Best Friends

Abigail and Areli are inseperable. The sad thing is that Areli's dad will graduate from the seminary in December and Areli will be moving away. I am sure tears will be shed.

Church at Home

Today is census day in Peru. Everyone, by law, is to stay at home until they have been counted. We were counted on Friday since we are living inside an institution but still, everything is closed. This will continue until 6PM, but even then public transportation will be difficult. Our church people decided to not even have a late evening service. We had church at home today. Benjamin was our song leader, Rebekah the pianist, Abigail the Sunday school teacher, David gave his testimony, I sang a special, the girls sang a special and Jacob preached the worship service message. It is awesome to see our children developing and using their talents for the Lord. Abigail also played a piano special.

Ladies of Victory

Yesterday we had our very first ladies meeting at Victory Baptist Church. The meeting went well with 16 ladies present. We had games, a testimony, object lesson, Bible study and a craft. All in 2 hours. We are studying Pearls from Proverbs so the theme and craft had to due with pearls. We all had a wonderful time and are anxious for the next meeting. We will be meeting once a month for now. They are excited about doing something special for Christmas.

Praises!!

Yesterday afternoon David went out to the Briceno house (Jack's parents) where he met with Fanny's nephew. Fanny is Jack's wife. Irvin is an 11 year old who was interested in hearing about how to be saved. Praise the Lord he was saved yesterday. We are rejoicing big time in this house, seeing how God is already using Jack's death in the lives of many. At least 100 people heard the salvation message on Friday night at the viewing and Saturday at the burial. Jack and Fanny's family members were in church on Sunday. All of Jack's immediate family is saved but none of Fanny's. David gave a strong salvation message at the end of his message on the Doctrine of Man and how God has marvelously created the human being.

Rejoice with us!

Jack

Rebekah and Abigail( carried the bride's train)
with Jack and Fanny at their wedding

Wednesday morning a young man in our church was killed in a car accident. He worked as a minerals engineer in one of the mines in southern Peru. He and several other company employees were on their way to Lima and then on to see their families. At 8:30 AM, a large truck with rolls of paper crossed the center line killing 9 of the men and injuring 14. Jack was only 26 years old and leaves behind a new wife. They had been married a year in June. His family also faithfully attends our church. David had the privilege of marrying them last year. Their names are Jack and Fanny Briceño.

As of right now his dad and brother are on their way to the city of Ica (where the accident took place) to bring the body back to Trujillo for the viewing and funeral. Since they don't embalm the body here, things have to go quickly. Ica is about 11 hours drive from here. They flew down, hopefully they can fly back with his body.

Here are our prayer requests:1. That God would be glorified through Jack's death. We know he is in the presence of his heavenly Father.
2. That the wife and family would be comforted.
3. That our church would rally around this couple and meet their needs. We are prepared to do that, but we would like this to draw us even closer together.
4. That David would have wisdom through all of this. His schedule, for the first time in months was open this week, the Lord knew he would need a lot of available time . Also this is his first time in a death situation like this. Since he married them, it is going to be harder. 5. That the unsaved world would see our hope, that one day we have the hope of seeing Jack again.

Tarma City

Now for the rest of the story...While in Tarma we were involved in many different activities. David preached every day on the radio covering the 4 rules of communication. He preached every night, taught at the leader's and men's meetings, gave the devotional at the baptismal service and taught 2 Sunday school hours. Kandie taught at the ladies' meeting and gave her testimony on the radio (one radio time was enough for me). We all (including the children) were involved in special music. Since it was so cold we purchased ponchos and 3 of the children also purchased the typical mountain hat called a "chuyo" (chooyo with a long o at the end). I personally wouldn't be caught dead in one. Benjamin was also in charge of the powerpoint for his dad since the church doesn't have a remote control for theirs. We are now wondering where our next adventure will be...the United States in July 2008!

To see more pictures of our Tarma trip, please check out this site:http://www.msnusers.com/StilwellsinPeru

Tarma trip

On Friday the 14th we, as a family, left for the mountain city of Tarma. The city is located at 10,000 feet above sea level. The children thought we were going to Lima on Friday and then on to Tarma, little did they know we had a few surprises planned to break up the trip. On Friday we ate lunch ate a ocean beach area 2 1/2 hours from home. The car speedometer quick working on this stretch of the trip, since our gas gauge was also out of order we used that to know when we needed gas, needless to say we made frequent stops for gas and rarely needed to fill up with more than 1/2 a tank. Anyway, we then headed to the city of Casma where we spent the night. Since it is farther inland it was warm and we were able to swim in their pool. Saturday we headed to Lima but stopped at a forest reserve along the way and hiked. Since it has been very foggy lately the mountains were very green. David said he had never seen it so green before. Sunday was also spent in the Lima area. Monday we headed towards Tarma having McDonalds for lunch. We arrived in the city of the flowers around 5:30. This trip took us over a 16,000 feet pass. We were up at the tops of the mountains, here we saw the snow peaked mountains, beautiful!

Mountains around Chancay, green!

16,000 feet pass. Cold and little oxygen.