Greetings,

Thank you for your prayer support this past year.  Many things have happened since we have gone to Peru.  This past year I worked with the chicken project at Mi Refugio.  We got 2 houses functioning, producing about 1000 birds per month.  Overall we averaged a 21% profit that went to help with children’s home cost.

We had encouragement from different teams that visited us this past year.  We had teams that visited us from different parts of the United States, Mexico, and even from Peru!

One mother brought her daughters and spent a whole afternoon working with the girls trying to get the lice problem under control.  In the jungle of Peru lice are not eradicated – only controlled.  Ruth would spend up to several days a week after they left working to keep it controlled.

Denver along with 2 other young Peruvian men took an evangelism class.  Their graduating assignment was that they had to preach a 20 minute sermon to a panel of 3 judges.  I had the privilege to be one of the judges.  I was impressed with the dedication of these 3 young men and their desire to follow God.  They are 17 years of age and younger.

The one thing that marks our lives are changes.  In January God open up doors for us to go to language school – something of which we were in dire need.  While we had learned enough to “get around town” the 15 months we were here, there was no way we could communicate our heart to those around us.  I thought we could pick up the language in 12 weeks of intense school.  After 10 weeks it was clear that packing a 6 month course into 3 months was impossible for us at our age.  So our plans are to do the unglamorous part of mission work and finish language school in Arequipa mid-June.

We returned to the states in May for another change in our lives – the graduation of our youngest son Denver.  This also means that Ruth “graduated” from teaching as well.  He plans on returning with us to Peru for the time being but he is thinking of pursuing mission aviation in the future.  Austin is still living with my parents in southern New Mexico and enjoying it.  It looks like he is settling in there.

We received word in February that our sending church of Byrneville Mennonite was going to close its doors.  Pastor Marvin Bender has accepted a pastoral position at a church in Iowa and is moving his family there. So they decided to close the doors since this left only a few people.

This is another change in our lives and also affects you as a donor because Byrneville received your donations for our mission work in Peru.  In checking out our options we have found a non-profit organization called Missionary Companion Ministries that will handle this for us. We discovered that it is quite common for an organization like MCM to handle the finances for missionaries.  We believe that their help with the financial part of our ministry in Peru will be a blessing to us and you as a giver.  Information on how you can partner with our ministry in Peru is in the box below.  Our ministry will come under Good News Fellowship and they will help fill our need of a spiritual covering.

When we have completed language school we plan to go back to the jungle area where we were.  Please join us in prayer that God would direct us to the best way that we can join Him in His work of reconciling the world to Himself.

Blessings,

Stan Schrock Family

P.S. Don’t forget to follow us on our blog at http://www.schrocks4christ.com.