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.