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                                                                       Nauta, Peru – from the Marañon River

November 2019

Hi friends,

October has been a busy month.  Like we mentioned last newsletter, we finished school around the middle of the month. Because doors closed for us to serve at the children’s home in the jungle, and because we were asked to help serve with Dennis and Ruth Lacoursiere, we returned to Iquitos/Nauta area to collect and disperse of our personal things there.

We enjoyed seeing the kids at the children’s home as we packed our stuff.  We also spent time with other missionary friends in Nauta and in Iquitos.  While in Iquitos, Denver and I visited Cleser and Jolita and family. Cleser helped me several months on the chicken project. When their youngest son was born last November, they named him “Denver” also.

As we close this chapter of our work in Peru we reflected on the many good things that happened:

• Our family learned another culture first hand
• We made many new friends both Peruvian and from other missions
• My goal of helping the chicken project be successful was realized and I was able to create an instruction guide for this project
• We learned many valuable lessons in relating to others from a different culture

We are looking forward to serving with Dennis and Ruth Lacoursiere, missionaries from Canada.  They are part of Christians in Action Missions International and have been serving in Peru for 40+ years.  We are technically not joining Christians in Action Missions International but will serve alongside of Dennis and Ruth, keeping the same connections that we have with Good News Fellowship in Alabama, our previous sending church group.  We are excited to join the leadership team both at the main church, and also at the outreach church in Jose Olaya, a community on the outskirts of Arequipa.  During the last several months the small church at Jose Olaya has almost doubled.  It is exciting to see this happening even though we had little to do with its sudden growth.  As always, it is God that gives the increase.

Please keep us in your prayers as we seek to follow God’s leading.

Blessings,

Stan Schrock

Dear friends,

While you all are enjoying fall weather, we’re enjoying the warmth of spring.  The flowers are prettier, the birds are singing their spring songs and we can open the windows again!

We are enjoying life here in Arequipa.  As most of you know we had been planning on going back to the jungle.  However, little by little we saw evidence of doors closing and we were beginning to wonder what we were suppose to do.  Then we were approached about staying and helping with some of the churches in Arequipa. After a lot of praying and encouragement from others we feel called to stay.  Now that our decision has been made, we are excited about all the possibilities here.

Stan and I finished school last week.  Denver finished 2 weeks ago. Our farewell party was on Friday and we all had to give a speech in Spanish of course. We are looking forward to having more time to spend with the work here.

The retired folks from the local church meet in the basement every other Wednesday afternoon. I help make refreshments for this meeting as needed. To say the least, I really enjoy it here.  My talents are being utilized more than I would have thought possible.

Denver is involved with the worship team, youth ministry, and plays fútbol with some local friends.  Occasionally the music team meets at our house for practice. We always enjoy that.

As some of you know I led the devotional at the ladies Bible Study 2 weeks ago.  My practice teacher helped me put it together and was a huge encouragement in the whole process.  My grammar teacher even showed up at the Bible Study to support me. Bless her!

We have some dear Venezuelan friends here.  Gabriella lives in Dennis and Ruth Lacoursiere’s apartment below us.  For the last several months she has been trying to get her visa so she can join her husband in Chile.  Because of the heavy influx of Venezuelans the immigration laws keep changing, creating all sorts of frustrations for her.  She only has a part-time job because she is not planning on staying here permanently. On the weekends she pours herself into the church work.  She has an amazing attitude and has become like family to us. Please pray for her.

Efrein and Mariel are a young, Venezuelan couple who also love the Lord.  Mariel has a job but Efrein doesn’t because Peruvians are slow to trust Venezuelan men.  Please pray for them as well.

There are so many needs here!  There is a great need for discipleship here as well as scriptural teaching.  We have been blessed to meet up with various Peruvians who are rooted and grounded in their faith but many are not.  We look forward to helping with this need.

Thank you for your prayers.

Ruth Schrock

August 2019

Dear friends,

August is the start of “spring” and is the windiest month of the year.  So for kid’s club, we had kite day. We posted notices and invited the kids to come to the park one Saturday afternoon for several hours.  Afterward we gathered them together and shared the gospel story using colors and kites.  Then they all trooped to the church for hotdogs.

Tragedy has struck a local family.  Victor and Alimar Anchante and their family have recently started coming to church.  He is a security guard at a local business.  The 3^rd week in August a large 1 ton steel door fell on him injuring his back and feet.  Since it happened at work the business should pay for it but it has been reluctant to do so.  He finally had a back operation last week and foot operation on Saturday.  The doctors are telling him it will be at least 3 months before he can walk and longer to go back to work.  So now they are without income. Alimar needs to care for Victor and her kids so she can’t work either.  Please pray for them and this situation.

There has been some political unrest here this last month.  The president of Peru signed an agreement with Southern Copper Corp, a mining company, to open a new mine at Tia Maria in the Arequipa region. The local residents fear pollution and water loss and have been fighting this for over 10 years.  This has sparked protests at various times in Arequipa.  Last week Denver and I sat with Alimar during Victor’s back operation.  When we left the hospital that evening there were different demonstrations happening in various parts of the city.  The public bus driver tried to avoid them the best he could which meant taking narrow back streets, some of them we got hung up on the corners between the curbs, signs, and buildings because they were so narrow.  It took us almost 2 hours to get home.  Fortunately, for the most part, the demonstrations have not been violent.

It seems that God has closed the doors for us to return to the jungle, at least for the time being.  We have been amazed at how God has moved and is opening doors for us to serve here in Arequipa.  There are so many needs here also.  We have about 4 weeks of language school left and then we plan to engage more with ministries here.  Please continue to pray for us.  We will keep you posted on further developments.

Thank you so much for your prayers.

Stan, Ruth and Denver

Dear friend,

You are a blessing to us. We have felt your prayers this past month. Here are some highlights:

We had kids club at Jose Olaya, the church outreach 6 kilometers north of our house. Peru celebrated Independence Day July 28 so the theme was on how to be a good Peruvian citizen and how to be a good heavenly citizen.  I introduced the corn hole game and also made a toss game with a map of Peru painted on a board with 4 major cities as goals.  Both games were big hits with the kids.  Ruth helped with crafts and Denver helped manage the games.

Kid’s Club – a kids ministry at Jose Olaya.

Kid’s Club – a kids ministry at Jose Olaya.

Kid’s Club – a kids ministry at Jose Olaya.

Dennis and Ruthie Lacoursiere, the missionary couple that lives in the apartment below us, have returned to Canada to visit their children and grandchildren.  They will be gone for 2 ½ months.  We are taking care of their house and their 2 dogs while they are gone.  Gabriela, a lady from Venezuela is living in their apartment, at least for a while.  She and her husband are immigrants from Venezuela. He is already in Chile and has a job there.  She is working on here paperwork so she can join him there.

We had off from school for a week holiday for Independence Day so Friday we hung out with Efrein and Mariel, another immigrant couple from Venezuela. It was great hearing their story of coming to Peru.  Life for Venezuelans is difficult here because most Peruvians believe that they (the Venezuelans) are associated with crime and that they are taking away jobs from the Peruvians.  To date almost 400,000 Venezuelans have been given temporary residence permits in Peru.

Denver has almost completed school.  He is dropping grammar but keeping practice class for now.  We are looking for something for him to occupy his time while Ruth and I continue Spanish School.

These are highlights of our month of July.  Thanks for your interest and your prayers.

Stan

Dear friends,

We were in the states for the month of May and the first half of June, returning to Peru on June 14^th. Our trip was pretty uneventful except that it was long. From the time we left my brother’s house in Phoenix to drive to the airport until we arrived at our apartment in Arequipa was 29 hours. I was a little worried about Ruth’s ticket from LA to Lima, Peru because she was on a separate booking and we had spent 4 hours in Lima trying to get it solved when coming to the states in May.   Fortunately, there was not a problem, not even lost luggage.

One of the most humbling things that has happened in my life is learning another language. My Spanish is not good yet and it caused a little frustration with immigration in Lima.  I was not worried because I had Denver along and he hears and speaks it very well.  But if was humbling when the immigration officer seemed upset about the fact that I had a residence card but couldn’t speak the language.  Then when Denver went through she was super nice and dismissed him with the informal goodbye of “chao”!

Our classes at ABC Spanish School are split up except for Ruth and I still have one class together every day.  The individual tutoring is very nice, but it means that we are forced to speak Spanish more because we can’t rely on our co-student to answer when we don’t know how to say it.  One day last week instead of Practice Class I went with my teacher to a market where they sell only tools.  I had to talk with the vendors about different tools and prices, etc.  It was difficult especial to know that my teacher was standing right there and probably cringing at the mistakes.  But it was fun and it is part of the learning process.

We said goodbye at the ABC Language School to Ryan and Katie from the US.  Ryan has finished school and he and his wife are moving to Cusco.  Ryan told us when he came to Arequipa the only Spanish words he knew was “taco” and “enchilada”.  His last assignment at school was to give a speech to all of us classmates and teachers.  How cool and how encouraging to hear him speak perfect Spanish and to feel their excitement of moving on to their mission. It was a boost for us also.  To celebrate we had salteñas and soft drinks.  Ryan has a background in project management and will be using those skills in Cusco.  Katie is a doctor and will be working at a mission clinic there also.

These are highlights of our month of June.  Thanks for your interest and your prayers.

Stan

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.

We had a chance to go and see one of the world’s deepest canyons that is close by Arequipa called Colca Canyon.  A group from the Spanish Institute decided to hike it.  Our plans were to hike in one day spend the night at basic cabins and hike out the next morning.  Ruth decided that she did not want to try the hike because trail we planned to take descends around 3700 feet.

We met to leave at 2:30 am.  After 2 hours of collecting others who were taking the tour we left for the 4 hour drive to Colca Canyon.  Denver got sick right before we left but after bring up the previous night’s supper, he felt better and wanted to keep going.  We arrived around 7:30 and had a quick local breakfast of bread, coffee, and smoothie.  We drove another several hours stopping for 15 minutes at a look-out where the Andean Condor, the world’s largest flying bird, is often seen.  We saw several in the distance but none close by.

We continued to where the hikers were getting off.  Denver was feeling very rough by this time so he and I decided not to continue on the hike, but to return with the bus to Arequipa that evening.  The local antidote to nausea is to sniff rubbing alcohol so Denver was constantly sniffing it the whole trip back.  After dropping off the hikers we returned to the Condor lookout.  When we arrived, there were at least a dozen of them flying close by around the lookout.  Their wing span of more than 10 feet make their flight a spectacular sight!

On our drive back we stopped at different sites along the way.  The road winds along the canyon and the views are gorgeous.  We visited villages along the way.  The sides of the canyon have terraces that date back pre-1500 to the time of the Incas. The local people still farm these, some of the larger fields done by modern equipment but I saw plowing done with oxen on some of the smaller ones.  Only about 50% of these are farmed now because a lot of the rural people are migrating to the cities searching for a better life and better education.

Along the way we saw many sheep, alpacas, and lamas that open range graze in this desert.  Crossing the pass in the early morning was cold.  There was no heat in the bus and the windows iced over. Even though we are close to the equator it is still cold at 16,110 feet.  On our return trip it was warmer.  We stopped at the top and the view was incredible.  We also saw from a distance the volcano Sabancaya, one of Peru’s most active volcano erupt.

For me it was an incredible day – for Denver not so much.  We saw and experienced many things that the hikers did not get to experience. But we didn’t get to experience the hike either, including the sore muscles and blistered feet that they had the following week.