Starting to feel like home

Well the Williamsons have now been in Arequipa for 1 month.
We have experienced celebrations for the first day of spring (more like a hot summer day in the UK ) and are getting used to life here in Peru. Our house is secure comfortable and homely and the children are singing the peruvian national anthem with their hand on their heart each morning at school with great enthusiasm.

Sam and Jess are settling well into their new classes and have made friends at school church and with the neighbours.

Scott and Anjanette are enjoying and working hard at language school. We study with other students from Norway Germany UK and USA who will be working with other mission agencies, besides being excellent teachers the language school is also very pastoral and is giving us great orientation about the area country and culture.

We all have school in the mornings then we have homework to do each afternoon and in the evenings.We are enjoying precious family time and are amazed at how happy and adaptable the children have been.

We are starting to get involved at church, Scott is due to preach again this weekend as well as speak to the youth group. The church has a group called "The Radicals" similar to an action team , they are a lot of fun and we are enjoying getting to know them.
Anjanette has befriended one of the mums from school and church and is meeting regularly with her to chat and pray together.

Whilst starting to miss friends and family at home we are so grateful to God for providing us with new friends both Peruvian and other missionaries, we feel we are starting to build good friendships here.
Scott enjoys playing football every Saturday morning and last weekend enjoyed watching Arequipa play Lima at the local Football Stadium.We are also enjoying going swimming in an outdoor pool with a fantastic view of the Andes.

Jessica's highlight so far has to be eating Cuy (guinea pig) when we had a day out in the countryside last week.

There seems to be an awareness of God here many taxi drivers have religious symbols hanging from their mirrors, we saw a slogan on the back of a bus saying Dios Sabe mi Destinacion, not sure if that spoke more about the drivers' faith or driving skills but the roads here certainly are quite dangerous .

One big concern has been the childrens' school places in Cusco for March when the school year starts.Thankyou for praying for them, we found out last week that they have places and next week (8-10 Oct) we travel to Cusco to enrol them and to meet some students in the university whom we hope to work with next year.We are really excited about going to Cusco next week and will have a clearer idea of where we will live work and study after that. The week after Cusco we need to fly to Lima to secure the childrens ID cards so we have some more travelling ahead of us.

Items for praise: safety in travel, good health, making new friends, great language school
Items for prayer: trip to Cusco 8-10 Oct when Jess and Sam have a small exam, childrens' ID cards process, continued language study, safety and good health.

Thankyou for journeying with us,God Bless you , we will upload more photos onto the blog after our trip to Cusco.

Some Photos from Arequipa

Jessica enjoys cuy (guinea pig)
View from our window of El Misti
The lama who lives round the corner

The New School Uniform

Jessica and Samuel new School uniform

Greetings from Arequipa Peru.

Gracias a Dios we have arrived!
Well we have been in Peru for 12 days and we are really excited that this months blog has so much more news.

In 12 days we spent 17 hours flying, 16 hours on a long bus journey, 11 hours in Immigration ,9 hours in church and have heard El Condor Paso 3 times so far!

More than ever before, we have felt uplifted in prayer and are so grateful to you all for praying with us and supporting us. We we very concerned about such long journeys with fidgety Samuel, after 10 hours flying from Heathrow to Miami he said “Are we really there? That was a short journey!”

We received a wonderful welcome from Margaret Swires a BMS colleague based in Lima, we all stayed with her in her 2 bed flat and she helped us do get our ID residency papers and all our admin and fright sorted. Margaret then travelled on the bus with us to Arequipa and is helping us get the house organised, open bank accounts and general orientation. Lima was very cold grey and damp and we are delighted that Arequipa is lovely and warm in the daytime (cold at night) and every where you go you see the beautiful view of the Volcano and mountains. We have visited the children’s preschool and our language school and are really looking forward to getting down to language learning this week.

Samuel is enjoying singing Spanish songs he is learning at church, Jessica made friends with some girls at Sunday school today but she is quite nervous about her new school. Please pray that the children will settle easily at school, we are pleased to discover that they both will have an American child in their class which will be helpful as they get used to new things.

The house we are renting is nice and spacious the children are enjoying having a room each and we have enormous 6 ft cactus house plants inside and out!

We are grateful for safety in travel and good health , please pray for patience and perseverance for us and for the language teachers. Please pray that the children will quickly settle, make new friends and that we we all make good progress in Spanish.