We moved! Our big news from the last few weeks is that we moved to a new neighborhood in the district of Sachaca. October was a whirlwind, and on the 31st, the same day that our kids got to trick-or-treat for the first time ever, we moved a couple miles away from where we’ve been for the last 8.5 years.
Back in August we started pursuing the possibility of purchasing a small lot of land in El Molle that we could build on. The owners had put up a “For Sale” sign, but after a couple weeks of talking with them, they disappeared—just completely stopped answering the phone. In the meantime, we launched the Alpha Marriage Course with another couple’s church, which gave Katie and me the chance once again to have some specific, intentional conversations about our home lives (Side note: do something like that for your marriage!). From that I finally got the sense that we needed a change. We’ve loved our neighborhood, but haven’t felt “at home” in the actual home we’ve been in for a long time.
Since we could no longer get in touch with the folks who owned the lot we wanted to buy, we decided to give a week of prayerful phone-calling (wherein we prayed together as a couple, and then made the phone call), to give us peace to move on if they never answered. And they never answered.
But we got an answer to prayer in an unexpected way: a German friend of mine, with his Peruvian wife, told us during that they would be starting to rent their home in October, because in December they’re moving to Germany after 30 years of work in Peru. And we accepted! We got kitchen cabinets built and moved in just in time to host Jake and Jaclyn Blair (our former teammates) for a 4-day visit. We hosted the church and friends, a group of about 40 people, three days after moving in. For the first time in our 9 years in Arequipa, we have a small backyard! And just outside our front door is a big park that Kinney is already loving playing soccer in. It’s two miles (or 15 speed bumps) away from El Molle and our community there, and only a 2-minute drive or 10-minute walk from our kids’ school.
We’re deeply thankful for the opportunity to move here and have all sorts of feelings, mostly excitement and thankfulness, though also some mourning of moving further away from the people that have been our family and community for so many years. I realized through this process that, before El Molle, I had never before lived in one place for 8 years, so this is significant for me on a personal level. We’re deeply thankful for El Molle, and also thankful for our new home.
The month and a half we’ve been here so far have been full of affirmation that we made the right decision, and I ask for your prayers as we start to share life and faith in a new part of the city.
