Two steps forward, One step back

This past Saturday, my team and I hosted a little Halloween party of sorts for the neighborhood kids, taking the focus off of Halloween and putting it on God. We hosted a Noah’s Ark themed event for all of the children of our neighbors. We have often played with the kids in the street, but in an attempt to gain trust and develop relationships with our neighbors, we decided to start by loving their children. All of the kids were to come dressed up as an animal and their costumes were to be homemade. We too dressed up and represented the bunnies, the cats and the roosters. Noah was also among our party! We sang, we played games and Elsa told the story of Noah and his love and faithfulness to God, and how God in turned blessed Noah. The even reminded me a lot of the VBS that I helped with in Mexico, and the kids were wonderfully excited to play and receive prizes. I pray that this will have honored God as well as allowed the neighbors to trust us a bit more. We hope to host a neighborhood Bible study in our home once a week and are currently trying to establish a day to do it.
Although our event with the children was a success, we are still working through many of the difficulties of relating in another culture. Even Elsa and Julio come across problems as the culture in Lima is really different from the culture in Tarma. We still run into a lot of problems with preparing and praying over company that never shows up or classes where the students don’t show up, or mainly people not showing up in general. As we make progress in one area we still have problem-solving to do in other areas. I suspect that this is a natural part of cross-cultural ministry, and we are waiting on God to open our eyes to what we should be doing differently.