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.

A Busy Summer (but not all work) June 2023

 Dear friends and family,

Greetings from Pucallpa, Peru where the weather has been sunny but not blazing hot for the past few weeks. We have had a few "frios" where a cold front has moved through the area and we run for our long-sleeved clothes because it's in the low 70s.


Last letter we asked for prayer for William as he was setting up an internship and needed housing. In answer to these prayers, William was able to find housing that met his needs. He is learning about commutes and has two new roommates. Fellow missionaries in North Carolina are gifting William a car that was used by their daughter while she was in college. As a family they want to bless another missionary kid with a college car! Cullen is hard at work filming and producing videos at Lake Geneva Youth Camp. His latest production can be viewed here.

Joy's scans in May came back clean, and she continues to be able to take the medications without severe side effects. We praise God for his continued blessing on Joy and her health. Continue praying for healing of her neuropathy and for the consistent muscle cramps she experiences. Her next set of scans will be in the first week of August.

To that effect, we are traveling as a family to Chicago for those scans. Most importantly, we will finally celebrate our 25TH WEDDING ANNIVERSARY! We are setting aside ten days to travel while Camilla attends teen camp before Joy's scans. When we return, the boys will be done working, and we can have a few days of everyone together again.

Since the beginning of June, Joy has once again added the interim program manager of SAMAIR to her list of responsibilities. This includes a supervisory role of the team, managing team dynamics, extra zoom meetings with both SAM Peru leaders and JAARS aviation program managers from around the world, as well as making decisions regarding operations and spending. She also continues scheduling the flights, billing and receiving of flight income and maintains her position as safety manager for the team. After her next scans in August, she will once again look into submitting paperwork to the FAA to regain her flight medical. Pray for this process as it will involve extra costs and the willingness of her doctors and the FAA to efficiently process this information.


Bill is working this summer on class prep as well as light maintenance at the school. If anyone knows how to replace floorboards they can give him a call. Lots of painting, replacing mosquito screens, and moving around whiteboards and bulletin boards are in his future. Praise God, the school looks to be set for teachers in the fall and we should have about the same number of students. The school recently had a promotional video produced. It is available for viewing here.

Please be in prayer with us for these things:
(1) Safety and God's protection for both of our sons as they work this summer.
(2) That we are able to arrange to pick up the car and figure out all the paperwork involved.
(3) Clean scans for Joy at the beginning of August.

Last but not least, we wanted to highlight some of the ministry opportunities our daughter Camilla has been involved with in the past months. In May, her high school went by river to a small Shipibo community where they painted the school building and ran a day program for the kids. A few weeks later, she participated in an evangelistic event in a local neighborhood where 74 kids made decisions for Christ. She also helped out at a local Peruvian school during "English" week leading worship and interacting with students while they practiced their English with a native speaker. Take a look at some of the photos below.

As always, thank you for your prayers and support for our ministry as we bring God's truth of love and redemption to the people groups here in the jungles of Peru.

In Christ,

Joy
Here are a few photos showing what Camilla has been doing the past few months.

Spring News 2022

 

Christ has risen!

 

Spring is always a favorite time of year as we celebrate the reason we are serving our Lord in Peru: the hope of eternal salvation that springs from the truth of Christ's death for all, knowing that because of His resurrection, we have new life in Him. I Cor 15

As we are reminded why we are here, we count it a privilege to serve in our respective fields. Aviation has continued with a tight flight schedule this spring, but we are looking forward to increasing the number of people we can serve and fly in the upcoming months. The spring months for teachers are always busy as they come through the "home stretch." Bill continues to look for ways to keep his students engaged while knowing that their minds are already focused on all of the end of the school social events. Next year SAM Academy already knows that it is losing three of its long-term teachers: elementary, high school Bible/history, and Spanish teachers. Pray for us during the recruiting process as we try and fill these positions for next semester: 

Besides our normal weekday ministries, we are also involved in other ministries to encourage both Peruvian nationals and the missionary community. One of these events was an evening of worship that Bill, playing the keyboard, and Camilla, playing the guitar, participated in. They practiced for many hours and in the end, the service was a meaningful time of praise and adoration.  We were also encouraged during a week-long South America Mission and TEAM Peru missionary conference, which focused on unity. This is the first time in almost three years we were able to gather from all the different ministry locations around the country to celebrate what God is doing and to spur each other to live in a community. (see photos below)

We also wanted to give you an update on our church's second construction phase. Our local church, Mil Palmeras, has been asked to move off the SAM property where it has been renting for many years. We are trusting God for funds to put in bathrooms, an office, and storage facilities so that we can meet more regularly at our new property site. Please watch this video for an update on that project. 

Lastly, we need to brag on our youngest daughter Camilla. Next week we will be celebrating a big 15-year-old party, Latin American style with a modified "quinceañera". We are proud of her kind and cheerful spirit, her desire to minister to children through helping in the church's nursery and the Peruvian outreach "Granito de Amor" that is restarting its ministry to kids, and her gifts and talents in music. She is not only a diligent student but her writing has recently been recognized as she won honorable mention in a young writer contest for the Baltimore Science Fiction Society. Here is another example of a story she wrote a while back about our non-traditional Easter hunt celebration. Cascarones 

In two weeks, Joy returns to Chicago for another PET scan. We continue to thank God that the medication seems to be effective in keeping her cancer in remission at this time. Some of the side effects of nausea have subsided. Continue to pray that the neuropathy in her feet (caused by the first immunotherapy treatment in 2019) would completely heal and that the muscle cramps she currently experiences would subside.

We have some SPECIFIC PRAYER requests and NEEDS for this summer: 
1. William has an internship lined up in downtown Wheaton but is in need of housing in that area since at this point he does not have a car to commute from his grandparents in Chicago.
2. Regardless of the housing, we are looking to purchase a small used car for William to serve as his first car. We are aware that this is extremely challenging for almost everyone purchasing a used car in the US at this time and is complicated by us living overseas. Fortunately, we believe in a God of the impossible.
3. Pray for Cullen as he volunteers at Lake Geneva Youth Camp this summer as their videographer for the many weeks of camp. He also knows that he is in need of a vehicle for his last few years of college at Taylor University.
4. Pray for Joy's upcoming scans at the beginning of May and her visit with our sons and family in Chicago.
5. Pray for new teachers for SAM Academy for next year; both for the logistics of the ones we are hoping to recruit as well as for those we don't know about yet.

As always we appreciate your prayers and support. We simply could not be here without them.

In Christ,

Bill and Joy Carrera

Bill and Camilla taking part in the missionary worship service.

The 2022 SAM-TEAM Conference saw missionaries from all over Peru gather to worship, study Romans 12, and encourage each other.

Cascarones

“No-no-no! Iz-”

Too late. Her hand came down. The shell broke. Confetti rained everywhere. Paper 

bits ran down my shirt and arms, sticking to my sweaty hair. Izzy had won. She laughed and ran away, not bothering to help me up. 

Most Easter egg hunts are normal. Parents hide the eggs, the kids go find them, eat the candy, and you go home. Hooray! But that is not how I grew up doing it.

Unless you're the Brewsters, my family starts to save eggs a month before Easter. (If you are a Brewster, you collect months and months worth of eggs.) When you use an egg, instead of cracking it normally, you get a knife and crack a hole in the top.  The raw egg comes out and you save the shell. Once you have enough, you dye them.

After the eggs have dried they are stuffed with confetti. Finally, with tissue paper and glue you cover the hole. “Guys, I need you to dye and color the eggs today, okay?” Aunt Megan asked us the day before the Easter egg hunt. Only my girlfriends helped. The boys weren’t helping… as usual. The eggs were brown so they didn’t dye. Instead, our fingertips were the ones getting all the color.

“Hey, look!” I exclaimed. I examined my fingers and showed my friends. “If you leave your hands in the water it dyes your fingers.” Soon everyone had their hands deep in the bowels.

“That's awesome!” Ella said, taking her deep blue hands out of the dye. “It looks like I have frostbite!” 

I said with a laugh, “You're turning into a smurf.” By the end of the day, everyone had different colored fingers. 

I race down the side porch, the plastic bag slapped against my arm. My eyes scanned the grass looking for the eggs.

Early that day, all the dads at the event had hidden the eggs. Knowing this, I didn’t have to look very hard. The first egg I saw was a yellow one hidden in the lemon trees. That was easy. I ran across the grassy field looking and searching. In the tall grass is where I found the jackpot.

“We were so tired of hiding them,” Uncle Joe explained to me later. “So we just took all the extras and put them into a pile.” And that’s exactly what I found. Being nice, I make sure to leave some for the next person to find.

No one exactly shouts “it’s time to fight.” It just kinda starts. Once the first egg is smashed you know it's time for fun. Grabbing an egg, I quickly ran and smashed it on someone's head. They shout something. But I wasn't paying attention. I have a new target.

Everyone is free game, no one is out. The one rule is you have to crush the egg in your hands and sprinkle the confetti on their head… but even that rule is broken. My chance to get Uncle Joe had arrived. He had his back turned. I quietly sprint towards him. I leap. Yelling, I smashed the egg on his head. I only had time for a small victory. Soon he was after me. I ran forward, dodging around people and trees. But he was gaining on me. Almost on me. I saw a hand reach out. I screamed. I took a sharp turn. Leaving him behind.

“Oh, man! I missed,” He shouts. He fell as his feet slipped in the wet grass.

“Ha-ha!” I turned around to laugh at him. 

I can’t explain what happened, but before I knew it I was on the ground. The trees 

blocked the sun out of my eyes, I knew I was finished. Down, I lost. My breath was hot and I pant wildly. The wet grass filled my nose, along with the smell of sweat and dirt. I scrunch my nose. Soon a man comes into my view. Uncle Joe is standing over me with a smug grin. My head falls on the grass. I groaned, but a smile crept up on my lips. Laughing, he grabs an egg out of his plastic bag, taking time to enjoy his moment of victory. He smashed the egg on my head, rubbing the colored paper bits into my sweaty hair. He walked away, almost skipping in his slow swagger. I lay there defeated. But a full smile comes, reaching the corners of my eyes. Laughing and panting widely, I got up, brushed the itchy wet grass off my back, and I went off to hunt the next person. 

June 2021 School is done...

 

Don't know who is prouder,
Dad the Principal
or the Graduate!

Greetings from Peru. We hope the start to your summer has been a good one. For the month of May, we were able to have our sons with us for a few weeks, and while it was sad to see them leave, we are so thankful for the time together. They both found jobs at a Christian camp for the summer, which was an answer to prayer. 

With graduation a few weeks ago, the academic part of the school year came to a close. The 8th-grade graduation (8 students) and the high school graduation (5 students) took place on different nights due to COVID restrictions. Camilla was excited to march with her friends, and she proudly insists she is now a high schooler. The list of projects the school staff put off during the months we were not in person has now become our priority. Mosquito screens need repair, books have to be organized, and classrooms need to be cleaned and painted. Bill has also started working on outlines for classes. We anticipate returning to in-person instruction and are planning accordingly. 

Next week Joy begins her new role as interim program director for the aviation department while her boss goes on a four-month furlough. She will be picking up additional accounting tasks this summer as well. The flight schedule is getting busy as we have the privilege of helping our partner mission organizations get back to normal. For the first time in a year, we will be flying young indigenous leaders and their families back to Bible school. The Shawi Bible conference canceled last year has also been rescheduled. We continue with an increased number of medical emergency flights. Pray for us as we negotiate payment from the national health services for over three months of flights that need to be paid for. Lastly continue to pray that the FAA would grant Joy her flight medical. The oncologist consultant has been sitting on her file since March. Pray that this individual would feel compelled to review her file and rule favorably in this case.

Everyone enjoyed a boat ride with friends.

Camilla plans on sleeping, riding her motorcycle (she recently figured out third gear), and spending as much time laughing with the few friends who are not traveling this summer. She now has a bird, a dog, and a cat, although the dog is mostly Bill's dog. She is going to be the leader of worship at school chapels next year and has collected piles of music to look through.

We have a trip to Chicago scheduled for the end of July for Joy's medical scans and are looking forward to seeing family for the short two weeks we will be there. The boys will be ending their time at camp, and we should be able to see them as well. William is moving into an apartment at Wheaton College and we might be shopping for kitchen supplies and giving some impromptu cooking lessons.

Prayer Requests:
(1) Continued safety and protection during the emergency flights SAMAIR is doing.
(2) Pray that Joy's scans in the first week of August would be clear and that the doctors would be able to give a good report.
(3) We praise God for his protection from COVID during our time here in Peru.
(4) Pray for ministries to resume to normal this fall including aviation, churches, and in-person school.

In Christ,
Bill, Joy, and Camilla

Nov 2020..possible Return to Peru?

 

We have return tickets to Peru! Read below to see how God has done some amazing miracles on our behalf to allow us to return and don't forget to check out the items to pray for.

Dear Friends and Family, When we last updated you at the end of August, we had just been through a tough month filled with ups and downs. Cancer-free scans were the good news, but closed international borders to Peru was the bad news. God in His wisdom, then took us on a two-month journey showing us things about His character, about ourselves, and how we should respond in times of uncertainty. For the first two weeks in September, we thoroughly enjoyed our time in Spokane Washington. Our time was spent seeing how Moody still trains missionary pilots and mechanics, sharing in chapels, attending classes, and eating meals in the evenings with both staff and students. We had the privilege of spending time with a student Bill had taught on the mission field in elementary school who is now at Moody. We got a vision for how Joy could be a valuable instructor and mentor to both male and female students in the program and how Bill's educational background could be used in the student services department. The doors are open for us to work there in the future whenever God leads us from our current ministry. While we do not feel this is right for us at the moment, please pray for us as we consider His will for us at Moody in the future. As we left, God gave us the privilege of spending a day and a half exploring Yellowstone National Park. (See pictures above.) Here are the fall miracles God worked for us. Miracle #1: Joy was able to reduce her use of gabapentin throughout the month and by the time we returned to Chicago she was completely off this medication that causes drowsiness and would prohibit her from obtaining an aviation medical. While there is still some discomfort primarily in the evenings, this has been easily managed with over the counter pain medicine. Miracle #2: While at Moody, we were given the contact information for a company that specifically helps pilots regain their FAA medicals. The owner is a Christian, and we hired this company to represent our case before the FAA. Once Joy's doctors send reports of Joy's surgery and treatments of this past year to them, they will submit a legal document representing her when she finishes her medical exam with a designated FAA medical examiner next week. Miracle #3: At the end of September, we drove to the JAARS center in Waxhaw, NC. The plan was to attend a two-week refresher ground school for all JAARS supervisor pilots. But since the country of Peru still was not allowing flights from the US, we approached the head of training at JAARS and asked if there was any way he could facilitate the flight training immediately following the ground school. There was an instructor (more like 3 who shared the load) and an aircraft available for this required training. After two weeks of instrument training, left seat, and right seat flying, Joy completed all the training necessary to requalify for a full five year JAARS recurrent training event.  Miracle #4 Peru officially began allowing flights from the US starting November 1st. We returned to Chicago and this past week we able to fit in dental work for both of us, Joy's three-month CT scans (ONCE AGAIN SHOWING NO CANCER), an upper esophageal scope for Bill, AND PURCHASED TICKETS for Monday, November 16 to return to Peru.   Here is how you can pray for us in the next 7 days:   1. Pray for Joy's FAA medical exam Tuesday the 10th. After the exam, the FAA review board will need to deliberate based on this exam along with the report from Pilot Medical Solutions on her behalf. 2. Pray for one more treatment (BOTOX) on Bill's esophagus Thursday the 12th. 3. Pray that we will be able to get COVID tests here in the Chicago area which is difficult due to demand. The timing has to work perfectly due to government mandates to arrive with results within 72 hours of receiving the results. 4. Pray for us as we leave our boys in the US at college. Pray that God would continue to bless them this semester and for their plans for the holidays as they will not be traveling to Peru. 5. Pray for us as a family as we return after so long. Our expectations are high, but we know we will be returning to a difficult situation. 6. Lastly and most importantly pray for Bill and me as we work on our spiritual life and family life after this difficult year. We are entering a new season and trust that God will be glorified in our lives. 7 days to go! Pray for us on November 16 and 17 as we finally get all the way home. In Christ, Bill and Joy Carrera

May 2020 Prayer Letter: Everything has changed...

Everything has changed

Dear Friends and Family,

     It is not very often you can look back at a prayer letter while writing your next one and discover everything you planned did not happen. We had speaking engagements planned and penciled in. Awana programs, a mission conference, a women's brunch, and a trip to Brazil to renew Bill's visa were all on the agenda. They were not to be; God had other plans.

     The second weekend in March we flew to Atlanta for the wedding of Joy's niece. This was to be the start of a busy schedule, but instead it was the first and last thing we did outside the home. That next week we kept checking our phones to see if future plans were going to hold. One by one they all fell by the wayside. The shelter-in-place order for Chicago, like many around the country, has closed churches and forced small groups to meet by telecommuting platforms.
       All of us have had our lives turned upside down. The day before traveling to the wedding, William received the shocking news that Wheaton College had made the decision to shut down the campus and move the last quarter online. He returned to campus that following week to say a few goodbyes and pack his room. Good news for him is that he completed his finals last week, and his first year of college is one to remember. Camilla and Cullen also transitioned to e-learning that week, a temporary solution that later became reality for the rest of the semester. Cullen's graduation ceremony was cancelled as was Camilla's production of Charlie Brown through the Chicago Christian Youth Theater program. However as resilient children, they make these loses and transitions look easy. They have followed schedules without any prompting from us, starting each day around at nine o'clock and finishing shortly after a lunch break. As I type this letter, Cullen is taking his AP Calculus test online. He feels well prepared, he says.
       Through all this we have seen the hand of God active in our lives. We had hoped to return to Peru in January, with Joy flying to Lima for treatments once a month. When COVID-19 shut down not just America, but the whole world, we realized that God had spared us a huge trial as Peru's restrictions were more severe than Chicago's. Within 24 hours, the Peruvian president suspended all international and national flights meaning either Joy would have been separated from her family if she had been in Lima at the time or making Joy's treatment impossible for us without having to request emergency evacuation from the US embassy. Here in Chicago, while Bill is not able to go with her, Joy has been able to continue monthly treatments and scans requested by her doctor. Her last scan in April continues to show no growth of any tumors anywhere else in her body.
       While we were sad that Cullen was not able to return to finish his senior year in Peru, because we were here in Chicago, he had the opportunity to apply for a scholarship for urban leaders. We were first made aware of this scholarship to Taylor University last fall. It was a long application process, with three steps involving essays, evaluated group dynamics, and interviews. At the end of February, Cullen was named an Acts 6 scholar and given a full ride scholarship to Taylor. He will start classes in the fall, studying film and media production. This scholarship is also an internship as it invests heavily in urban students who want to make a difference in their communities. Cullen already has begun online classes with his fellow scholarship cadre and is looking forward to other activities this summer before school starts in the fall.
       While we are not speaking at conferences, Bill is working on teaching materials and developing his writing skills by reworking stories he wrote about growing up in a large family here in Chicago. There have been hours spent trying to get our pictures safely archived from old CD's to an external drive and then correcting their dates and compiling them in a format that we can find and use in the future. Joy also has some nursing continued education credits due this month as well. Of course we are enjoying being together as a family one more time before everyone separates in the fall. We were reminded at Easter that we are at the one year mark of Joy's cancer diagnosis. Last Mother's Day our family was separated by a continent as Joy was facing major surgery that next week. Those reminders make us immensely grateful that God has brought us through this past year, and we can rejoice in the many amazing gifts He has continued to give us.
     Our future plans remain in God's timing. We have already tried twice to plan our return to Peru only to be postponed. This time we are waiting before attempting to nail down a firm date. However, with this said, we hope to return to Peru in August. We will confirm the date after Joy's last treatment and result of last scans. This time we will return with only Camilla in tow, a big change for all of us.

We have a few prayer requests as this season of our lives moves forward.
(1) Pray for continued healing for Joy. Her neuropathy continues in her feet and any decisions regarding future flying will be contingent on the healing.
(2) Pray for William and Cullen as they try to decide what to do this summer. Jobs are scarce and we don't know that working outside the home and returning everyday is a good idea while we live with Bill's parents.
(3) Pray for summer plans as far as finishing our furlough goals of visiting supporters and friends that are not in Chicago. We typically make a long trip and even had lined up dates with a few churches in July. Pray for God's will to be done about our plans.
(4) Pray for the Lord to have mercy on His world and to stop the spread of the COVID-19 virus. Pray that these locked borders and quarantine orders will not affect our plans to return to Peru and/or that we be patient with God's timing.

One final note or thought: If our shelter in place continues further into the summer, we would like to hear from you if there is a time that you'd like to meet with us for a internet based missions report. This could be a Skype/Zoom/Google-Talk with any small groups, churches, or families that would like to hear more about our ministries in Peru. If we can figure out how to share a power point, we can call this a tele-furlough! In all seriousness, we would love to connect with you despite this time of social distancing.

In Christ,

Bill and Joy Carrera