Happy Birthday Chana

Chana (Roxana) is a little girl who comes to our Saturday morning kids club and Sunday school class every week without fail. Her grandmother looks after her and we know her well since her grandmother sells fruit from her fruitbarrow which is positioned at the bridge ( El Puente) next to our church.When she is not at school or at our church Chana spends all day on the street with her grandmother. She lives with her grandmother , father and his partner but her father is barely involved in her care. This morning she told her father it was her 5th birthday today , he told her that he didn't care and that it didn't matter! Carla in the picture with Chana , runs our childrens' ministry she asked if we could do something to celebrate her birthday and so Scott and Carla and Jessica chose a small gift for her , here she is in the photo opening her only birthday present !

the Maize is growing

Eight weeks ago we gave out maize seeds to the families from the flooded community in Yucay. How exciting today to visit Yucay and see that maize growing in the fields.We pray that seeds of God's love and hope will also be sown in their hearts as they watch their crops growing !

Pastor Stuart visits

Pastor Stuart is the team leader for BMS World Mission in Latin America and is our immediate line manager. It was great to have him visit Cusco and gain a better understanding of our work here. We took him to meet some of our friends in Yucay to learn more about the seed project and the relief work, he visited Huambutio where we did the chocolotada last Christmas (a village on the outskirts of Cusco where we hope to work more in the future), he visited La Fuente the medical clinic where Anjanette works and was able to meet with the doctors from Fuente to talk about our partnership with them, he visited the language school and the preschool we have organised for the midterm family joining us next year and of course he met our church family and preached at El Puente Iglesia. Roxana a 5 year old Peruvian girl who comes to our church was very taken with him and kept on stroking his pink sunburnt face and his grey beard, I don't think she'd ever seen anything like it before!!
It has been great having him here with us ,bringing fresh ideas and experience as we review our work over the last 2 years in Peru.

Jungle pics

Scott had fun seeing parrots sloths crocodiles turtles anacondas and even pink dolphins on his recent trip to the jungle.

Iquitos youth conference

Scott spent a few days this week in Iquitos in the jungle leading a youth ministry seminar for leaders and pastors. Folk shared with Scott about the huge problems the young people face in Iquitos with drugs, alcohol, teenage pregnancy and child prostitution. Projects were implemented at the conference to specifically address some of these issues.

Agua o muerte! (Water or die!)

Anjanette and the children have stayed home during the strikes these photos were taken by Ellen a friend of ours.
For as long as we can remember there have been protests and disruption over the issue of the government diverting water from Cusco to Arequipa and periodically there are strikes and protests.
This week there is a 2 day strike so schools and universities are shut and there are few cars on the roads and there have unfortunately been reports of violence and injury.
Today Scott had to walk to the airport since there were rocks and broken glass on the roads and the army were escorting people in and out of the airport , thankfully he made it safely!
Today he travels to Iquitos where he is leading a youth ministry seminar, hopefully there will be some jungle tales and photos to publish on the blog when he's back in Cusco in a few days.....

13th wedding anniversary

our anniversary card from Jessica


Anjanette had a go at driving the beast !

Scott at Moray

the fabulous salineras at Maras

for once we didn't get told off for writing in the dust on the car !!

Let's go fly a kite

August is "El mes del viento " The month of the wind when everyone has fun flying kites. Well at the end of August our friend Giovanni kindly made Jess and Sam lovely home made paper kites. The day he brought them over and the whole of the following week we had uncharacteristically rainy weather, so the poor old tissue paper kites weren't put to use. Well today we drove out and had a picnic (Jessica's favourite activity) and flew the kites out in the countryside, they flew brilliantly!

Possible site for new clinic in Yucay

This week we looked at 240 square metres of land in Yucay. (The foreground of the land in the picture). It is in a good central location, far from the river that flooded earlier this year and the owner will sell it at a reasonable price since it is for a social action project not a private home.

We hope to buy this land to build a clinic/church plant here. (We decided not to accept the land that the mayor offered to us for free since it was being offered with strings attached and probably for political gain, however it did bring up the need for better health care for the community and an important opportunity for us to continue our work here in Yucay) It is such an exciting project the government health provision for the Yucay community is very poor, currently they have few drugs and no doctor in their health post. We would hope to model a different approach to health care where we treat the patient holistically body mind and soul. Today we met with the owner and await him producing the records and the deeds to the land , if all goes to plan we hope a representative from the CEBP ( Peruvian Baptist convention in Lima) will travel to Cusco in a few weeks to do the paperwork, how exciting !!! However this is Peru things rarely go to plan so please join us in praying for this venture.

Medical campaign in Lucre

Margareta , our quechua speaking nurse who is from Lucre

some people are rebuilding their homes, other homes are left derelict as their owners have left Lucre and moved to Cusco.

Makeshift shelters made of wood, plastic and metal roofs.

Some enormous Aloe Vera cacti!


Anjanette examining a screaming patient!

the pharmacy area, where we had a limited stock of drugs to donate to patients.


Lucre is one of the villages in the Cusco region badly affected by the floods 7 months ago.
Lucre is 20mins drive from central Cusco and since a number of other churches and mission agencies are already established there we decided to concentrate our help to the flood victims further outside of Cusco in Yucay, so today was our first visit to Lucre.
Lucre is based around a lake and has a river running right through the village so the majority of the adobe houses in the village centre were destroyed, unfortunately some houses were completely submerged ! 7 months after the flooding folk are still living in makeshift shelters and the whole village looks like a building site, many people are now rebuilding on the land where their houses were destroyed.
An american short term mission agency called MMI are working in the Cusco region for 2 weeks and have asked the Cusco missionary doctors from La Fuente clinic to join them and help see patients this week ,so today Scott and Anjanette spent the morning helping out with the medical campaign which was held in the Lucre health post. Scott enjoyed the experience since all the patients kept on calling him Doctor ! Anjanette had a guided tour of the area by Margareta one of the nurses who works at Fuente clinic. Margareta lives in Lucre and spent the morning with us helping to translate for the quechua speaking patients.

Tramites Tramites.....

Tramites is the spanish term used for paperwork and documents and poor Scott is up to his eyeballs in tramites.

He has been busy organising paperwork for the Roper family so they can obtain their residency here in Peru when they hopefully move to Cusco and work with us early next year.

He has been renewing our residency status and permission to stay in Peru another year , this involves receiving documents from Lima and visiting the immigration office in Cusco .

Today he has travelled to Arequipa for a few days to submit Anjanette's legalised medical documents the first step on a long road to hopefully receiving her license to practice medicine in Peru.

Being the 1st of the month we have to visit different banks to pay the childrens' school fees , our house rent to the landlord and also the church rent to the church landlord. No such thing as easy direct debit monthly transfers here and waiting in queues in banks can take a whole morning . You may be surprised to hear that other bills ( like electricity and water ) are paid at the pharmacy or ironmongers! We don't accumulate gas bills we just call the gas company and pay when our gas bottle is empty and a man on a motorbike brings a new bottle for us , we use gas bottles for cooking, for hot water and for the heater.

So this is the joy of doing tramites in Peru, nothing is simple fast or straightforward but life is certainly never boring !