain development fields and recently he received an email from this organization saying that there were two other people in Peru requesting the same training. They happen to be the exact same couple we have just met in Huancayo! How mad is that? God got plans or something?

Health
Rachel’s health continues to baffle the local doctor. So far she has lost 8kg, had two kinds of parasites, bronchitis and two different infections as well as all the related tiredness and ill-feeling.  Three lots of medication have hopefully knocked the parasites on the head, the lungs are now better. Weight has stablised and she has even gained a possible 0.3kg), but has a long way to go. She has been given a month off work to recuperate, make a trip to Lima to get more tests done and also wait for her legal work documents. Whilst not working she will still be studying nutrition, preparing things for ‘church’ meetings, learning how to play the keyboard and writing a new course for the university (see below). 
Please pray for quick recuperation, helpful test results and for her work documents to come through for next month.

Rachel writing new University course
During our two years in Peru we have come to realize that the education here is very poor and consists mainly of students copying from a blackboard and memorizing what their teacher tells them. Paul has noticed whilst visiting families that the older a child the less imaginative, creative and inquisitive they are. It is quite simply beaten out of them. They are not allowed to question teachers and are not taught to think for themselves. 
Rachel has found this a huge stumbling block at the University. Her students need to be spoon-fed, they can’t interpret information or follow instructions. They fail to see the reason behind an activity and the fact that we teach English using text books from England means the teaching style is very foreign to them. 
After having a lovely chat with her boss, Rachel is now developing a 7 day course (foundation type thing) in order to prepare students for the type of learning they will encounter on their English course and also teach them Grammar in Spanish to give them tools to use when they have to deal with such alien things as verbs, adjectives, pronounds, adverbs…etc

Paul’s course
Paul has been extraordinarily busy – and that is without looking after Rachel, doing the shopping and cooking etc!
He has been up at the crack of dawn most days visiting local families (sometimes not that local considering the families live up to an hour and a half away) doing a kind of questionnaire with them involving pictures of possible problems in their community and them using beans to vote which ones are the most important to them or most in need of solutions.

Proposal for a new oven
Paul has also written a proposal to a local charity for a new oven for the training centre in order to replace the already existing one that the lead chef has to pray over before he uses!! 
So maybe you can all pray that his proposal is successful!

Church changes
Thank you to everyone who got so excited about our new meeting place for our mid-week meetings – especially our tiny chairs! Unfortunately we turned up a week later for our second meeting and we told we could no longer meet there, apparently because the equivalent to their PTA wouldn’t want a church meeting there.
We are now back to square one.
We have had encouraging moments with our small group. We had to flag up a particularly grave error on the part of our co-leader (and her family), which she accepted with humility and made the appropriate apology to the person in question. We hope this incident grew her trust in us as this was a difficult thing for us to do but she heard us and agreed!
New people have visited our meetings too. We hope to see them come back regularly.
Please pray with us we try to decide where to meet and in which area.

 

4th May 2010 - Headlines 13

Church moves venue!
Last Wednesday our church group officially moved out of the family house where it has been meeting for 3 years and into a local nursery building. The first meeting had 8 people and was very encouraging in some respects.  It remains to be seen who will decide to commit to our group and who won’t. 
Please pray that God will touch people’s hearts to commit.

Paul becomes a student again!
We hear everybody groan…! How long did he last without studying? Well he has recently managed to get a discount (due to being a volunteer overseas) on 2 courses on development project planning and implementation. He insists this is to help his work here!

Sunday School Teachers conference on 1st May
Was an amazing success! Just under 200 people attended and their response to the teaching given by our American friends Tony and Rebecca from Vineyard USA was overwhelmingly enthusiastic, so much so that a three day conference has now been put in the diary for the end of October!  Thank you to everyone for praying! Paul became a celebrity, having his photo taken with many, many people and also became known as a bit of a comedian.  He made a few jokes during the course of the day, one of which (and we have to say the English wouldn’t have appreciated his humour nearly as much as the Peruvians) everyone was laughing and retelling the rest of the evening – much to our amusement.  Peruvian humour is often a bit like outdated English humour – not funny anymore. The funniest bit for us is the the fact that they find it funny! 
Please continue praying that those who attended the conference will put into practice what they have learned and make good use of the resources they have been given.

Health
Rachel’s health still needs lots of prayer.  She has finished two cycles of medication (for parasites and lung inflammation / bronchitis type thing) and is just about to start another course for the second of two parasites. Unfortunately the internet tells us that her parasites maybe resistant to the medication she was given so we are yet to find out whether she is getting better. She has also lost more weight this week. The symptoms that one of the strains of parasites presents are the many symptoms of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. She has managed to keep teaching her class so far, all but one day, but this hasn’t been easy. The doctor has said after her third lot of medication she will need to be treated with vitamins to regain strength and weight.

Rachel has temporarily given in her notice at work…
… on the basis that her permission to work documents still haven’t come out.  There have been various delays and this means that by the middle of May she will have taught 2 months without permission, so last week she emailed to say that if they don’t come out ready for the next cycle of teaching she would withdraw from her position until the documents are ready. This may be a good thing as given her health situation she may need a little time to recover.

 

21st April 2010 - Headlines 12

Well the last two weeks have been busy for us both.  Here is a summary:

Rachel finishes her first English course…
… and starts her second. Out of 23 students, 18 have passed onto cycle two (each cycle is a month long). The students are university students who are studying other subjects but are obligated to study English for a year as part of their degree.  Some of them are really struggling.  Rachel’s main challenge is to identify the learning styles that work the best and to show that it is possible to learn a language with a little bit of effort outside the classroom too! 
Please pray that she can encourage and motivate her students.

Microenterprise Workshop
Rachel happened to stumble across an American missionary couple who also live in Huancayo and through email contact established they were running a microenterprise workshop for Peruvians.  So Paul gate-crashed for the week!  It has been hard work and long days, but has been great for Paul to get to grips with all the ins and outs of business planning and he hopes to be able to pass this information on, in a much simplified form, to some of the families in the Trust who currently lack the know-how and the confidence to be able to make a good go of generating income through business.

Major Vocabulary Blunder…
At our Wednesday church meetings we recently finished studying the latter part of Jesus’ life, and of course his death and resurrection over Easter. Last week Rachel very enthusiastically advertised Paul’s next ‘course’, based on the book of Galatians, unfortunately finding out the hard way that if you say ‘Galatians’ in Spanish with the stress on the wrong part of the word, you end up advertising a course led by Paul studying naked women! If anyone would like to fly over and join us, we start this week!

Post!!
We were very excited to receive post from the UK last week. We were getting very worried that nothing was ever going to arrive, but the parcels that we have been told about have now arrived. It appears that it was mainly due to the fact that no-one had been to the post office to pick it up rather than the postal system failing us.

Documents
We now have our visas all sorted. Rachel is still waiting for her permission to work. 
Please continue praying about that one.

Fleas, Parasites and X-rays
We’ve been plagued by fleas from the neighbour’s dogs – so sleepless nights scratching and jumping! We have also both had various medical tests done due to losing weight over the last month, Rachel more worryingly so. Paul’s tests were negative, but Rachel’s tests showed up two kinds of parasites and a lung X-ray (which requires that one holds their breath whilst leaning against a cold board for far too many seconds that being at altitude allows! At 6 seconds you are hoping they will press the button soon, at 8, REALLY soon, and at 10 seconds you are sure you will pass out before the X-ray has been taken) showed up some kind of inflammation. All the above has been/is being treated. Further blood tests have been taken to see if there is another reason she has lost so much weight.
Please pray for recovery and for gaining weight.

1st May Sunday School Leaders Training Conference
This conference that Paul has organized is due to take place on Saturday 1st and so far seventy-five churches have been invited in the Huancayo area, with more to go. The aim is to equip, train and encourage children’s work across the city and beyond – most churches need A LOT of help in this area.
Please pray: that the right people come; that the event takes place without major problems; that the teaching is taken on board and put into practice.

Church Changes – prayers answered
Having unsuccessfully tried to meet up with Elizabeth three times for lunch last week in order to discuss possible changes and vision for the church, we turned up at our Wednesday evening meeting to find that more people had arrived that usual and everyone was enthusiastically wanting to discuss those very topics! Rachel also had to opportunity of talking to Elizabeth off to the side about the potentially sensitive issue of moving our meetings out of her family home to a more neutral place. Not only did Elizabeth readily agree with this idea, but she also suggested the very place we had thought of ourselves. We haven’t yet been able to organize this move but we hope to be able to do it for next week. Thanks for your prayers.

 

7th April 2010 - Headlines 11

During the last two weeks, Paul has spent most of his time in meetings, visiting families, signing up new children to the sponsorship scheme and re-writing important documentation within the context of administration – oh joy! Rach has spent most days, planning lessons, giving lessons, shopping at the market, cooking, studying nutrition, and downloading Youtube videos for her students to practice listening to and singing songs in English. Next week her students have a Karaoke lesson to look forward to!

Easter Games and Cookies…
Easter morning we got up rather too early to keep a skype date with one of our supporting churches.   In order to greet everyone at the end of their morning service at 11.30am we had to get up at 5.15am to get online and stare bleary eyed at the congregation staring back at us not so bleary eyed!!! Nevertheless we enjoyed seeing lots of you and wishing you a Happy Easter.
We spent the rest of the day in a bit of a daze, doing not much (which is quite nice).  With the fact that our church group is not officially a ‘church’ but rather a ‘homegroup’ that has a regular meeting on Wednesday evening, we had a bit of family time with folk in our flat for the first time.  Most of us played frisbee and volleyball outside in our very own park (not a particularly nice one as most people use this space for ALL KINDS OF THINGS) which is directly outside our front door.  Afterwards Paul made Easter Cookies with a few of the girls for us all to enjoy.  It was a great opportunity for them to bring their friends and a few neighbours also joined in with the games outside.

Jesus parades round our park…
The local catholic church sets up a tent in the park outside our house every Sunday morning  to have their meetings.  They  appear not to have their own building.  Unfortunately they play music rather loudly from very early in the morning and not very religious music at that.  Good Friday we saw ‘Jesus’ carrying his cross around the park (shorter version of the stations of the cross) accompanied by Titanic and Frank Sinatra’s ‘My Way’ which we thought particularly amusing!

Getting our flat organized…
One of Rachel’s colleagues from work has started coming to our church meetings. One of his last comments on Sunday in our flat was “I like that this place has an echo… but are you guys, like, gonna, you know… buy any furniture?”
Yes we are, little by little – we are still rattling around in our lovely new SPACIOUS flat.  We buy a few new things each month.  This month we hope to purchase a spare bed ready for some visitors from Lima who come at the beginning of May.

Plan for a big children’s work conference…
Paul is organizing a large conference in Huancayo, providing training in teaching children in a Sunday School context.  Whilst we were in Lima in February we made new friends from a Vineyard in the USA who have an amazing ministry in this area and they are coming up here on the 1st May to lead this conference.  Invitations will be going out to as many churches as possible.  More about this later in the month.

Change is in the air…
We haven’t made any firm decisions yet as we are still to chat with Elizabeth with whom we co-lead our church group, but we are thinking  along the lines of changing our meeting place.  We currently meet in her family’s living room and this proves awkward when not all members are enthusiastic about joining in, or house chores tend to get in the way (or eating) and about 15 people are all living under one small roof!!! We think it is time to leave the family nest and advance with the group with those who REALLY want to be part of us.  We hope to have more to share in our next email. Please pray about our discussions relating to this issue.

Weather…
Thanks to those of you who made contact with us upon hearing about the recent mudslides in Peru.  Some of you thought that Huancayo was now under mud but in fact it is a place with a very similar name (Huanuco).  So we are ok!  We are still in rainy season and still experiencing regular heavy rainfall and thunderstorms.  This makes getting about difficult. Yesterday, for example, we had to wade through ankle deep river (on the roads), Rachel in her work clothes!!  Rachel uses an umbrella (Paul hasn’t quite got round to getting one) but with the horizontal rain, an umbrella just about keeps your scalp dry and nothing much else!!!
Officially we have another month of rain left but as we are sure you all know, the world’s weather system is hardly staying true to its usual pattern these days!

Updates from prayer requests in last Headlines
Paul’s sternum muscular problem is slowly improving, but isn’t helped by his frequent sneezing… Peruvian air makes us sneeze lots!
Manuel is still in Lima, feeling a bit more rested, but still with his medical problems. He is due to return to Huancayo next weekend.
Paul is heading to Lima today (Wednesday) to pick up our visas!
Rachel’s permission to work should be available for pick up in a week or so. (?????)