Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Hope everyone had a great Christmas yesterday! I’m a little late in posting, but I thought I would share our Christmas card from this year.

Cole got a new tricycle and we have barely been able to get him to stop riding it since he saw it yesterday morning! Santa is also bringing him a big boy bed, but the elves were a little late getting it together so hopefully he’ll have it sometime this week. We enjoyed a nice dinner last night with Matt, Charla, and Gabbi along with Matt’s parents and his brother, James who were visiting for Christmas. I made my first turkey! It wasn’t as difficult as I had imagined it to be and it turned out really good. I read online that brining it was the best way to keep it from drying out, so I did that for about 24 hours after thawing it, and it was wonderful! Very moist and tasty! I would post the recipe, but I am sometimes not very good about measuring everything out, so I just kind of threw it all together. Basically with brining you soak the meat in a marinade heavy with kosher salt and sugar, along with other liquids (I used apple cider) and spices. You’re supposed to inject the turkey in several spots but I didn’t have anything to do that with, so I ended up using the sharp end of my meat thermometer and just poking a few random holes in so the marinade could soak through better. Everyone here in Cusco takes their turkeys to cook in traditional ovens, which are all over the city in different neighborhoods. I hadn’t seen one in our neighborhood (they are not really labeled so it’s hard to know where they are) so I called around and found one within walking distance. Like I said, they aren’t labeled, but I saw a few other people walking into this house with big bags that looked like turkeys, so I figured that must be the place. I followed them to the back of the house and there was a big room with lots of little cubbies on the wall, and turkeys were lined up in metal pans within the cubbies. Then in the back of the room was a giant stone/adobe wood-burning oven and an older man had one of those giant spatulas (is that the right term!?) that they use in pizzerias for the brick ovens. It was full of turkeys and so I just told them what time I wanted to pick it up and they gave me a number for pick up! It was very easy and so much better than cooking it in my own oven. Our ovens here run on gas so baking sometimes can get expensive. Anyway, I thought I would share with you my first turkey adventure!

I thought I’d also share a recipe I used last night for Cranberry Wassail. My parents always host a big Christmas eve party at their home with all of our relatives, and my mom usually makes Wassail. This is a slightly different version of the traditional recipe, because it uses cranberry juice, but I thought it turned out good. It’s a nice drink for Christmas because all of the fruit juices and spices make your house smell very nice and festive! You can find the recipe here. I didn’t add the lemon juice and I added a little more sugar because my juices weren’t already sweetened.

Quick Trip to the States

Well, I thought when I wrote the last post that I would get two posts done in one day and here I am almost a week later! Oh, well, better late than never! I have a few minutes while my chocolate cheesecake is baking for Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow so I thought I would post about a little whirlwind trip back to Alabama that I recently made.

The Thursday morning after our 1st anniversary at church, I got an email from my dad asking me to call him as soon as I could. My mom’s older sister, who lived in Arkansas with her family, had very suddenly fallen into critical condition and was not expected to live through the day. This was a huge shock to everyone because not only was she relatively young (59) but she was in good health and had even been planning a trip back to Alabama to spend time with family that very week. The week before she was suffering from what she assumed to be a cold, and it gradually got a little worse, so she called my uncle (who was away on business) to come home a little early. He got home and not too many hours later, she was burning up with fever and couldn’t breathe. He rushed her to the local hospital, who quickly transferred her to the bigger university hospital in Little Rock. She was then diagnosed with acute leukemia and after that point she really only lived a few more hours. It just really shocks you sometimes how quickly life can pass. My aunt was a truly kind lady who had a gentle spirit and a love for travel. She even made a trip to Peru a few years back and got to see Cusco before we moved here. In her job, she worked to help support local farmers and the agricultural business in Arkansas. She was able to accomplish great things in her work life and she was a great mother, wife, and grandmother to her family. I was blessed to be able to fly home for the funeral with Cole, so I got to see some cousins and aunts and uncles that I don’t get to see very often and that was a great blessing as well.

After the funeral, I spent a couple of days in Huntsville and then ended up going on a Young Pros retreat that my parents had previously committed to hosting. My dad’s company owns a chalet in Gatlinburg so we stayed there for the weekend. It was a lot of fun and my sister and her husband were able to come as well, so we got to spend a lot of time with them. While we were there, we ate out a couple of times, did some shopping in Gatlinburg, and got to visit the Aquarium there. They had a new exhibit on penguins, which was a huge hit with Cole because he is absolutely obsessed with penguins right now! He got to see them up close and personal (although much to his disappointment, he wasn’t able to pet them)!

We ended up doing a ton of traveling in a very short period of time (the flights to and from Peru, 8 hours back and forth from Arkansas, and 5 hours back and forth from Gatlinburg) but Cole did unbelievably well and was a real trooper through it all. He loved getting to spend time with Papa and KK (my parents), Aunt Ashley and Uncle Charlie (my sister and brother in law), Uncle Nathan (my brother), as well as his great grandparents, great aunts and uncles, and my cousins and their families. Although I was there just a little over a week, I got to bring home lots of goodies from the States (including a tricycle for Cole for Christmas) and my suitcases were a lot heavier than when I brought them!

Tomorrow we are going over to the Cooks’ house to spend Thanksgiving with them. We’ll miss the Reaves family, who are on furlough right now, but Charla’s parents are visiting this week so our group won’t be too much smaller than usual. We went the easy route this year and got our American friend who owns a restaurant here to cook most of the meal for us. He cooks the best burger in town and even built a smokehouse behind his restaurant so he can make authentic American BBQ! He’s a great chef, so I know everything tomorrow will be delicious and the best part is that we don’t have to do all the work!

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2nd Anniversary in Cusco

I am really behind on my posts, so I am going to do two separate ones about recent events. Just a few short weeks ago we celebrated our 2nd anniversary here in Peru and our first anniversary since the inauguration of the Ayllu congregation. I’ll start with the anniversary of the church here, since that’s why many of you read this blog. At the end of October, we celebrated our first anniversary with the Ayllu congregation. The past year has been a huge blessing and it’s really neat to look back and think of all the new friends we’ve made and the new Christians that are now working with us. It hasn’t been without its challenges, and I know there will be more to come in the future. But overall, we feel very blessed to be a part of the work here. It’s been a great learning experience, not just that we’re having to do everything in a language and culture that are foreign to us, but also in the way God can work in people’s lives and how the gospel really can change people for the good. We’ve learned that there are many challenges and struggles in trying to help new Christians grow, especially when many times the culture here dictates a different view on what commitment really is. A lot of Catholics here in the city are accustomed to church being a small part of their life. They go to mass once a month, or less, and celebrate the big holidays. But it’s more of a background thought than a major part of how they see the world and live in it. So one of the big challenges we face here is getting our new converts and regular visitors to really embrace Christianity and let it change every aspect of their lives, rather than have the church just be a place they go one Sunday a month. Please pray for us in these challenges.

Many of you were able to come down and work with us on some of the various campaigns we held throughout the year, and we want to express our gratitude once again for your help and support, whether you physically came or whether your donations and prayers made our work possible. We kicked off with an Inauguration Campaign last October, which ended with the first official service as the Ayllu congregation. Over 200 were in attendance that day, and we made lots of new contacts that are still working with us today. We also had a program of English classes that the campaigners used as a way to introduce the church to the surrounding community. In March, we held a medical campaign and were able to help around 850 patients, and lots of new Bible studies were set up. Once again, some of the people we met that week are still working with us as a valuable part of our church today. In July, we had a team of 8 college students from Freed-Hardeman University come and work with us for a 6 week program of English classes using the Bible. One of the campaigners had the blessing of baptizing one of his students, and we really enjoyed forming some new relationships both with the campaigners and with the students they helped. And then last month we held a carnival/family seminar that you can read about in the previous post. We are so grateful to have been able to help our community and make lots of new contacts through the efforts of these campaigns.

Additionally, the end of last month marked two years that we have been living and working in Peru. It’s difficult for me to express to you what a huge blessing the last two years have been to our lives. We have had the blessing of becoming bilingual, and while the process of learning Spanish hasn’t always been fun, it’s a lot of fun to be able to speak and work in two languages now. There are still new words and phrases that we learn on a regular basis, but overall we have grown very comfortable with the language here. It’s also a lot of fun to watch the kids on the team start to understand and communicate more and more in Spanish. Cole can follow many commands in Spanish, and many times he greets people and says goodbye (chao) to them in Spanish without us having to prompt him. It’s also neat to hear him ask to pray for some of the people he’s met through the church here. It just warms my heart to hear him request to pray for “Alboto” (Alberto), Marco, “Chora” (Melchora) and “Edira” (Yedira), people he never would have met or formed relationships with had we not made the decision to come here to Peru. I’ve learned to cook lots of new dishes, and learned new ways to cook some of my favorite dishes from back home. I now can successfully cook lots of dishes at a high altitude (11,500 feet) although some things still allude me (layer cakes and chocolate chip cookies)! I’ve tried tons of Peruvian food, which is rich with new flavors and combinations that I would have never thought to try before. I’ve heard before that Peru has one of the widest variety of different dishes in the world, and I believe it. And most Peruvians (both men and women) can really cook! I’m always amazed at how well they navigate themselves around the kitchen. We’ve learned where to buy little odds and ends around the city, and we’ve found lots of great restaurants and parks. We’ve been able to take several trips and vacations to see various parts of Peru, which is also rich in geographical diversity. We’ve traveled from the peaks of the mountains through the rich valleys, through deserts, beaches, and islands and even through the jungles (the guys are the only ones so far to have this experience). We’ve both embraced and become incredibly frustrated by cultural difference between “us” and “them”, but we’ve learned a lot through the process. We’ve had several family members and friends come down to visit us and we look forward to more visits in the future. Through the confusion and frustration, we really have come to love our life here in Cusco, Peru.

I’d like to post a year in review in photos but haven’t had the chance yet so be watching for that soon.

La Gran Feria Ayllu 2011

Last week we had a group of campaigners here to work alongside our team and the Peruvians in our congregation to do a big 3-day carnival. At the same time, we also held a parenting seminar, so all the parents who came with their kids to the carnival were able to hear a lesson on the importance of Christian parenting. Chaos tends to reign here in Peru, so we knew we would have to work hard to keep everything organized and as non-chaotic as possible, and I think everything went really well. We made sure no kids came in without their parents (another reason for this was to get more parents to go to our seminar) and we broke everyone up into groups for different sessions. There was a very well-decorated entryway/foyer area that we used as a waiting area between groups and refreshments were also served there. Gary dressed up and painted himself up like Shrek, and Minnie Mouse, Buzz Lightyear, and a clown were also there. Some of the different games we had were: pie toss, balloon dart throw, face painting, Lucky Ducks, cookie decorating, hula hoop toss, ring toss, temporary tattoos, coloring table, football throw/soccer kick, door prize drawing, candy guessing game, a dunking booth, and a huge moonbounce/slide. Everyone had a great time and I think the community really appreciated us hosting a family event. We had 757 in total attendance (464 kids and 293 adults), 120 signed up for our School of the Bible course, and 191 Bible studies were set up. We will very busy doing follow up work, but hopefully soon there will be new Christians working with our congregation. Thank you for our prayers for this event, and please continue to remember our work in your prayers.

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A few new recipes…

A couple of months ago I mentioned that we were starting a program of group Bible studies in the homes of those of our congregation. It’s been very successful, and the Cusqueñians have been very excited about it and participation has been great. They have invited visitors on several occasions, which is one of the purposes behind it, to present a little less formal way for them to visit our church for the first time. Anyway, our groups have been growing, so we decided to add a new one at our home on a different night of the week. The other groups meet on Wednesdays, and our group will meet on Tuesday nights. It’s common to serve a lonche, or snack, when you have guests over to your home in the evening, so last night I prepared some cookies and tea and both were a big hit. Even though it is technically spring here, I guess my mind is still trained to be in fall mode in late September, so I made some things that remind me of autumn back home. One was a snickerdoodles recipe with a twist (pumpkin) and the other was chai tea. I also wanted to share an unrelated Brazilian Beef Stroganoff recipe that I have made a lot when we have visitors from the states. I always get a lot of requests for the recipe, so I’ve been meaning to put it on here.

I love herbal teas, which is great living here because they have a wide variety and everything is super cheap. I am actually not much of a fan of traditional black tea. I like it in sweet Southern iced tea, but my favorite way to drink it is in chai lattes. I am not a coffee drinker, so this is generally my drink of choice at Starbucks. For those of you unfamiliar with it, it is a tea from India full of warm spices and mixed about half and half with milk. I have bought Tazo chai tea filters in the past and mixed those with milk, but this recipe puts those and even the Starbucks variety to shame. I can’t take credit for the recipe, though!I got this from my friend Leah’s cooking blog full of amazing recipes.

World’s Best Chai Concentrate

(makes 1 quart concentrate, enough for 2-3 quarts chai)

1 qt. cold water
1 family size black teabag (or 4 individual black teabags)
2 cinnamon sticks (or 1/2 tsp. chopped cinn. sticks)
12 cardamom pods, crushed (or 1/2 tsp. cardamom seed-I used this and it turned out great)
1 inch piece fresh ginger, peeled (or 1/2 tsp. dried ginger)
1/4 tsp. whole cloves (about 4)
1 tsp. vanilla
2/3 c. sugar
Milk

Put water, teabag, cinnamon sticks, cloves, and ginger in saucepan. Lightly crush the cardamom pods if you use them in this form. Don’t grind to oblivion, just enough to release the seeds! You can do this in a mortar and pestle, or with a rolling pin. Combine cardamom and cloves in teaball, put in pan (Note: If you don’t have a teaball, you can put everything in loose and just strain it at the end). Bring to boil, reduce heat, simmer 5 minutes. Remove teabag, cinnamon, ginger and spices. Stir in vanilla and sugar. *Note-I also added in a star anise and a few allspice pods (is that what you call them?!) during the first stage, but adding them is of course optional.

To store for future use, pour mixture into container and refrigerate. To serve immediately, mix chai with milk in proportion of 1/3-2/3 or 1/2-1/2 . Adjust to taste. Delicious warm or cold. *Note-I used a little less milk, like maybe 1/3-2/3 proportion, and I think next time I will decrease the sugar a little because it was just a tad too sweet without the extra milk.

*Cardamom might be a little difficult to find and it’s a little pricey, but you can use it to make a ton of chai once you buy it. I got some at Whole Foods when we were home on furlough. I’m not sure if they have it at regular grocery stores or not. It is an important spice to the flavor of this drink, so don’t be tempted to skip it.

Pumpkin Snickerdoodles

Yield: 3 dozen cookies

Ingredients:

COOKIES:
1 cup (2 sticks) salted butter, at room temperature
1 1/2 cups granulated white sugar
3/4 cup pure unsweetened pumpkin puree (or zapallo if you live in Peru)
1 large egg
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
3 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

ROLLING SUGAR:
1/2 cup granulated white sugar
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon allspice

Directions:

1. In a large bowl, use an electric mixer to cream the butter until fluffy. Add sugar and pumpkin puree and beat well. Mix in egg and vanilla, scraping down sides of the bowl to incorporate all of the ingredients.

2. In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, salt and ground cinnamon. Beat flour mixture into liquid mixture a little at a time just until incorporated.

3. Cover dough with plastic and chill at least an hour, or until dough becomes slightly firm.

4. When ready to bake, preheat oven to 350°F. Line baking sheets with parchment paper (or spray with nonstick spray). Mix rolling sugar ingredients in a small bowl.

5. Remove cookie dough from refrigerator. Use a medium cookie scoop (1 1/2 Tablespoons) or a large spoon to scoop out dough and roll into balls. Use your hands to roll the balls in the cinnamon sugar and make sure they’re coated really well. Place 2 inches apart on the prepared baking sheets. Use a glass with a nice, flat bottom to dip in sugar and flatten the balls.

6. Bake at 350°F. for 10 to 14 minutes, or until they are slightly firm to the touch. Let cool on baking sheets for 5 minutes or so, then remove them to a wire rack to cool completely.

These cookies are just slightly cakey and don’t have a strong pumpkin flavor if that’s what you are looking for, but I think it’s a nice addition.

Tips:

*Store in an airtight container. These cookies freeze well too. Place them in freezer zip bag and remove from freezer when the craving hits.

*For my high altitude friends: For preparation at 11,500 feet, I used 4 cups of flour, 3/4 teas. salt, a little less than one cup pumpkin puree (zapallo), and two eggs. Decrease the baking powder to 1 teaspoon and you can also throw in just a pinch of baking soda if you’d like. I also used raw sugar (azucar rubia) because we prefer that at our house over white sugar. You’ll want to decrease that by a couple of tablespoons as well (no matter what kind of sugar you use). They turned out perfect!

Brazilian Beef Stroganoff

• 1 10-oz. package fresh sliced mushrooms • 2-2.5 lbs. roast beef (cut to 2″ stir fry strips) • 1 large onion, chopped • 2 rounded tsp fresh minced garlic • 1 cube beef bouillon • 3 14-oz. cans tomato sauce • 1 Tbsp mustard • 3-4 cans table cream (crema de leche-found in the Latin Foods section of grocery stores) • salt and pepper to taste • 1 can shoestring potatoes

Brown mushrooms in butter and set aside. Brown meat with garlic & onions in butter, seasoning with salt & pepper. Place browned meat, onion, mushrooms, buillion cube, tomato sauce, and mustard in a crock pot and cook until tender.

When meat is ready, stir in cream. If more sauce is needed, stir in one more can of cream. The sauce should be pink or light orange in color. Serve over rice & sprinkle shoestring potatoes on top.

September Update

I really had wanted to post an update sooner than this, but August ended up being a pretty busy month. A lot of you know that I have an Etsy shop (see righthand sidebar for a link), and I’ve been working on updating my designs and that’s been keeping me pretty busy in my free time here lately. It’s been a fun hobby for me that I would love to see turn into more of a real part-time job one day. I started it just to kind of keep my hand in the design world, but I’ve really enjoyed it. I’ve actually gotten to work with a lot of people from different parts of the US and different parts of the world that I probably would have never been able to otherwise. Jen, Charla, and I traveled to Urubamba, a nearby city in the sacred valley, for a little girls’ retreat of sorts a few weeks ago. Mainly we went for some relaxation and renewal, and it was a really nice break for a few days. The guys stayed home and kept the kids, and they did great with their dads, which we all expected. It was the first time I’ve ever been away from Cole for more than a few hours, and I’m thankful that Barton was able to keep him because of course I felt much better being able to leave him with his dad. Our work here continues to go well, and yesterday we had another Bible student put on Christ in baptism. Her name is Margie and she is actually from the U.S. and was working here in Cusco doing some volunteer work for several months. She was near the end of her visit, and had been studying with Gary, so she decided now was the time to give her life to Christ. From here she will travel on to Bolivia to work there for a while, and eventually will travel back to her home in Washington, D.C. Please pray for her as she begins her new life in Christ and that she will find a good congregation of Christians to work with when she returns home.

Cole turned 2 1/2 years old yesterday! He has really grown up a lot in the past few months. He’s still shy, but is becoming more social, and is constantly talking about the people we see on a daily basis as well as his family back home. When we pray, he mentions all of our teammates by name, and also all of his cousins, grandparents, and aunts and uncles. He makes sure that we don’t forget anyone! He and the other kids on the team are starting to play together more and interact more as they get older, and lately he and Brody are really becoming best buds. Brody just turned 2, so he is just about 6 months younger than Cole. Cole still sleeps well at night, and takes a decent nap most days, but I’ve noticed that if I don’t get him down before the late afternoon, he will almost always refuse to nap. So that’s tough when we have to do stuff in the afternoons because he’s pretty cranky by suppertime. He loves to read books of all sorts, and a lot of times he pulls out old photo albums and wants us to “read it”, so we tell him what’s going on in each of the pictures. He’s talking all the time now, and his little vocabulary has really taken off in the past few months. He’s forming sentences pretty well, and he’s starting to speak a little more Spanish as well. On a regular basis, he says, “Hola”, “Chau”, “Gracias”, “Casaca” (jacket) and “De frente” (giving directions to cab drivers!). He will repeat (or try to repeat) a lot of other Spanish phrases when we ask him to, and he understands most commands and a lot of other vocabulary in Spanish. He is really fascinated with learning his numbers and colors right now, and a lot of times he prefers to count in Spanish rather than English. One thing that amazes me with his numbers is that he recognizes numbers when he sees them written in books. The other day he  even picked up a 5 soles (the currency here) coin and handed it to me and said, “Cinco”. Santa Claus and Christmas are two big things with him right now, and he has a Santa hat from his first Christmas (that is way too small!) that he somehow found and dug out the other day, and now whenever he catches sight of it, he insists on wearing it all day! He wants to read The Night Before Christmas and The Polar Express most nights for his bedtime stories, and now when Barton is shaving in the morning, Cole asks to have shaving cream put on his face so he can be (in his words) “Santa Cole”! He also is really in love with his shoes, and one of his favorite activities is taking them all out of his drawer and lining them up in a (very) straight line! He definitely gets his organization skills from Barton and not from me! The other day he woke up from his nap early screaming (I think he had a nightmare), and he kept asking for “shoes”. I tried rocking him back to sleep, but the only thing that would calm him down were his new pair of shoes! I finally gave in and handed them to him, and he pointed to his bed and snuggled them and went right back to sleep! He is still not a huge TV watcher, but in the mornings while we eat breakfast we put on one of his shows and he will watch it pretty well then. He still likes Elmo and Sesame Street, but his new favorite is a British cartoon called Pingu about a little penguin. We are able to watch it through our Roku player (which is amazing! especially when you are a missionary and miss American TV!).

I can’t believe it’s already September! Our fall campaign is just a month away now, so we are busy making preparations for it. It’s a little bit of an unconventional idea, but what we’re going to do is have a big carnival at our building, and at the same time do a parenting seminar in the back classrooms so that we can hopefully draw in a lot of new families to the church. I’m really excited about it, and hopefully we’ll make a lot of new contacts from it. Barton and I celebrate our 7th wedding anniversary this weekend, and we were able to go out last night to our favorite restaurant on a date. We had a great time and it was nice to go out without a two year old for once!

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Arawara and Ccochawasi

The names above are of two pueblos we have visited recently in the Cusco region. The last week of July, our friend Melchora invited us to the pueblo where she grew up, about 2 hours outside of Cusco. Her family still owns land there, and until recently, her parents still lived on that land. The whole team went along, as well as the 8 English teachers, who were finishing up their 6 weeks with us. We rented a big bus, and at times it was more than a little frightening trying to get it up some of the mountain roads! There were several times most of the passengers had to get out to lessen the load, and once they even had to push–and this was a nice bus with a seemingly powerful engine! I guess the dirt roads in the countryside of Peru don’t see a ton of traffic! But we were able to see a beautiful part of Peru that has been almost untouched by many conventions of civilization as we know it. The people there live without electricity, although from some signs we saw it looked like the government was hoping to install electricity in that area in the near future. There were no toilets, and the food they eat is gathered from their gardens or killed from their livestock, and cooked over a homemade stove or oven. The homes are actually a series of mud-brick buildings with a simple stone fence around them to mark the property lines. There are lots of herbs and medicinal plants growing on these hills, and the people who live there have a vast knowledge of their uses. Melchora and her mother prepared some chamomile tea for us, with the chamomile freshly picked from their garden. It was really good! I am a huge herbal tea fan, so I brought along a bag so that I could bring some herbs back with me for tea. Melchora’s father and younger siblings helped build a simple oven out of mud bricks to cook a popular dish, huatia, which is a specific kind of potato that is smoked in this type of oven. The dug up some of the bricks with a pick ax, then arranged them in an arc and built a fire underneath. Afterwards, they added the potatoes and smothered the oven with dirt while the potatoes cooked. When they took them out, they were soft and had a really delicious smoked taste to them. I’m not sure if they even added any seasoning, but they tasted really good. We also were able to try guinea pig for the first time since arriving in Peru, and it was surprisingly good! The guinea pigs were killed that day (some of the group watched but I went nowhere near the kitchen for that part)! I think I liked it a little better because I was expecting them to serve it with the head on and the little feet sticking up (which is what we’ve seen most of the time), but luckily it was headless and footless and covered in a delicious red sauce so you almost didn’t know what you were eating if you didn’t think too much about it! They also had a really delicious sauce made out of peanuts, Andean mint, peppers, and some other spices and it was really good, too. It was a little spicy, so it was served on the side. The rest of the day was spent exploring the nearby mountains and fields and just relaxing and having some good conversations with Melchora’s family (although her mom only spoke Quechua so we couldn’t talk much with her) and with the campaigners. We saw a lot of livestock and as you can see by the photos below, the scenery was absolutely breathtaking, even in the winter where everything was dry and brown. I can’t even imagine how pretty it would be during rainy season! I also can’t imagine going up that dirt road in a bus again during rainy season!

I also wanted to write about a little day trip we took last Friday with the kids to Ccochawasi. It’s a little pueblo just outside of Cusco, on the way to the town of Pisac, a nearby town in the Sacred Valley where we’ve had several team retreats. There is an animal sanctuary there, and it’s free so that was a big bonus. It’s really well done, and another thing I liked about it was that many of the animals there were rescued. There’s a tiny zoo at the main university in Cusco, but I think this is really the closest thing to a zoo any of our kids have seen in Cusco. We saw Andean caribou (they were like grey deer and they were so sweet!), macaws, parrots, llamas, alpacas, coatis, condors, horses, pumas, hawks, and a Peruvian bobcat. All of the animals there are native to Peru, and you can touch many of them (not the dangerous ones like the pumas or the bobcat!) so it was also kind of like a little petting zoo. The kids all seemed to really enjoy the day, and it was a nice break from city life for a day. We chose last week to go because Barton and Matt were gone for several days to Lima. They went to get the paperwork done for their Brazilian visas because they’re planning to go to Brazil in October for a missionary men’s conference. They brought Charla and me back lots of goodies from Lima that we can’t get here in Cusco, including tons of cheddar cheese and even a package of blueberries! I’m guessing the blueberries must be imported from somewhere else, because we can get nearly any other fruit here in Cusco. I’ve been on a smoothie kick lately, so I added the blueberries in with some raspberry juice (which we can get here although I’ve never seen raspberries!), frozen strawberries, and milk and it was so yummy! Strawberries are really big and ripe here right now, so I’ve been buying extra and freezing them so I can enjoy them for a few months longer.

We had a great month for our church in July, and so far August is proving to be a wonderful month as well! We had to say goodbye to our wonderful group of campaigners (although one is still here with us for a little longer), but we’re still seeing visitors as a result of their efforts. Our midweek Bible studies that we’ve been having in different home around Cusco have been going really well since their start last month and it’s been encouraging to see our members and visitors excited about participating in these group studies. Also, yesterday we were blessed to see two more men decide to put on Christ in baptism! Please pray for Luis and Carlos as they begin their new walk with Christ!

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