A New Year!!!

Dear friends and family,

Greetings this New Year, 2023, from rainy season Peru. We pray that God will direct your path and make them straight in this coming year. As we start this New Year, we look back at some of the highlights of 2022. This past year saw our completion of 25 years serving with Wycliffe Bible translators, the aviation program seeing a full year of operation with the the new aircraft N9691Z, and the first high school ministry trip since COVID. As a family we celebrated Camilla's 15th birthday (a big deal in Latin American culture), the wedding of Joy's brother and our 28th wedding anniversary. This last celebration took place in Paris, a trip we postponed twice due to COVID. We also faced a few challenges this past year, including Joy's multiple trips to the US for medical scans, roadblocks in getting her flight medical approved and political and social upheaval here in Peru. Our biggest praise is that God granted us another year of clean scans for Joy. 

Our Christmas was spent in the country of Colombia with old friends and our boys were able to join us during their Christmas break. We'll post some pictures below.

Our roles and ministries here in Peru are back into the swing of things after the start of the new year. School is back in session and the aviation program is busy. Bill and Camilla have one more week left in the first semester and then will have a new schedule for the rest of the year. Joy's role in aviation will change slightly as she gives back the job of program manager now that her boss has returned from furlough. She will continue working as the flight coordinator, finance (flight billing and receipting), and safety manager. In 3 months, Mission Safety International will come for an external audit so she will be focused on making sure that the aviation team is ready.

Our biggest and best news is that we are coming on a short home assignment starting in the beginning of May. William graduates from Wheaton the first weekend, and we want to take advantage by planning our trip at that time. We plan on being in Chicago for the month of May. June will see our big circle trip, swinging through Atlanta-Tennessee-Maryland-Pennsylvania. In July we will base out of Chicago again before heading back to Peru for the beginning of the school year in August. It will be a whirlwind three and a half month trip. As plans begin to firm up, we will provide updates and information about where we will be. Our goal this furlough is to make a concerted effort to spend as much time as possible with all our friends, family and churches this furlough. We can't wait to see you all.

Continue praying for us as we have  full schedule ahead of us and as we make plans for this upcoming summer.

In Christ,

Bill and Joy Carrera

For the first time in several furloughs we will also be looking to increase our monthly support to cover the additional expenses of Joy's travel to the US every 3 months and reaching our annual insurance out of pocket costs for Joy's ongoing cancer treatment and monitoring. We would ask you to join us in praying for additional partners to our team to cover this increased need at this stage in our lives.

Below is our latest family picture, a slide show of some of our time in Colombia, and the student body at SAM Academy.