Saturday, June 26, 2010
OH the wheels on the bus go round and round.
So in just an hour we will be leaving ("we", being the NEBC team, Emily, Travis and I) for Lima. It is my official job today to escort the team safely back to Lima and their hotel in Magdalena. As soon as I drop them off and am assured that they will be getting themselves to Cuzco alright, I will be officially on vacation! WhooooHoooo! Please be praying for my family today as they will be spending the entire day traveling to Peru. They will be flying from KC to Miami, to Panama City, Panama, to Lima. And they are due to get in to Lima at 12:30am. Pray for safety, for making all connections and please . . . for NO LOST LUGGAGE :)!!!! I’ll be looking forward to filling you all in on the time with the fam. It’s the first time we will all have been together in two years!
Friday, June 25, 2010
Final Friday
Well the week is almost over and it has indeed been a full week of gospel sharing, workshop giving, translating and mountain climbing! The team has been going non-stop and of course that means that my team has been going non-stop along with them, which is why I am just now able to update the old blog. Today is the final Friday of ministry with the team here in Tarma. We will be going to one more school to share workshops and the gospel, and then tonight will be our farewell event at Chichos, for all of the kids we have met during the week.
Something neat that occurred due to our presence at so many schools in town is that we met a girl who will be having her Quinciñera tonight immediately after our closing even in Chichos, so she invited the whole team! How neat that the group will be able to experience one of the typical cultural aspects of Peru, the all-important quinciñera, the “right-of-passage” of sorts from girlhood to womanhood. It should be a lot of fun.
Also this week has been full of Emily time, and I was also blessed to meet her incredible boyfriend Travis, who came along with the team. They have both spent the week encouraging me, making me laugh, uplifting me spiritually and just being wonderful friends. The highlight of the week for me was yesterday morning when Travis, Emily and I got up early to climb the mountain behind my house. It took us two hours to get up to the peak and make it back down, but the view was absolutely breathtaking. I’m so thankful to have had time to spend with this couple and be reminded of what it feels like to have friends around :)
Saturday, June 19, 2010
Updates
So, I finally have more to update.
Life in Tarma is a whirling dervish. The last weeks have been spent preparing for the weeks to come. Now those weeks to come are here.
Tomorrow the team from Northeast Bible Church (TX) will arrive with Meredith and Emily from Lima and we will begin another week of intense ministry in and throughout the city. I’ve been looking forward to the team for a while now because I was so encouraged by the last team (TBarM Camps) that came through. It was great to share our secluded little ministry with “my people”. The past weeks of preparation have been wonderful mainly due the presence of Emily Maddock (picture to come), a seasoned missionary of 26 how has blessed me beyond measure with her wisdom, her humor and her friendship. I have continued on in my daily life in Tarma without friends, and have gotten used to it. But then Emily came and reminded me how wonderful it is to have someone to share life with. I have laughed more in these past two weeks than I have in a while, and have spent a lot of time talking with Emily about ministry, about life in general and about the future. We’ve decided that we are pretty much the same person, and I can’t begin to express to you all how amazing it feels to be understood by someone when you feel like you are misunderstood all day every day :).
Well, like I said, the preparations have all gone really well and the ministry is now upon us. The team will arrive tomorrow evening, and we will pretty much just do dinner and then go to bed. The 6.5 hour bus ride from Lima can really take it out of you, and the altitude often messes with people. So I suppose when I say that the ministry is now upon us I really mean that we’ll get started on Monday. I’ll try to post more in the days to come about how the ministry is going and how God is working. And of course I’ll post pictures too. And maybe even a few videos.
How can you be praying for the week?
- Pray that God would open new doors that would lead to new contacts and new Bible study groups.
- Pray that God would bring men into our circles, men who are ready to commit to something greater than themselves.
- Pray that the team would be safe from accident, injury and illness while they are in Peru . . . I don’t want to have to take anyone else to the emergency room!
Life in Tarma is a whirling dervish. The last weeks have been spent preparing for the weeks to come. Now those weeks to come are here.
Tomorrow the team from Northeast Bible Church (TX) will arrive with Meredith and Emily from Lima and we will begin another week of intense ministry in and throughout the city. I’ve been looking forward to the team for a while now because I was so encouraged by the last team (TBarM Camps) that came through. It was great to share our secluded little ministry with “my people”. The past weeks of preparation have been wonderful mainly due the presence of Emily Maddock (picture to come), a seasoned missionary of 26 how has blessed me beyond measure with her wisdom, her humor and her friendship. I have continued on in my daily life in Tarma without friends, and have gotten used to it. But then Emily came and reminded me how wonderful it is to have someone to share life with. I have laughed more in these past two weeks than I have in a while, and have spent a lot of time talking with Emily about ministry, about life in general and about the future. We’ve decided that we are pretty much the same person, and I can’t begin to express to you all how amazing it feels to be understood by someone when you feel like you are misunderstood all day every day :).
Well, like I said, the preparations have all gone really well and the ministry is now upon us. The team will arrive tomorrow evening, and we will pretty much just do dinner and then go to bed. The 6.5 hour bus ride from Lima can really take it out of you, and the altitude often messes with people. So I suppose when I say that the ministry is now upon us I really mean that we’ll get started on Monday. I’ll try to post more in the days to come about how the ministry is going and how God is working. And of course I’ll post pictures too. And maybe even a few videos.
How can you be praying for the week?
- Pray that God would open new doors that would lead to new contacts and new Bible study groups.
- Pray that God would bring men into our circles, men who are ready to commit to something greater than themselves.
- Pray that the team would be safe from accident, injury and illness while they are in Peru . . . I don’t want to have to take anyone else to the emergency room!
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
After nearly a month . . .
Well my friends, family and blog readers, it has been nearly a month since I have last posted anything on my blog, and I apologize if you have been waiting for an update. I guess there just wasn’t too much to update this past month. It does happen. We are, as you know, in the midst of Bible studies and discipleship groups, school devotionals, kid’s clubs and English classes.
We are hitting a new barrier in ministry as we have had a presence in Tarma for almost a year now, and yet our groups are pure women. There are no men who have taken a consistent interest in our ministry, and therefore we can only advance so far in the work at hand. We need prayer support here because the lack of men is a result of the culture, of time-management/priority issues and of lack of interest in religion. We have several groups of women who are growing and seeking to know more, and we have a successful children’s hour every Saturday morning, but if our goal is to “Develop, Empower and Release” we can only go so far with women and children (and I say that with all the respect in the world). I have been meditating on 1 Timothy and Titus, and Paul’s counsel for the standards of Deacons and Elders and Overseers in the church. These leaders are called to a higher standard, men of respect, humility who are above reproach. But men like that do not exist here in Tarma, and the ones that have the potential to grow into this kind of leader don’t see God as a priority in their lives. So please be praying for our team and the future of this ministry because God and the Holy Spirit are really the only ones that can turn the hearts of these men.
Thanks.
We are hitting a new barrier in ministry as we have had a presence in Tarma for almost a year now, and yet our groups are pure women. There are no men who have taken a consistent interest in our ministry, and therefore we can only advance so far in the work at hand. We need prayer support here because the lack of men is a result of the culture, of time-management/priority issues and of lack of interest in religion. We have several groups of women who are growing and seeking to know more, and we have a successful children’s hour every Saturday morning, but if our goal is to “Develop, Empower and Release” we can only go so far with women and children (and I say that with all the respect in the world). I have been meditating on 1 Timothy and Titus, and Paul’s counsel for the standards of Deacons and Elders and Overseers in the church. These leaders are called to a higher standard, men of respect, humility who are above reproach. But men like that do not exist here in Tarma, and the ones that have the potential to grow into this kind of leader don’t see God as a priority in their lives. So please be praying for our team and the future of this ministry because God and the Holy Spirit are really the only ones that can turn the hearts of these men.
Thanks.
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