Well, we have a few prayer requests and updates, so I figured it's best just to write a quick blog letting all our prayer warriors following our journey know how to pray for us. Thank you so much for your prayers. It is an amazing and humbling thing to know that all around the world there are fellow believers praying for our family and the ministries we are part of here in South America. And honestly, it really is quite comforting for us to know that you all are going before the throne on our behalf.
First of all, we wanted to update you on the protestors/strike situation here that I wrote about in our previous blog. The protesters paused their protests/strike and met with government officials for negotiations. But they were not satisfied with the response of the government. The protest is over a copper mine about 2 or 3 hours from here that the people, mostly farmers do not want because of potential contamination of the water and destruction of their land and agriculture. They want the mine closed down, but right now it is only on pause. Since negotiations did not go as they had hoped, another strike, called a huelga, has been planned for next week, May 27 and 28, with the potential to continue indefinitely. For us, since we do not live in the main areas of the strike, this mainly means not really being able to go anywhere in the afternoons after school. What it means for Arequipans, especially police, in the strike areas is potential injury/death as the protests tend to be violent; businesses losing income on the strike days because they have to close their doors, often churches/ministries having to pause mid-week services/Bible studies/events, and kids and college students having to miss classes as they cancel school for safety(which of course kids don't mind, but school officials and teachers mind a lot). Pray for peace and a reasonable resolution to this conflict soon. Pray that the protests do not become violent and that they don't go on indefinately. Pray for safety for Arequipans and the police. By the way, Andrew is flying out to return to the states on May 27th, but he is leaving early in the morning, sufficient time before the strikes usually begin. This is a praise because once the protests begin in the afternoon, the road to the airport is usually blocked off and people are throwing rocks at cars.
That leads me to our next prayer request. Please pray for Andrew as he travels May 27th and 28th. And for us as we say goodbye. The other day, James said he didn't want Andrew to go because he loves Andrew and will miss him.
Next, GREAT NEWS!! IT'S TIME TO REAPPLY FOR OUR VISA!
The 6 months waiting period to reapply for our Colombia visa ended. And we found out that we could apply online for it. So, Chris applied yesterday. We hit some snags in paying for the visa application because the payment system was down, but we have some great contacts on the ground in Bogota who are working on getting it paid for us. Please pray that the payment goes through easily and rapidly and that the visa is approved quickly, Lord willing.
Finally, please continue to pray for us in our final months of language school. Right now, we plan to complete language school mid-July and head to Colombia. Pray that we can continue to expand our vocabulary and remember all we have learned about conjugating verbs and sentence structure. We have some great teachers and also some amazing friends from Colombia who are helping us learn and practice. God has been with us every step of the way and has put some amazing people in our lives here in Peru, and we feel blessed.
God bless you all. And please let us know how we can pray for you. The great thing about going to a Christian language school is that we learn Spanish needed for ministry. I have enjoyed learning to pray in Spanish and learning specific vocabulary needed for prayer. I have written prayers for practice, and it's been a blessing to lift up my requests and some of yours in Spanish. God understands all languages. :)
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