Time sure moves on rapidly. In the men’s group the other night some commented how time moves like a clock. I hadn’t thought of it that way before but I guess that works.

This newsletter report is mostly on things that happened this past January and February but one thing I would like to highlight from December that was VERY special to us was my brother Lamar and his son Delmar’s visit for the holidays. We had a great time, visiting Colca Canyon, the sillar quarry where a lot of the old city’s rock comes from and other places around Arequipa. They also got to experience a Peruvian Christmas.

We celebrated a church wedding at Jose Olaya also. Jonathan has been attending church for several years and Flor has been there since a little girl. They are a solid couple and we were blessed to be part of their special day with them. Ruth made the cakes and I drove the “get-a-way” car after the ceremony. We took them to a beautiful site nearby for photos before returning to the church for the reception.

January and February is our rainy season when we will get our 2-4 inches for the YEAR. It is not unusual to have mud and rock slides during this time, partly because of the unstable terrain and also because it is desert, there is no vegetation to slow the water down. You can click on this link to see a short video that was taken from a dash-cam of a rock slide.

This year there happened to be a mud slide right above where the drinking water is collected for the city and they had to shut off the water until the river cleared up enough to filter it again.

We found out something we didn’t know before. 90% of the population of Arequipa relies on 2 water treatment plants that get their water form this one source! And plan B is 50 water trucks for about 1 million people. Some places people waited in line all day to get water.

Fortunately the water was off only 3 days. I decided to install a water tank on the roof for emergency. So far this rainy season our water supply has been interrupted 3 times because of intense rains further up the mountain that contaminates the water supply to the point where it can’t be filtered.

The workshop has been busy with different projects – an order of stools, kitchen cabinets for the church, a media stand/cart for a different church, 3 in 1 exercise gym for toddlers, etc. The most rewarding has been a stander support for a special needs boy. Though it was ordered through another mission called Latin Link, I was blessed to be a small part of this boy and his family’s life by building this Stander.

We have had several new believers respond to the gospel in our church. It seems we have a lot of different people at different stages of discipleship and it is a challenge to find time that works for them and us to advance the discipleship classes. We hope to be able to have a baptism sometime within the next several months. Please pray for these new believers.

Blessings,

Stan & Ruth Schrock