Author: qosqo1

This morning for our morning services we had our chocolatada. Doing a chocolatada involves giving out hot chocolate, some sort of bread (usually panetone), and a gift.  (Rebecca made nearly 70 cupcakes and 10 liters of hot chocolate!)  We decided to do ours on Sunday this year and invite the children’s parents to come.  The kids sang a verse of 3 different Christmas carols and some of them read the story of Jesus’ birth from Luke 2, and still others read an acrostic for NAVIDAD (Christmas).  The Lord blessed us with a great day and we are praising Him!  We had about a great group of people at church this morning!  About 35 of those were children and we had around 20 adults.  We praise the Lord for bringing 10 of the children’s parents and 2 of those were dad’s!  It was a crazy morning but well worth it!  We were able to preach (briefly) on the Jesus being the true gift of Christmas and present the gospel to those there.  Pray with us that these parents will return in the coming weeks!

This week we took a quick trip to our “old stomping grounds” of Arequipa, Peru.  When we first came to Peru, Arequipa is where we lived for almost 2 years.  We stayed with missionaries and our friends – Todd and Rosalinda Marks.  We had a good visit with them and we were privileged to sing and preach in the church we started helping with when we first came to Peru.  The church just formally organized last Sunday.  It was great to see so many familiar faces!  We also got to enjoy some food from American restaurants and do some shopping at a couple of the different malls that Arequipa has.

The girls were able to be in a Christmas play at their old school this past Friday.  They were “extras” in the Sunday school class and as angels.  This was the first Christmas play that the school had done.  They did the “Best Christmas Pageant Ever”.  It was a fun evening and we actually ended up with two grumpy looking angels (as noted in the picture above).  Neomi actually started feeling bad during the play and is still not feeling well. Natali was probably just tired but it was very comical to see two “angels” with arms crossed and sour expressions at the birth of Jesus.

Well, these kids might not look too happy to be getting their Bibles but they were (at least I think they were).  In Peru, people don’t always smile for pictures like we do in the U.S., in fact many times they are told not to smile.  The Lord blessed us with a good Saturday kid’s club.  We had 26 come and several of those were visitors from the area around the church plant!  Each child receives a Bible for coming to club 4 Saturdays in a row. We are trying to teach the kids to use their Bibles through playing Bible Sword drills (pictured below).

Also, over the past several Sundays we have been able to reach out to at least 400 people through the giving of flyers, gum, and balloons.  As we mentioned before our district was having a “Recreovia” where for at least 6 Sundays they shut down one side of the street and allowed people to play games, walk and ride bicycles.  These were great opportunities for us to get out and meet people where they were.  This Sunday was the last one for theses activities but we pray to see fruit!