Saturday, April 29, 2006

New Missionaries

April 19th marked a new occasion for rejoicing among the Peru Mission team. Allen and Sandi Smith, have officialy begun their ministry with us in Trujillo. They arrived in Peru from the States with their daughters Abigail and Adeline, back in the third week in January, but spent February 1 through April 15 in langauge school in Cusco. On April 19 they made their way up to Trujillo after a few days of paperwork in Lima. We now have them officially moved into their new home. They will continue langage studies as Allen eases into responsibiities around the mission. We want his transition to be as smooth as possible and will not load him down with much to do just yet, other than studying Spanish, doing visits with our pastors, and helping out with church music. Please pray for Allen and Sandi as they continue to adjust to a new city and a new home, and as they continue learning Spanish. You can read their blog updates here.

In addition to the Smith Family, we have also welcomed to the team Mr. Caleb Sutton from Valparaiso, Florida. Caleb is actually an old hand around here. He first visited Cajamarca and Trujillo back in the year 2000 on a short term trip with his church. Since then, in addition to other short term trips, he has done two internships with us. One for about nine months in 2003 and then again in 2005 as a summer intern. Now, however, he is back for a much longer tour of duty. He finished a bachelor's degree in English at the University of West Florida this spring and graduated about 10 days ago. We are delighted to have Caleb back for at least two years. He will be teaching English in SALI, as well as helping with the university ministry and church music. Please be praying for Caleb and his ministry with Peru Mission.

Friday, April 14, 2006

New Sport


We have begun a new sport here at the Baker house, swimming. So far we are loving it. Abby, Katheryn, Olivia, and Noah are all taking classes 3 days a week for an hour a day. Katheryn has been working on getting a breath between strokes without raising her head out of the water. Olivia has been working on getting her entire head under water and not just the tip of her nose. Abby has been amazing me at how fast she is on her back. She has a"bad" backstroke. She beats all the other kids to the other side of the pool almost everytime. And Noah is our frog. He doesn't really like to swim on top of the water, but boy can he go when they practice swimming under water. They are having a lot of fun, and I'm just a little proud of them!