A Peruvian Wedding

When Alfredo first told the team that he and his fiance, Judith, wanted us to attend their wedding, my overwhelming thought was “Wow!”. Now, I’ve been to lots of weddings in my life, but it has always been people I have known for a while and the invitation was not a surprise. However, this invitation meant more since this relationship is fairly new. Somehow in our few 
months here we have come to mean enough to this couple to be invited to a very important event in their lives, and we felt honored. 

ICDU Update: Kitchens, Libraries, and Nicknames

If frequency of mention in newsletters is an indication of importance, then you should be understanding how important to our work Alfredo has been and will continue to be. April has been a huge month for ICDU (www.icduperu.org) and most of the progress has been made thanks to Alfredo’s knowledge and expertise. For those who may not know, we have contracted Alfredo to help us launch our first development project. In reality he is doing much more than that. He is teaching us gringos how to enter into poor communities and communicate effectively and serve humbly.

An Update to Prayers

Our strategy contains a period of time devoted to felt-needs research, in order to let Arequipeños tell us what would best serve them. Based on this data, we plan to formulate an initial developmental program that attempts to meet one of those needs in a sustainable way. This means that we have to learn how to do legitimate urban research, which has its own learning curve. All in all, we have a very slow ramp up to a large-scale, labor-intensive project before we ever get to the actual first developmental project, which we will also have to learn to do as we go.

14 Peruvian Cultural Quirks

I thought it would be fun to share some “Peruvian Quirks” that I feel we have gotten used to in the past six months. If you are planning to visit, these are some things that will get on your last nerve or that you will find to be blatantly different from the U.S. I know that I have left so many things out, but here is a list I have tried to compile over the month... 

Great News!

As you know from our previous newsletter, March was to be a month of house hunting. With our leases expiring at our apartments, we decided it was the perfect time to look for more permanent housing in our target area. The good news is that both families have found a place to live. I’ll give the details a little later but first you need to hear how we found these places. 

A New Perspective: Diane Litton

After leaving home approximately 32 hours earlier, traveling on three planes, and staying up for 22+ hours straight, we arrived at our 4th airport expecting to be met by Kyle only to find a slightly larger welcoming committee. With Shaye on his shoulders holding a sign that said, “LITTON,” and Larissa by his side, all our travel weariness was eclipsed by pure joy as we embraced this family. This is why we came…and we’d do it all over again any chance we have. 

"Divine Contacts" Revisited

After our team’s first research trip to Arequipa I wrote an article about ‘Divine Contacts’ that had been made. So much has happened that I think this concept needs revisiting. Entering the “mission field” of Arequipa we felt very confident that we were supposed to be here. We had signs point to a ripening field for harvest in the city and we experienced God’s love and provision through our supporters in the states. Even still I think there has always been a few questions about how things would get started. We have our five year plan mapped out with reachable goals (with God’s help), so you can say we came prepared. A few signs of affirmation never hurt though. 

Above and Beyond

During our time with each of our sending churches, one of the tasks we undertook was to put together a mission support team. You may be thinking that must have been a little awkward, since the point is mostly to support…us. It’s natural enough that we need support, but putting it together ourselves is something else, partly because it’s hard to know what a support team should do and partly because it’s strange to ask people to be actively thinking about what we might need or even want. The short of it is that we were in a position, in terms of time and energy, to kick-start such a support system, which everyone agreed was beneficial for the longevity of our missionary service.