So much has happened this first half of the year that it’s hard to know where to start. We continue to be deeply thankful for life and work right here where we are. We have found good rhythms of family life and ministry.
The kids have settled into their new school. It’s been a huge challenge for them that they’ve responded to incredibly well, taking steps to learn French (most of their classes are in French, the rest in Spanish, except for English class) and make new friends. Adileen is doing 5th grade math in French when at the beginning of the school year (March) she could barely count to 20 in French. So we’re proud of them. Kinney is playing soccer and happy with World Cup fever.
HULA 2026 was amazing. We had an absolutely incredible group of 34 students and the huge blessing of working with our visiting faculty and missionaries in Peru, Miguel and Ann Onofre. This group in particular really bought into the cultural practice of greeting locals and our friends, neighbors, and church members noticed and loved the relationship building with them. As always, it’s a huge blessing to get to visit the churches my friends are a part of in both Buenos Aires and Lima during HULA.
This year at end of HULA we closed up the hotel that we use as a campus, finished grading and accounting, and I immediately transitioned into launching a course I was invited to teach for Harding School of Theology—Global Evangelism. The syllabus is linked here if you’re interested to see what I had the students read and how we built out the assignments. I also wrote a paper that I would eventually present at the Christian Scholars Conference in Pepperdine on the impact of HULA on our Peruvian and Venezuelan friends in terms of their own spiritual formation. The paper I presented was part of a Spanish language session so I wrote it in Spanish, but I’ve shared it here in English if you’re interested.
We got to take the kids to Italy for the first time for a week of their vacation at the end of May to celebrate my brother’s birthday. It was a surprise trip for the kids (they knew we were flying somewhere on our 11-hour flight, just didn’t know where). On our way back to Peru we got to spend the day with our dear friends and former teammates/HULA co-workers Debora and Sira Rodrigo in Madrid which was incredibly special. And as soon as we got back from Europe I flew out to Pepperdine for the conference and then on to Searcy to teach 35 hours’ worth of Global Evangelism.
Katie’s been in Arequipa all June and July, and I’ve been back since June 13th. We’ve been doing life and work, which means helping mentor the CUDA leadership spiritually through some significant challenges with Living Libraries, dreaming up and planning for new directions for CUDA Community Development, participating in life and service with our church, and getting to know more families as we interact with our kids’ friends and their families. Our dear friends Alexy and Solangel and their family recently showed us what followers of Jesus do when tragedy strikes. That’s the subject of the next article.
