Family Get Away!

This week our family headed out to camp, an hour south of Trujillo. We enjoyed the time together with no telephone or doorbell. We had fun playing games together, working together and grilling out.

David and Benjamin hiked up a mountain and got some good pictures of camp from up there.

Even in Peru we have beautiful rainbows!

Silly time...

Working at pulling up weeds.

Game time

Ninth Anniversary of Iglesia Bautista Victoria

Pianist Grandma

Our choir

Deacons and Pastores praying for the church

The cakes were beautiful!

The special speaker

Pastor Grandpa :)

Pastor Daddy

Rebekah's Quinceañero (15th birthday celebration)

Here is a slide presentation of the celebration...they aren't quite organized but some of you are anxious to see the pictures. Let me know if you can't view them. For the world this time is when the girl goes from being a child to being a teenager/young adult. It is quite the worldly activity. We have modified it to being a Christ centered activity that includes a promise of purity on the part of the young lady.

Grandma's Birthday

First the silly pictures:

When Caleb sees the camera this is what he always does

Silly grandparents!

Uncle David smiling like Caleb

The oldest and younest (and Caleb) with their mom.

All the grandchildren here in Peru

Caleb helps Grandma blow out her candle

The birthday girl!

Happy Birthday, David!

The big cake complete with trick candles.

Pastor David modeling his new suit that was a gift from the church.

Birthday lunch. The Peruvian man next to Martha is a guy David grew up with here in Peru.
He is a member of our church.

My Trumpeteers

Last night David and Benjamin played a trumpet duet at the seminary's music night as part of the anniversary. It was nice.

Praise!

Many of you know of and have been praying about our issues with Rebekah's medical bills. Our insurance company had refused to pay for Rebekah's January surgery saying that it was cosmetic and not covered in our plan. Needless to say we were shocked. Cosmetic? Anyway, Rebekah's surgeon wrote a letter to the company explaining what he did and why. Early in July all this information went back to the medical evaluation committee. Rebekah has been saddened over the fact that we may have to pay a large amount of money (somehow or another). She is a young lady that is very careful with her money and it is difficult for her to just spend it. She didn't want us to have to spend money either. She also is aware that God allows all this to happen and we tried not to talk about the matter too much in her presence. Any way...today we received an email from the insurance company stating that they were paying all but $80 of the $14,900+ we owed to the hospital in Indianapolis! At our house there was some serious shouting goin' on! Rebekah is thrilled and once again we see God's love and care for us. Thank you for praying with us in this matter. What a great God we serve. Of course, He would still be a great God even if He didn't answer our prayers in this way!

Are You Ready for Some Football?

Last night we had our BMM potluck for Trujillo and Chimbote. We enjoyed celebrating the October birthdays (Natalia, Steve and David). Caleb wanted to be on Uncle David's lap so he is in the picture too. He recently learned how to blow out candles so we had to work quick! He blew out Uncle David's before we could get the other 2 lit :) After supper we watched the Vikings - Packers game. Everyone was cheering for Minnesota except for Jacob. Yes, he is our cheese head! It was an enjoyable evening. The cousins enjoyed being together and watching a few episodes of Gilligan's Island.

Update

I am sorry I haven't updated the blog in a while. I guess everything is just the same ol' thing. That is good, I guess, meaning we have had a routine. This week David and I traveled to Lima to begin working on getting our visas. If you recall, we lost our visas during our furlough due to a change in the immigration laws. The new law states that we cannot be out of the country more than 6 months or lose our visas, so we lost them. We had considered traveling to Peru in January for a couple of days just to say we had been in the country but that would have been, literally, thousands of dollars. While it will cost us a few hundred to get new visas and carnets for all 6 of us that is much cheaper. So, David and I traveled to Lima by bus on Tuesday afternoon, spent 1/2 hour at interpol (international FBI), had our fingerprints taken 18 times (I am not joking), our teeth checked (for future identification if necessary) and our mug shots taken. All this now goes to the FBI in the USA and when they clear us then we move on to the next step of actually receiving our visas and being able to get our carnets. The children don't need to pass for all of this since they are too young to be criminals :) Hopefully at the end of November all 6 of us will go to Lima for the last step. This last step usually requires several hours of waiting and waiting and waiting. The children are dreading it, they remember the last time! We will take a sack lunch, books, and games just in case. David spoke at a church on the other side of Lima Wednesday night. Since it was rush hour (why do they call it that?) it took us an 1 1/2 of bumper to bumper (literally) traffic. So glad I took some dramamine before that trip. The same route only took us 30 minutes to get home! Thursday we spent a little while at Fetzer (MK school through which we homeschool) then headed back to the bus station. We arrived home last evening at 10 PM. The children enjoyed 2 great days in Chimbote with their cousins, Uncle Steve and Aunt Molly. Grandpa and Grandma Stilwell joined them on Thursday. They traveled home, by bus, last evening arriving 10 minutes after we did. Thanks Stan and Ruth for housing us in Lima!

The Stilwell Family at Victory Baptist Church

Abigail makes dessert

Aren't these cute? Mom, they came from one of those dessert cookbooks that you gave me for Christmas.

Missionary Conference at Victory Baptist

Our church just finished their annual missionary conference, it was an awesome weekend!

The waiting line for the...
the food on the table

Our missionary families

Kangaroos

No, we are not in Australia, although that would be awesome!!

Instead our children are the kangaroos...for the all churches olympics Abigail and Ben won first place in their age groups. Jacob got 3rd place. Ben really had to work for his 1st place, he had to jump several times against a good friend of his. Jacob also had to jump several times for his 3rd place status. It is neat to see them participate. Rebekah ran for our church in her age group. She got 3rd place.

Jacob's Birthday

See if you can guess the theme of his birthday this year. I give you one guess....

Did you figure it out?

Beads and Books

Some school pictures...

Benjamin 11th grader

Rebekah 10th grade

Jacob 5th grader

Abigail 8th grader

The Peru girl cousins enjoyed spending a morning together. They had a jewelry making party.

First Sunday Back at Victory

Ben with one of the young ladies from church

Delcious potluck of peruvian food

Tons of people, including new faces to us, at the potluck

We made it!

Thursday at noon we left the hotel, arrived at the airport and found out that our check-in bags arrived in Lima several days before we did. We hoped they were still there and unopened (they were). At 3 PM they announced our boarding would be delayed until around 6 PM, we started laughing...so many delays, missed flights, etc...what would be next. At 5 PM we began boarding, at 6 PM we actually took off. Can you say excited? The flight was awesome with free headphones to use the personal movie/game screens at our seats. The children even played Battleship against each other (all my men were in row 17, us ladies were in row 8). We landed in Lima at 12:30 AM, flew through immigrations and picked up all of our bags. We now had 26 bags in our possession (carry ons and check ins). Off to the national airline counter to recheck in the checkins. We found out that now they allow 2 bags per person since we came off an international flight, woohoo, we only had to pay for the 2 extra bags!!! What a blessing. By 2:30 we had had some chicken and were waiting at our gate for our flight to Trujillo. Jacob slept through most of the wait. By 5 AM we were on our plane flying to Trujillo. It was a blessing to get home. Several of our youth group members were at our home cooking us a breakfast of pancakes and fruit salad. Too bad we had eaten on the flights and in the airport, we weren't too hungry. It is great to be home, today we saw many of our friends and church members, lots of huggin' is going on today. Several of our bags are unpacked, the rest will wait until next week. David is at the youth meeting right now, having a great reunion I am sure. Thanks to everyone for your diligent prayers for us.

Happy people waiting in the Lima airport for the last leg of our journey.

Jacob sacked out in the airport

Beautiful sunrise over the ocean on our flight to Trujillo
Our pickup packed with some of our bags

Dad's pickup with more of our stuff

Some of those who greeted us at home with a breakfast