The kids’ Bible class in home churches on the Peruvian mission field looks very different from our homeland experiences. It is often much more chaotic and informal with a mixture of lighter and darker faces and the English and Spanish languages. However, the same principle remains: instilling in the children of our church the foundation of faith.
On the 14th of January, we officially celebrated our first year in Arequipa. What a journey we have been on and it’s only the beginning! While we do have mixed emotions about this past year—saying all those good byes along with the challenges before us for this next year—we are confident in God’s provision.
Happy New Year! In this special edition of the Team Arequipa newsletter we want to suggest 15 of our favorite books and tell you why we like them. In this day and age of fast information—140-character tweets and BuzzFeed lists designed to be quickly consumed and discarded—we believe the discipline of reading a book from cover to cover is important. In Peru we see the devastating impact of poor literacy and the lack of a culture of reading (which is why CUDA is working with Peruvian students, parents, and teachers to create a love for reading). Reading empowers. Literacy affects all areas of a society. Books provide opportunities for learning, whether you agree or disagree with the author's conclusions. We hope you'll pick a book or two (or fifteen!) from this list and resolve along with us to read more this new year.
We’ve been talking for months about all the changes surrounding our team and our families. However, we shouldn't overlook the effect that it is having on our church members as they see the “founding members” moving away and find themselves in relationship with new missionaries, wondering what is going to be left when the dust settles. To help with the transition we have been trying to build bridges between the new missionaries and church members.
As I sat in our planning meeting the other day, it dawned on me that my new job as a volunteer with CUDA is to spend all of my time doing, in my opinion, the best part of these doctors’ jobs because they don’t have time. I couldn’t help but feel downright giddy about the prospect. What a gift from God!
The time has come. This is my last Team Arequipa newsletter article. I was listening to “I’ll Be Home For Christmas” the other day while washing dishes. The weirdest feeling came over me. I remember bawling through that song our first Christmas here, because I missed my home and family so much. I know that many of my new teammates will be experiencing this same emotion this Christmas. But this seventh Christmas in Perú, the sentiment is different. Arequipa has become our home, and we are about to say goodbye to all things familiar to us here. The song causes me to bawl my eyes out but not in the same way.
Another one of the changes and a part of our transition into life lived here in Arequipa is forming new traditions. This is somewhat difficult to do especially when it’s the holiday season and you are missing family and special time spent with them each year around this time. Sarah, my wife grew up in Italy and I grew up in the United States and now we live in Peru. There are a lot of traditions, especially holiday traditions, to mix into the pot. We genuinely want to learn and make Peruvian traditions important and meaningful to us, but also not forgetting some of our own important ones from Italy and the US.
CUDA has had a language school for a while now, but a little over a month ago added a homestay option. What the homestay option offers is full language and culture immersion by living with a Peruvian family. This is a great option for extra language learning beyond what happens in the classroom and gives the opportunity to use Spanish in a real context, every day.
Jeremy and I moved to Peru over a month ago knowing we would be spending our first several months in language school full time, which is four hours a day, one-on-one with a Peruvian language instructor. However, we also knew that we wanted to do a homestay with a Peruvian family to reinforce what we had learned that day and to make us have to use Spanish outside of class. So, when CUDA started offering the homestay option we signed up right away.
