Author: mbsamperu

Eleven years in, it is interesting to me how each new school year has its own unique feel. This school year, we have several new families in our elementary and I love the personality they have brought to the group. Along with new elementary families, we have a few new European faces as well. We are so thankful for the partnership we have with Mision Suiza in being able to educate their Swiss and German students. One of our teachers ran into a Member Care representative from the Swiss Mission at a conference. This person thanked the school for our work with MK’s saying that she was very impressed with how prepared for life outside of High School our students were as they left Peru and returned to their European passport countries. It was huge for us to hear that compliment, not just from another mission, but from a different culture as well!

Along with new faces, we have several “news” this year…

New schedules: Mike has a very different schedule now as he teaches all the middle school and high school sciences and the high school math, while administrating somewhere in there! This new schedule comes as a result of a saying “Good-bye” to one of our amazing teachers: Mr. Bill. He and his wife Joy, our neighbors and good friends, are leaving the Pucallpa field to join the staff at Moody Aviation where they will be tutoring, training and discipling the next generation of Missionary Pilots. It is an exciting change for them and we praise God for the work they will be doing, but they do leave a mighty big hole here in our school and missionary family!

New teachers: As we wave-off the Carrera’s this week, we also welcome in our new elementary teacher! We are excited to have Kayla Johnson join our elementary staff in 2nd and 3rd grade this coming quarter . Please pray for Kayla as she settles into life in Pucallpa and also starts her very first year of teaching!

New rooms: In making space for new teachers, we are also needing new rooms! In his side job in construction, Mike has been renovating an entrance of one of our older dorm buildings to be a temporary art room. This will open up the current art room, the room right next to mine, to be an elementary classroom for Miss Kayla’s class. It is always a fun job when the wiring is an intricate puzzle and the building isn’t quite level, but Mike has done a fantastic job and we are thankful for the volunteers, students and adults, who will help this week to move the art room and set up a classroom space for Miss Kayla.

New high-schooler: We have a new high-schooler in the family and he is stepping it up my friends! It has been a bit of an adjustment coming into the school year two weeks after his friends already started and got into the swing of things, but Liam has done amazing. This past week he followed in his sister’s footsteps working with Scalpel at the cross. He worked in intake, meeting patients as they came in and registering their information. He also snazzed up for Fall Ball this year. Check out all our beautiful and handsome high schoolers!

In addition to Fall Ball this week, our high schoolers also took part in English week at Colegio Hosanna. Three of our boys led chapel, giving a devotion in English and Spanish to the Peruvian school’s student body. Our students also participated in English classes having one-on-one conversations with their students. We have a really great relationship with this school and are so thankful for the opportunity for our kids to interact with the students there.

And finally, New-ish Experiences: With my pilot friend Joy leaving, we took the opportunity to have a “girls’ flight” over Pucallpa. I haven’t flown in a SAM Air plane since our first trip to Mazamari, Peru in 2013! It was so incredible to see our city from above, but also to look out at the stretch of jungle beyond. So many amazing God-things are happening here! Thank you for your prayers and support that keep us here on the ground, pouring into the lives of these Missionary families!

I think the last week of furlough has to be the worst week of a missionary’s ministry.  If not the worst, it rates up there.  The endless gathering and packing, saying good-bye and wishing there had been more time with friends and loved ones.  Feeling excited to go back and get back into ministry, but also guilty you are leaving again.  For us this time, there is the added grief of leaving our college girl behind.  Sometimes I feel like my heart is breaking in two. 

One of the things I have been encouraging our girl to do, however, is to grab hold of the good, to find the joyous moments in each day.  Trying to model that, I’m pushing past the sadness of “good-byes’ and focusing on all the wonderful “good” we have experienced this furlough.

We had such a wonderful time with the church families we were able to spend time with!  I felt like I came into each visit carrying this huge “mommy-burden” with all my thoughts and emotions focused on Ella.  With that, I didn’t feel as prepared as I usually do as we presented and shared our ministry, yet every church family welcomed us with open arms and warmly showered love on us.  It was so sweet to worship with each beautiful congregation and to feel not only encouraged by each, but also to feel reaffirmed that SAM Academy is being prayed over and lifted up by so many wonderful, wonderful people.

In addition to sharing with our supporting churches, we were able to meet with a newer board member of South America Mission and share about God’s work happening in our region, reconnect with our home office staff and fellowship together, and, also, meet with and encourage the Golpalan family who are in the candidate orientation faze with a goal of serving with SAM Academy.

Around our Home Ministry “assignments,” we were able to have some really special family time with both our families, as well as other special friends.  It was all very low-key this time around, but we made memories over dinner tables, fair visits and weekend camping getaways that filled us up and refreshed us.

Ella has started her college classes and is off to a great start.  As she learns to drive Stateside, part of our daily tasks having been taking her to class and finding things to do until she finishes.  It has been wonderful to have these stolen little moments with her and to also get to see a bit of what her life will be like as we go back.  Countering my sadness at the thought of living apart from her is an excitement to see what this part of her life journey has in store for her.  We are super proud of her and grateful to see the ways God is caring for her.   

While we have been here doing our thing, the 2025-2026 school year at SAM Academy has kicked off!  We are thrilled for a smooth start and anxious to be back in our classrooms.  I’m so thankful for my substitute, Rona, who traveled from the US and donated two weeks of her time to look after my little class—she has done an amazing job!  She’s going to be a tough act to follow.  We are also thankful for our amazing staff who have gotten the school up and running. We pray for an incredible school year this year and for all the seen and unseen things God will do through us!

Dear friends, this is just a short little update, but there will be much more to share with you as we land back in life in Pucallpa and get back to the work we love.

Please pray for us as we start into our eleventh school year on the field…

-Please pray for safety and peace as we travel. We land Sunday afternoon and start back teaching on Monday, so prayers for our sanity this week would be appreciated!

-You can encourage the Gopalan Family in prayer as they work their way through Candidate Orientation, as well as Kayla, our new teacher, who is currently studying in language school.

-Please continue to lift Ella up in prayer as she adjusts to both college life and US life.

-As we begin our next term, pray we can be unified with the missionaries we are serving in purpose and love, bringing glory to God together.

Well, I started typing this newsletter back in the beginning of June–as you can tell from the late arrival, I didn’t get very far! We are full into the furlough schedule, visiting our wonderful churches, catching up with supporters and spending really special time with family and friends. We are also settling in the college graduate, doing all the adult things: setting up bank accounts, attending college orientation, learning to drive (Pray for me on that one!). Each moment has been good and sweet, though, and I am so thankful to be here in the US, even for just a short time. I don’t want to completely throw out the newsletter I started, however. So many good things happened at the end of the school year that I want to share with you. If you will, pretend for just a moment it is still just the beginning of summer, and check out how our SAM Academy school year ended…

I really can’t believe I am sitting on my parents’ porch watching my dad bail hay as I type this. It has been a surreal month full of exciting, yet bittersweet things. I guess we’ll start with…we have a new graduate in the family!!

Actually, we have two!!

The Brown family graduated a senior on to college and an 8th grader into high school! We are so proud of the young adults both of them have become!

My last post was full of emotions as I processed this new stage of life we are in and the urgency of hoping I had done all I needed to as a parent to send Ella into the world not just as a successful adult, but more importantly, as a Christian anchored deeply in her faith.

It hit me during this season that we have answered God’s call to serve the missionary families of Pucallpa in discipling and growing their children, but in the process, my own children have joined that precious group of MK’s. As Ella steps into the next phase of her life, she is leaving all she has known as “Home,” and entering a world that is familiar, but foreign to her.

So after landing on US soil, we hit the ground running, getting her set up with all the things: bank account, driver’s permit, college orientation, warm clothes to survive in the frigid AC…Haha, my poor little jungle bunny. Each of these things has come with big emotions–nervousness, worry, but also excitement as Ella starts to step out in adulthood on her own.

Mixed in with teaching our daughter to adult, we have also started our Home Ministry Assignment! We have been blessed to visit three four of our supporting church families and have been immensely encouraged by our time with them. Between now and September, we are looking forward to reconnecting with nine church families that we are privileged to be partnered with in ministry and well as our individual supporters who have blessed us so much.

We are really looking forward to the time with friends and family, as well as having some time “off the field” to refresh and reset before diving into our next school year. Before we commit 2024-2025 to the books, though, Graduation wasn’t the only exciting event to take place this last month.

Our high school drama class put on an absolute amazing rendition of “Little Women.” They have come such a long way with their confidence on-stage. We are so thankful to have one of our school moms, Joy Carrera, a full-time missionary with SAM Air, take time to coach and direct our students and give them this experience! If you enjoy student-productions and would like to see the play in its entirety, I’d love to share it with you!

Our elementary and middle school students took some time out of the normal class schedule to visit some of our really cool, local medical ministries. The students first visited the Swiss Mission Base to see firsthand their medical clinic and the care they are able to offer to the indigenous bible students who come through their mission year round. Next they visited the incredible new Miracle Campus that was built by Scalpel at the Cross. This center will serve as a prosthetic manufacturing center and rehab clinic, as well as a research center which will share best-practice information with other low-income parts of the world to help other ministries serve and be blessing to amputees. In our part of the world, many of these amputees are left with no hope in life. This clinic truly is a miracle campus, giving new life and the gospel to hurting people in our region, and all over!

Along with our 8th grade and 12th grade graduates, we also graduated our 5th graders into middle school. There wasn’t nearly the pomp and circumstance with their graduation, but it was a still a celebration as these two special girls moved up to join the “big kids.”

So many memorable things to celebrate…and so many good things to look forward to! We have already turned out minds to the next school year and are excited for what lies ahead. Please pray with us and we turn our attention to the 2025-2026 school year….

Some ways to pray:

-Our beloved Middle school/High school Math teacher and principal is moving on from life at SAM Academy after 12 years to other ministry. Would you pray for Bill and his family as they prepare for this transition and also our staff and we seek to fill a huge hole in our staff. Mike will be temporarily teaching all MS/HS Science and Math while continuing as head Administrator so please pray for his full year ahead. We’ve also been introduced to a possible fit for the Math position.

-We are onboarding a new Elementary teacher, which we are very excited about. Please pray for Kayla as she completes language study and then comes to us somewhere between October and January. Cristy and I will cover all elementary classes until her arrival, so pray for our creativity and energy as well as Kayla’s transition to Peru and our SAM Family.

-Please pray for our just graduated seniors, including our Ella, as they begin college classes and get settled into adult life. A huge praise has been all of the love and support Ella has received from our church families here in the US. It has been overwhelming, and so good for my heart!

How can we be praying for you? I’m sure we are not the only ones going through huge life milestones. We’d love to hear from you…mmbrown@southamericamission.org.

And now you can return to July:) Happy summer!!

This school year has definitely had a different feel to it. As we start the fourth quarter of Ella’s senior year, it has really hit me that we are headed into a different stage of our lives. I have been preparing my heart for sending our daughter to the States to attend college without us, but somehow, all the prep isn’t quite enough. Everything we have done this year seems deeper and more significant because it is more than likely our last time doing it with Ella.

As emotional as it is knowing Ella is leaving us, it is almost equally emotional knowing her group of fellow seniors is leaving as well. This group has been something special. They were the first class I taught when we arrived here ten year ago and they are just a really great group of amazing kids.

I have learned many things in teaching here ten years and watching ten groups of students walk across our rickety, wooden stage as graduates. One of the things I have learned is that every time one group graduates, another group matures and steps-up to the task of being the next leaders of our school. We got to see that played out in beautiful ways this February as our entire school took part in a VBS for the special needs students of Refugio de Esperanza, the school right behind our property.

For months, our high schoolers not only prepped and planned bible lessons, crafts and games in Spanish, but also adapted those activities further for hearing and sight impaired students.

The week of VBS, we were joined by an energetic group of teens from Carmel Christian School in North Carolina. Together our two groups of students pulled off an incredible week of laughing, playing and sharing faith…in three languages: Spanish, English and Peruvian Sign Language!

During our debriefs each day, I loved seeing my students faces light up as they told me all about their new friends from Refugio. But what made it awesome was more than just new relationships. Their new friends were all deaf students–each day of the VBS, our hearing students worked diligently with gestures and newly learned signs to hold meaningful conversations with their new friends.

During VBS we used our Economics unit to pull off a pretty cool side gig. Our Elementary students planned, prepared and sold yummy baked goods as a fundraiser for the Refugio de Esperanza Special Needs programs. They raised s/400, over $100! They were so excited with their business venture!

We are so excited for the connections that were made with Carmel Christian School. They are already planning on joining us again next year for a possible river ministry trip! We are even more excited to build a lasting relationship with our neighbor school, Refugio de Esperanza, and their amazing kids.

Even with so much time devoted to pulling off a successful VBS, we still managed to squeeze in some other events this quarter. The anatomy class got some hands-on experience while dissecting a cow heart in class. Of course we have to be a little extra: the kids used clean utensils, cutting boards and gloves so they could make anticuchos (grilled cow heart) and enjoy them for lunch afterwards!

Also our school soccer team got a little extra practice in against some neighborhood teams in a recent tournament held here at the school.

Besides being busy, this quarter’s weather has also thrown us a curveball. The wettest rainy season seen in Pucallpa in the past 30 years has lead to immense flooding around and outside the city. Thankfully our base is in town away from water, but the SAM Air Base and other housing areas where are students live were saturated with high water. We have had some unique modes of school transportation during this time, including transporting students on tractor beds and taking motor boats. Please pray as the water began to recede but is still remaining higher than normal.

In addition to prayers for the Pucallpa community, we’d appreciate personal prayer as we as a family prepare not just for furlough this summer, but also prepare to settle Ella in to college life in the US. She hopes to attend Penn State Fayette and live with family while studying nursing. After watching her help with medical teams that work in our area, I can say I am really excited to watch her enter the field of nursing. It is bittersweet however, knowing she will be starting this part of her life journey far away from us.

As we prepare to furlough, we must also already begin to prepare for what the next school year will look like. We are praying fervently for teachers especially in the elementary and upper math and English areas. While we have some possibilities in the pipeline, pray for God to smooth out the details and for us to trust in His perfect timing.

As always, we thank you for partnering in this wonderful work with us and send our love your way! We look forward to seeing many of you this summer!!

I’ll blame it on senior brain…not older-person brain…the brain of a momma with a senior about ready to launch into college: I have writer’s block. Ok, actually I just have full out brain-block. So many emotions and commotions soaking in the last year with my girl that my brain is a bit of a mess at the moment. (Any other Senior moms out there that can relate?) Thankfully I have some little co-writers who love to tell you how it is. Hope you enjoy a few highlights of our first quarter written by a few of our elementary students.

Our Class

This year I have a new teacher. Her name is Ms. Marcy. She is fun, because she has lots of fun things like she makes Math fun. It was cool when she taught us to multiply 536 times 5 using the turtle method. It equals 2,680. There is also this thing called S.O.A.P. It stands for Scripture, Observe, Apply and Pray. We use it in Bible class. I have learned from it that Jesus has healed tons of people. He is so amazing, because he made you and made the whole Earth. Everything in it is so beautiful like the trees and how God healed a dead man. Once we observe what Jesus is doing, we apply it to our life so we can be like Jesus. Ms. Marcy is so fun and silly. She has a great dog that comes to class with her and she takes care of us. She helps us when we need it. Fourth grade can sometimes be hard but even if I don’t know it yet, if I keep trying, I will learn it.

-A.T.

Character Class

This year we’ve been learning a lot in Friendzy. I really like it! Friendzy has catch-phrases like “We Need Each Other,” “A Friend Loves At All Times,” and “You First.” I really like these catch-phrases. They teach me a lot. “We Need Each Other” taught me that we are better together. “A Friend Loves At All Times” reminds me to show my love with my words and actions–don’t just love your neighbors when its nice and easy. You should love them always even when they are mad at you. “You First” teaches you don’t always have to be first. We should look out for others. We memorize verses, play games and color. I really like Friendzy and I am glad we are doing it.

-K.E.

~The Middle Schoolers hosted the Elementary for a picnic lunch as part of our Friendzy Character program.

Special Events

I enjoy this year, but I enjoy most the special events. For example, our Student Council decided to host a event called Teddy Bear Day. Everyone brought to school a bear. I brought my Teddy Bear named Raspberry. StuCo also planned Talk Like a Pirate Day. We dressed up as pirates and the teachers served a lunch of chips, fruit and hot dogs that looked like pirate ships. We also had Hero Day. I dressed up as my mom. Our biggest event was Fall Festival. The parents set up stalls and the kids went around and gave tickets to play. We don’t get to enjoy Fall in the jungle so I really enjoyed Fall Festival. I can’t wait for the next event!

-K.B.

English Week

This year all the elementary for the first time went to Hosanna. (Usually just the high schoolers go.) Hosanna is a Peruvian school and it was English Week. We went to the First Grade classes. We first started by telling the class our names. Then we walked around asking them questions about themselves to get to know them better. After that we sang a song to them about the Days of the Week. They did the same to us by singing a song about obeying God. It felt like we were friends for a long time. We went there to teach them English but most importantly we made friends with them. I hope we go there again!

-S.C.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t add in a pic of our new, lovely bathrooms. The efforts of many allowed us to get these up and running, and moving the bathrooms from the old dorm buildings opens the way for us to remodel some much needed teacher and staff housing. Very thankful for the work being put in to make this happen!

Thank you for your prayers–we have felt them in the peacefulness of the first quarter!

Sorry for the delay in sending out an update. It has been quite the summer!

Ella, Liam, and I (Marcy) were very blessed to be able to take a quick trip to the States with the goal of visiting colleges and doing other college prep for Ella. (My girl is officially a senior!!) She still has many decisions ahead, but it was really good for her to see different universities and look into their nursing programs.

Between ACT’s, college visits and doctor’s appointments we were thankful to squeeze in vacations with both sides of the family. It is an understatement to say our time together was super sweet!

While we were soaking in the rays and family time, Mike was busy on school projects. This summer saw the school hosting around 8 short-term teams from the States, the majority of which were focused on the renovation of an old dorm building which will be used as housing for teachers, as well as the construction of a new bathroom building for students. The apartments will be an ongoing project this school year but the bathrooms are close to being finished and looking great! Their only downfall, the high schoolers have lamented, is that their close proximity does not allow the girls to have deep girl-talks during bathroom breaks without the boys hearing…haha! We are glad however to get our bathrooms out of the housing buildings and part of the actual school area.

Upon our return, Ella jumped right into things, helping with Impacto and observing medical ministry teams. This summer, instead of a camp for the elderly Impacto members, the group decided to host a Senior Olympics. This was absolutely one of the most amazing events I have ever watched. The seniors were divided into “host” countries and, after an opening ceremony, participated in three days of events that included synchronized swimming, hurdle jumping, and long-jump. Thankfully, there were no serious injuries, and the participants had a great time. Many announced they were Olympians to outsiders who asked about the medals they were wearing! I couldn’t help posting so many pictures…they were just to awesome not to!

And suddenly we find ourselves in a new school year!

As Ella enters her senior year with four other classmates, Liam is beginning 8th grade. I am teaching 4th and 5th grade while Mike teaches high school and middle school science (Along with the plethora of odd jobs he does as administrator!) The 2024-2025 school year is Mike and I’s 10th year teaching at SAM Academy! Can you believe it? This school year we are blessed to be working with 37 students, 8 of whom are new to our school. This particular group has roots in Peru, the United States, Germany, Hungary, Brazil, Netherlands, Switzerland, Costa Rica, and Ecuador–it is a very diverse group!

God has always been so good to our school and we pray for His continued blessing…please pray with us!

-Pray, as Mike directed us to in our first chapel, that God would be part of everything we do here at SAM Academy.

-Pray we extend His outreach with our voices and actions in the community around us.

-Pray for those in transition: our new families adjusting to Pucallpa, our seniors who are beginning their journey towards college

-Pray for safety for our students and faculty with all the sicknesses and “jungle-city” calamities that pop up. This dry season is already bringing brush fires to the area. Our days are hot and smoky at school though we have been safe from fire.

-Pray God’s protection from the enemy over our dear missionary families as they work and serve furthering His kingdom.

I have a love/hate relationship with May. I think as a teacher you naturally get a bit of an endorphin rush at the end of May. We breath a sigh of relief as we pump our fists in the year and yell, “We made it!!” For better or worse, the year is over and we can take a collective breath and regroup for the next one.

In that way, I love May. But May for us is bittersweet. May is when we say good-bye to some of the amazing kids we have walked alongside and done life with. I’m being honest when I say our whole school grieves a little. We’ll miss seeing Abbie, always on the stoop, knitting, pausing to smile and talk to the elementary kids. We’ll miss Isaac and his after school judo lessons and sparkly suit jackets at STUCO events. We’ll miss Nina, super cool driving into school on her motorcycle, the last of 4 siblings to sit in our classrooms.

And yet, we celebrate seeing their excitement as they get ready to step into their new roles ahead. We see our joy made complete as we watch another group of beautiful souls walk across that stage, successful. As a school, we pray we have rooted them deep in the faith of their Father and prepared them to go forward. Will you join us in praying for them?

Pray for Isaac as he studies International Business in Mississippi. Pray for his family as they send their youngest son off to school and become empty-nesters.

Pray for Abbie as she studies Nursing in Indiana. She is the first of six kids to head to college. Pray for her siblings who are going to miss her.

Pray for Nina who is headed home to Switzerland to also study Nursing.

Pray for her brother Josia and, another SAM Academy alumni, Daniella, who will also be in Switzerland this summer, getting married and starting their lives together!

…And pray with us, prayers of praise for an AMAZING school year! I may jinx it because we still have 5 days left, but we are so thankful that God blessed us with an incredibly peaceful and beautiful school year.

Just five more days and we can say, “We did it!”

Some of our ministry time took on a very different look than normal for us these past two months. It was exciting to have some opportunities to serve the Lord outside of SAM Academy–it was also definitely faith stretching!

I (Marcy) was asked to lead the craft during a Women’s Retreat for ladies from our local Peruvian churches. This was a unique opportunity to minister to the Christian women here in Pucallpa, many of whom are leaders in their own churches, and to form relationships between the believers of different congregations. This was also my first time leading a group “sola” in Spanish. God was so good in not just helping me “get through” the event, but making the time extremely special. I was able to lead my ladies in creating a craft to remember the names of God and the promises that go with those names, but more importantly, God allowed me to share time with these ladies and begin (and continue) some really wonderful relationships. I am so thankful that God guided me out of my comfort zone to participate in this conference!

THANK YOU SO MUCH for your prayers for our High-Schoolers as they traveled with teens from the Iglesia Misionera as part of their “Boat Camp.” It was a truly incredible experience for our kids. The teens spent time on the boat studying the Word and going through team building activities before presenting the Gospel through skits in four different communities along the river. Many of our younger and/or “newer” MK High-Schoolers came back with a desire to grow in their Spanish so they could continue sharing their faith. Ella said it was “a great experience to make new friends and do ministry while being ministered to.”

The week of Valentine’s Day we hosted the Middle School youth group in our house. The group is a fun mix of SAM Academy kids and homeschoolers from several different nationalities: Swiss, German, Peruvian, American, and Costa Rican. We looked at the four different types of love (Of course “Eros” love got an “Uck!” from Middle Schoolers.), and then talked about “God’s Conversation Hearts” to us. Mike also got into the Cupid-thing a bit and showed them how to shoot a bow and arrow.

The High-Schoolers helped host a Water Games Competition day with the Impacto Ministry, a group dedicated to serving the senior citizens of our community. I was a little nervous, I admit, when I saw the water slide and obstacle courses–can we say visions of broken hips?! But it was an amazing event that brought tons of smiles–and no broken bones–to our lovely older friends.

And then there are our normal school shenanigans! January brought on Spirit Week, while February saw us celebrating friendships during Valentines’ Day.

We are so thankful for your continued prayer for our school. Some ways you can be lifting us up:

-Rainy season has brought a really nasty bout of flu to the area that has hit our school community hard. Please pray for health and healing.

-We are in the process of recruiting a math teacher, an English teacher and an Elementary teacher. Pray with us for God’s continued provision in providing the exact person we need for each of these roles. He has been so good in not just filling roles but bringing the exact people we need.

-Mid-March, four SAM Academy teachers will be attending the International Christian Educator Conference in Prague. We are very excited to grow ourselves through this experience and hope to make the most of our time together with other International Christian schools. Isolated as we are, we lack opportunities for professional development so we are very much looking forward to this event.

-Our upper-classmen are in the throws of “higher education” planning. Please pray for these young adults and their families as they navigate preparing for life after SAM Academy. We are making plans in our own family to visit the States this summer briefly to allow Ella a chance to visit colleges before she begins her Senior year.

So we have been “out and about”…how about you? We’d love to hear how we can be praying for all of you. Feel free to send us a quick note at mmbrown@southamericamission.org.

I have started this newsletter four times. 

The first was at Thanksgiving. For the first time in our school history, we held a school-wide Thanksgiving meal. German, Swiss, Latin American and American families squeezed into our dining hall and shared a meal together celebrating all the many, many ways God has been so very good to us. Between explaining what stuffing is and listening to our Elementary girls giggle through the cutest Thanksgiving performance, I found myself just watching all these beautiful families interact with each other. I sat at the computer that night trying to put my feelings into words, but my bed won out instead.

I made it a goal to finish the newsletter before the end of November. I even started a draft cleverly titled, “By the skin of my teeth,” thinking I would squeak it out on the 31st. I don’t know why we have a phrase about skin on teeth, but I do know I didn’t make it and my computer was instead put to work finding party games and cute Christmas songs as we prepared for our Christmas Outreach. 

When I think of the joy of Christmas, I think of this event. This year we paired each of our students with an “Abuelito” or “grandparent” from a local church who they hung out with during a Christmas carnival of sorts. All the Abuelitos arrived by bus and were greeted by our students holding signs with their names on them; it reminded me of fans outside a rock concert! (“We love you, Taylor!”) Between helping Mike with the photo booth and herding my girls on stage for their Christmas number, I found myself watching as my daughter’s “Abuela” leaned over and kissed her several times during the morning. Standing in the back later, I found myself overwhelmed as one of the other ladies caught my eye across the room as she opened her gift from one of the highschoolers and joyously held up her new shoes to show me. 

I opened the newsletter several times after that. It even made it onto my December to-do list, right after…

-Decorating classroom door (We won!)

-Trim the mango tree that hits everyone with its big mangoes

-Decorate church (Didn’t it turn out gorgeous?)

-Fight off mosquitoes (Ok, that one never leaves the list in rainy season)

-And…Clear snake out of Liam’s bookbag (Hope that one never goes back on the list!)

These things got crossed off the list, but obviously the newsletter did not. 

And then December really got going…

Our family (without me, thanks to the flu) and many high-school students from SAM Academy participated in our church’s first English Worship Service. The hope is that we can continue these special services to draw in college students interested in learning and speaking in English.

The Pucallpa SAM community celebrated the season with a special Christmas Dinner with all of our Peruvian staff. This included not just our SAM Academy teachers, but our SAM Air staff and other SAM missionaries. It was a sweet time together!

And of course all the school December craziness where teachers are surviving on cough drops and coffee…

So suddenly, as you can see, here we are: My November Newsletter delayed until January. Looking back though, I’m ok with the things that distracted me. Well, except for the critters…I’d be ok without those distractions!

Since we have arrived here together to the New Year, may I finally finish this up by wishing you and your loved ones an absolutely beautiful year ahead. We never know what bumps or bruises (or critters!) are in the future, but one thing I have very much learned is God will take all of it–the good, the bad, and the ugly–and turn it into something amazing. May the days ahead bring you closer to Him and may you know just how truly loved you are!