Bibles on the soccer field

Two really cool things have happened today. Number one. I found out our house came with internet. This has been a huge blessing because my internet contract was over today, and I didn´t have the money to buy internet, because being a foreigner, we have to pay for the entire year up front if we want it in our name. With doing everything with my residency this month, I didn´t really have any to spare. So, to the day, God provides =) Nicchola was over, and he knew how to hook it up, so, presto, we internet. So thankful.

The other thing that happened that was so cool is that I went to meet with this lady that I met at a soccer complex...I met her a few weeks ago, and she had invited me to study the Bible with her. We were sitting there in the sun on the soccer field, Bibles open, soaking up the sun. We sit down she immediately starts to tell me what a mess her marriage is and her husband has been with another woman for 3 years, but she and her husband still sleep in the same bed. She told me about how her life didn´t have any meaning and about how she had tried to kill herself one day with a car. She raised up her sleeves and showed me her wrists where she had cut herself time and time again.

We talked about the gospel alot and about God´s love for us. We studied Gen. 1 together and talked about God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit all being there when the world was being created. We talked about being a child of God and repentance and giving him all that you are, but I am not sure it´s hit her yet. I think she thinks that the Christian life is supposed to be easy, and I told her that it wasn´t. This is a woman who has so many hard things her life, and has such a hunger for the Lord, but I think there are alot of misunderstandings. Please pray that the gospel moves from her head to her heart. I can tell her all day long the gospel, but until the Holy Spirit draws her heart, she won´t get it.

Love.

This morning I was in the kitchen about to make some eggs for breakfast and the Lord asked me if I loved one of my dear sisters in Christ. This person is such a wonderful friend to me, and of course I responded, ¨yes, Lord. I love her.¨ Well, as you can imagine, that was followed by another question. ¨Would you lay down your life for her if the situation arose?¨ Hmmm I´m pretty sure I tried to change the subject about four times in my head over the next 10 seconds, and then I realized how stupid it was to say that I loved someone without really thinking about what that could mean in a Biblical context. I started looking at this verse: John 15:13 Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. Man...either makes me not want to have alot fewer  ¨friends¨ or be way more serious about the friendships I do have. 


I guess I have been reminded over the last two or so years that I really don´t understand God´s love, and that seems like kind of a scary thing when I call myself a follower of Christ. I John 4:7-12  

7 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. 10 In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. 11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.

 I mean, love started with Him frist, and it´s about Him, so I guess I´m realizing that like pretty much every thing else in my life, I can´t just ¨try harder¨and something will happen. It´s admitting that I can´t do it without Him and that I´m desperate for Him to awaken my soul to the depths of his love demonstrated in the gospel. This is my prayer for myself and the body of Christ.

Getting up close...the close of the week.

 So, here is a little photo and video documentation of the end of the week. Friday night, we started our fifith house church with a group of kids in the street. The kid´s ages ranges from itsey bitsey to about 16. We got to sing some songs, play ball along with some other games, and read a Bible story. We are hoping to start another Bible study with the parents of these kids and / or those that work in the market nearby. Please pray for the opportunity to do that and that these kids and teenagers that came will invite their other friends and that this house church will grow.

Playin´ball.

 

Reading the creation story out of one of the children´s Bibles Southmont gave to us. Thank you, once again, Amy and your Sunday school class for raising the money for this...it´s a gift that never stops giving.

 Several of the boys listening.

 

Cute little girl.

Brothers, sisters, friends and strangers alike join to share the Word.

 

Lauren and a few of the people that came that day.

 Lisa and I tried shaved coconut patties afterwards, and they were pretty tasty.

Lauren, Lisa and I at our beloved chicken shack. So many memories here...

In the vid, the kids are explaining what God made each of the days of creation. Thanks, Lisa for recording this one!! =) (And taking the pics for this blog!!)

With a Touristy Touch...The Week in a Photojournal

Well, this week has been a special treat, because not only have we been able start getting ¨settled in¨after our trips to do church planting, but Lauren´s mom came for a suprise visit!!! So, Lisa joined us in our daily lives...and I took some of her pics from the week so that maybe you could get to see our lives from a bit of an outside view. Enjoy!!

The night Lisa came in! (I had convinced Lauren that we needed to fix a nice dinner cause we´d had a tough week...but what she didn´t know is that part of the plan was to cook a nice dinner and have a surprise guest!!) It turned out pretty good! Lauren had no idea until Lisa walked up behind her and put her hands over her eyes. =)

And, of course, Lisa came bearing gifts...She brought SMORES!!! =))

Next morning was Sunday, so we woke up and headed off to our first house church.

Sun. morning house church. 

Drinking Inca Kola after house church. This is the second of 5 house churches so far.

 

Second house church of the day...

Yes, in honor of Lauren we stayed up til 4 am that night playing board games. 

And went to go see Pirates 4 in 3D, baby!

Lauren showing off one of her birthday gifts.

The rest of the week has been filled with both ministry moments and touristy moments. Here are some sights around Lima that I thought you might enjoy. Most of these are taken from the busy downtown part. It´s cool but weird to be a tourist in your own town for a day...but definetely something I should do more often.

These are the ¨combis¨ or busses that we ride all of the time. It is the main form of transportation here.

People walking around downtown Lima

This is what most of Ventanilla, (where I live) looks like.

The streets of Lima...

These same streets become places of crime and prostitution at night.

Yes, we are ¨Los Amigos...¨ or rather ¨Las Amigas¨

Typical assortment of veggies and other random items at an outdoor market

We went down to the beach as well, for those of you who have been to Lima, we went to the part down below Larcomar where the water meets the sand =) This is what we found (along with the beach...)

The great thing about living in Lima is that you can be in the dessert, a market, downtown and the beach all within the same day.

Nicchola took us around that day, and we ended up eating at a restaurant in a part of Lima I´d never seen before. It reminded me a little of the Riverwalk in San Antonio...it was so beautiful, and SO MUCH FUN!!!

The sweet family that hosts house church number 2.

Thursday night we hosted a Mexican fiesta for some of our closest Peruvian friends. Over 50 came!! It was so much fun. We got to eat tacos and quesadillas and share the gospel, hang out, talk, dance, and watch some performances by some of the kids in the group. It was such a wonderful night and something we could not have done without the money Southmont has given us for ministry purposes. Such a blessing. It was my first Peruvian party, (and to think that I helped host it...scary!! Haha) But I think it went well considering that the people didn´t want to leave even after they had eaten, the music had stopped. It was so cool to see some of our friends in a group setting really step out and start opporating in their giftings. One of my friends is very good at making others feel welcome, so she was very lively and got people involved. Another was walking around with a plate of glasses full of coke, serving the other guests. Another was filming the party for us with our camera. Another brought a sound system (without us even asking!) Another had brought her guitar and organized a few songs to perform. Let me tell you, it was incredible. Tons of work, but so much fun. Please pray for each of the people that were at that party...they are in some way involved in our ministry here.

Rainey...she is a neighbor who will be moving back to the jungle on Monday...please pray for her protection and that God will draw her closer to Himself.

Family that hosts our first house church. Please pray that gospel will become something that moves from the head to the heart.

Nicchola and his family!!! Finally got to hang out with him!

Capricio and I. What a cutie!

Today, we started our 5th house church in the streets of downtown Ventanilla with about 10 kids. Please pray that the Lord will use this to touch the families that work in the nearby market and neighborhoods. Today went great. We brought a ball and played some fun games, sang, and talked about creation, Adam and Eve and the problem of sin and redemption. I will post pics about this tomorrow. Hope you enjoy!



The trip of a lifetime...Photojournal

So, I´m liking the idea of doing photojournals for these trips, so forgive the pictures =)

Our plane the beautiful mountain city we flew into to take a 6 hr. bus to the destination town. When we finally got there, our friend met us there, and we went to go find a hostal and get situated. It was late, so our friend went back to his house, and we went to bed. That next morning, we went out to grab breakfast and ended up finding some women who wanted to study the Bible later that day. It turned out to be something much bigger than that. =)

We brought an audioBible in Quechua, which is their native language. We were sitting around listening to Luke about when Jesus died on the cross.

We also brought bracelets with symbols explaining the gospel on them. So that gave us some opportunities to talk to people about the gospel.

Look who I found in the street! So cute...

Two ladies that I got to talk to for a little while, and a precious little boy that just liked hanging out there with us.

Part of a family that was walking by

Mom and baby

Many of the woman in this town carry all kinds of things on their back...sometimes their children, sometimes clothes or food or things they have bought.

Cuties.

Explaining: Jesús Cristo vino a la tierra, muro en la cruz, resucito al tercer día, se fue al cielo, y algun día va a regresar para las personas que han dado su vida a él. (Jesus Christ came to the earth, died on the cross, rose again the thrid day, went to heaven, and one day he will come back for the people that have given their lives to Him.)

One of the ladies let me borrow an extra hat she had.

Lauren sharing her heart with a woman.

This kid was sooo cute.

 

This precious woman was 28 years old but looked like she could have been 40 or 50. She had some kind of sickness that made her whole body ache. She´d had this for about a year. I asked her if I could pray for her. She said yes. I also got to talk with her and then one of my Christian Peruvian friends came up and started talking to us, and he shared his testamony with her. It was such a cool moment, because it was the first time my friend had shared his testamony with someone other than Lauren and I.

This girl is 13 years old. She sells tea in the street every day to earn money for her and her 9 brothers and sisters. She invited us to her house and we went...

This is us inside of her house with two of her brothers. We found out that three of the ten kids live in an orpahange down the road, and the other 7 live in a tiny tiny room that they rent with a part upstairs that I´m sure was probably just about as small. The father left some time ago, so they have to make do with whatever money the mom and her kids can bring in. 

Precious boys.

This was the son of the sixteen-year old sister....makes 9 living under one tiny roof.

They only go to school for 3 hours a day, and one the way to walking them to school that night, we stopped by school supply shop and Lauren bought them a few school supplies. What a precious family. Such sweet memories that I will never forget.

The following day, we woke up and went to the local nursing home to do a quick Bible study and some activities with the people there.

Many of the people here look like they are so much older than they are. Many of them have had such hard lives. None of them sleep there, because there are not the funds to be able to support people actually living there. The people come from about 8 in the morning to about 2 in the afternoon. They eat breakfast and lunch there and work on things like studying Spanish (most of them speak Quechua), working in the garden, sewing, cooking, and many of them are able to get a bath as well.

We taught them a few songs, and they were so great to sing and clap along with us!

This precious man was so involved in what we were doing.

We walked to the back of the compound and found these ladies making yarn out of wool. This is a common practice called ¨hilando.¨

This was such a neat experience. It´s crazy to think that 40 or 50 years ago some of these precious ladies were my age.

Next, headed out to see a place I´d been dreaming about seeing for a while now. Lauren had told me that this was the most beautiful place she´d seen in Peru, and after I´d seen it, I agreed. It´s called ¨Three Canyons.¨

Look! I can do stunts!! Hehe.

The bridge made out of hay.

Motorcyle crossing hay bridge.

It´s okay. Be jeaous. It was pretty awesome. =) You can see the ¨three canyons¨ in the background.

This is the type of houses many of the families live in when they work in the ¨campo¨or field (Three Canyons is located in this type of terrain). Most of the family spend a good part of their year working in the campo to harvest potatoes and other food. The families eat or sell what they produce, but it is a major part of life in the mountains.

Hiking on up

Lauren dancing with a woman who also took her necklace...hhahah oh the stories.

Another bridge we crossed.

 

A woman that was resting at the end of the bridge.

Llamita!!! (a little llama)

We headed back to the town to eat dinner and headed to bed. What a great day!

The next day, one of our friends invited us to come eat lunch at her house...there is our picnic lunch (so yummy...potatoes and home made cheese) and then we headed back to the bus station to catch our bus and flight back to Lima. God did so many amazing things during this trip. Again, I can not put pictures or mention names of the sweet friends we hung out with, but we were able to leave materials with our friend, and he is going to start a house church there. It was such a great time to get to hang out with him and get to talk about what God is doing in his life. We were also able to have a prayer time with him, which was a really cool experience. Please pray for the housechurch he is starting, as well as the one that will be started in the other mountain city I blogged about below. Blessings!