Cusco y Cosas

December is a busy month almost in every part of the world, Cusco is no different. Over the past nine days we have hosted three different events at our house plus one at the church. Becca has cooked and baked enough for a couple months in the span of those nine days. The month started off with the ladies of our church having a Christmas party at our house. From there, we moved on to host the Adolescent Christmas Party, and after that the Young Adult Christmas party. This past Saturday we had our Kids Club Christmas party to finish up another blessed year of ministering to the kids. The Lord blessed each event, and we are thankful to have been able to minister in this way to the people God has given us to serve. Here are some pictures:

Last week we had our first VBS in recent years. We praise the Lord for a great week! We didn’t have as many kids as we thought, but we were in the 20’s throughout most of the week and ended up with a high day of 39! This year we did VBS Tuesday – Saturday so the kids would be use to coming on Saturday for our Kid’s Club. Also we had the prize day on Sunday in hopes that the parents would come. On Sunday we had 24 kids come and 5 parents! We pray this will be a a boost for our children’s ministry. Throughout the course of the week we made contact with about 10 new kids; we will follow up with them for our Kid’s Club. Thank you for your prayers! It was an exhausting week and there was a lot of time and money put into it, but we pray there will be eternal fruit reaped from it all.

I think Christmas is a busy time of the year no matter what part of the world you are in.  In Peru the busyness tends to be compounded with end of the year school activities (the school year here runs from March-December).  Over the years we have learned the schedule and try to do our end of the year parties before the schools let out.  So, on December 8th we had a fun time celebrating with the young adults from our church.  December 9th we had our adolescent group over to the house and celebrated with them.  On the 14th the ladies of the church had their monthly ladies meeting where they celebrated by giving gifts and revealing themselves to their “Secret Sisters”.  This past Saturday (December 16th) we ended the year celebrating with the kids from our children’s ministry.  These Christmas parties in Peru are called “chocalatadas” because we celebrate with hot chocolate and a type of fruitcake called “Panetone”.  By the way, there are all kinds of panetone, not just fruitcake kind (our family likes the chocolate chip kind).  We had a great time with all three groups, but it is nice to have these activities done with.