Happy New Year . . . 3 days early

Since the time-honored tradition of making resolutions for the approaching new year is upon us, I figure I’ll try to get a jump on the sentimental moments and start hashing out what summed up 2010, and what I promise-to-myself-that-I-will-do-no-matter-what in 2011.

2010This was a year of all things unfamiliar. It was a year of firsts, a year of overcoming insecurities, fears and doubts and a year of having to depend more upon God than I’ve ever had to do in the past. This was a year of changing relationship and learning how to deal with that change. This year I, among other things,taught 96 English classes, traveled between Tarma and Lima 7 times, got sick twice, helped receive 3 short-term teams, learned how to cook Peruvian food, marched in my first parade, and taught a workshop in Spanish to educated adults, owned my first pet (Pacha), and lived in a land where yes means no and birthdays are about more sacred than life itself. It was a busy year full of ups and downs and in the end I had to work hard to get through this year. I praise God for giving me strength for each day and for remaining faithful to me as I try to remain obedient to him. So with all the pleasure in the world I say out with the old . . .

2011By this time next year I will be turning 26, I will have been married for 6 months, and I will hopefully have a job doing something that I will hopefully enjoy. I could be living in an apartment or a duplex or a house, and I will most likely be enjoying the small aspects of life such as, carpet, instant hot water, bathtubs, Subway, the change of seasons, and the ability to nest (as in stay in one place for a long time, not actually build a nest). In 2011 I would like to see myself using my Spanish on a regular basis in some form, I would like to have an idea about what I might like to “do” long-term and have started the process of making that career happen. I would like to take each day as it comes and never end a day without thanking God for his blessings. I want to learn how to cook a turkey and how to tile a bathroom. And if possible, I want to take a vacation to Boston, a city I’ve never been to. I suppose I ought to include the self-help goals of losing weight and working on character flaws and such, but really I figure God is in charge of molding me and shaping me so I’m more or less content to sit back and allow him to make me better than I am.

So out goes one year in comes another, and as I sit here and joke about our traditions and obsessions with the new year, I reflect on the consistency of God’s grace and faithfulness, how he has taken care of us and brought us through another year of life on this earth. May we all glorify him more, serve him better, and reflect his love more fully in the year that comes.
God Bless,
Bethany

How does God call people to give their lives in missions?

John Piper says, “He does it, along with other influences, by the mysterious and wonderful awakening of fear-conquering desire for the work through the preaching of his word. He does it by helping us count the costs so there is no romantic naiveté about missions. And he does it by filling us with a longing to know these blessings to the full”. I would say that this is an accurate description of how God moves in the heart and draws people to the special calling of missions. I would also say that this is how God moved me so many years ago, first through the ministry in Mexico, later in Argentina and ultimately in my sorority in college. All “foreign” lands, all needing the love and truth of God and His word.
I was recalling this morning my commissioning the Sunday before I left home to give two years of my life to this calling, when I was asked, “Why do this? Why give two years of your life to this work?” I remember my response clearly – that beyond God moving circumstances and drawing me to this ministry, the greatest reason was that 60 years from now I didn’t want to look back on my life and wish I had done more. I used to be passionate, full of vision and possibility, not thinking about the risks but of the blessings. Maybe my response to Brian’s question two years ago was cliché, but it was true in my heart.
Now with only five weeks remaining in Peru I look back over my time and can’t help but to reflect and give an account of the two years I’ve spent in this church-planting ministry. Someone asked me once not long ago to describe in a nutshell my time in Peru. And as I thought about the question and gave my response, I couldn’t help but feel a bit discouraged at how I summed up my time here.
My missions experience in Peru has been passionless obedience, for the sake of obedience, to God’s call and God’s design on my life.
Where did that wide-eyed, passionate and visionary little girl go? Deep down I believe she is still there, but why did she leave me when I most wanted her to be present? As I think over my time here I have to admit that I am somewhat ashamed of my selfish grumblings and negative attitude driven mainly by dissatisfaction with where I am now that my formal ministry responsibilities have ended. I’m tired, physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually and when it comes down to it, I just don’t want to be here anymore. How’s that for a super un-spiritual confession?

This morning I listened to a sermon by John Piper entitled “I Am Sending You Out as Sheep in the Midst of Wolves”. He preached on the passage of Matthew 10:16-31, and addresses the dangers, and the blessings of living out a calling to frontier missions. As he spoke and dissected the passage, as the blessings greatly outweighed the dangers I was convicted of my selfishness and lack of desire to be here. He notes that the first blessing is “The Blessing of Being Sent by Christ” – what a great privilege to be called by Christ and sent by Him to do a good work. What a great privilege. How must Christ feel by my dissatisfaction of this great privilege?
I was speaking to my mom the other day and was struck when she reminded me that God’s timing always has purpose, that there is always reason behind when we leave and when we come home. She was right, and I needed to be reminded of that. I have five weeks left and I now am faced with a choice to continue living these last days grumbling about how I would rather be home with my family, friends and fiancé for Christmas, or I can remember the blessings of being here, I can pray with all my might that God would reignite the passion I once felt for missions and I can move forward in forgiveness and grace remember that God has reason behind His timing.
I humbly ask for your prayers in these final weeks that I would choose to be “the better man”, and press on in spite of missing my loved ones during the holidays, in spite of being tired, and in spite of feeling unworthy to be here. Pray that I would take every opportunity to share the love of Christ with those I am around and that I would not waste a single minute that I remain a missionary of Jesus Christ.

Christmas Celebration

This past Monday night the ADIEL Tarma team (my team) hosted our end-of-the-year Christmas Celebration to end the “official” Bible studies for the year 2010. It was the best turnout that we’ve had all year with a grand total of 59 people in attendance. We held the event at Chavin, a local restaurant where we have given studies this year with the owner and her family. We played some games, sang Christmas carols, a sketch, testimonies and a short wrap up of our studies on forgiveness at Christmas. We celebrated with paneton and hot chocolate, the typical Christmas food of Peru, and welcomed several guests who have never attended any of our events before. We as a team are very satisfied with the turnout and the event in general, and it was a great way to end our official ministry for the year.
So what now you might ask? Well, Meredith and Julio are taking some vacation time this month, which leaves Elsa and me to visit contacts, invite people over for lonche, and celebrate the season together. While the official ministry is done for the year, we are no means done with personal ministry, unofficial bible studies and discipleship. We are also making plans for the 2011 calendar year and already have another University Internship week planned for the second week in January, this time opening up the week to both university students and adults. So we keep plugging away!

The Biggest Surprise of My Life!

Boy does good news travel fast! Even though most of you have heard the news, I figure I might as well post something to make the announcement a little more official. This past weekend, Meredith and I traveled to Lima (to Chaclacayo, a suburb just outside of Lima) to the house of our fellow missionaries, the Bruggers, to spend Thanksgiving with them and the ReachGlobal missionaries in Peru. I was excited to go mainly because it was going to be my last few vacation days of the year, and after the last short-term team I was ready to take a few days away from Tarma. Meredith and I arrived Thursday night and enjoyed all day Friday at the Brugger’s house, relaxing, and enjoying the quiet. Because Thanksgiving is not celebrated here in Peru (makes sense since the pilgrims didn’t land down here), the Bruggers had to work Thursday and Friday as usual (they are school teachers in Lima). So our official Thanksgiving celebration wasn’t planned until Saturday.

The entire morning was spent getting the turkey ready, making stuffing, guacamole, spinach and artichoke dip (thanks to my good friend Andi’s amazing recipe), pumpkin pies, pecan pies, cheesecakes, and other deserts. I was in charge of preparing the garlic mashed potatoes, and had just started mashing them in the giant pot on the stove (there were going to be 20 of us at dinner) when, out of the blue Denise Bruggers asks me to take a tablecloth up to the room where Meredith was setting the table for the kids. I will confess that I was confused and a bit annoyed that she asked me since there were 15 other people around not doing as much, but I took the table up to the roof anyway. Meredith was nowhere to be seen, which only frustrated me more, so I threw the tablecloth on the table and turned around to make my way back downstairs, only to come face to face with Jason! I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw him standing there with a huge grin on his face.

You have to understand that Jason and I had talked about the possibility of him coming down to visit me one more time this year around Thanksgiving, but in the end both of us decided that it would be wiser to just wait since I’d be coming home soon after. So he wasn’t supposed to be there, yet there he was! Overjoyed by the coolest surprise ever, I sounded like an idiot as I kept repeating my unbelief over and over again. Pretty soon we sat down and Jason started explaining all the reasons he had come. He wanted to see me, he wanted to help me move some of my things home, he wanted to spend Thanksgiving and his birthday with me, but the biggest reason was that he had a question to ask me – one that he had been wanting to ask me for over a year now.

That is when he got down on one knee and explained that Proverbs says that a man who has found a wife has found a good thing, and he had found a good thing in me. He asked me to marry him, and in my excitement I said yes before he could even get the ring out! I didn’t care, because his presence and his proposal was the best surprise of my life, and one of the happiest moments of my life.
It has been difficult to be apart from the person you love, especially for as long as we have been apart. But God has been so faithful to maintain us, to be our strength and our hope. And now we can celebrate in two joys: that I will soon be home and we will be together once again, and that we can now start planning our lives and future together. Thank you to all of you who have been supporting us through this season of separation, and who can now celebrate with us as we close this season and begin a new one.

We’re engaged!!!

Jason stayed the entire week with me here in Peru and we split our time between Lima and Tarma. Meredith organized a bit of an engagement/birthday party for Jason in Tarma, and we continued to celebrate with friends and contacts throughout the week. Now I'm down to my final two months in Peru, and am even more anxious to finish up and get home. I still have a lot of goodbye's ahead of me on this end, and I do want to finish up well. The time will go fast and I'll be home again before I know it, celebrating with all of you!

8 Weeks

This past week my ReachGlobal “Boss” or, church-planting coach, came to visit Meredith and me in Tarma. It had been a year since he had been here and it was fun to show him all that we have accomplished in 2010. We spent time talking about the future and what we as a team would like to see happen in the next 5 years or so. We talked about my transition as I finish up this season of ministry and head home to start a completely different season of life.
Today marks the start of my final 8 weeks in Peru. People have asked me if the time has gone quickly, and the answer always seems to be yes and no. Each day of transition into a new culture, of learning how to live on my own, doing ministry in different and sometimes frustrating ways made the time seem like it was crawling by. Being away from my family, my friends and Jason has been difficult as well. Yet now that I’m standing here a mere 8 weeks from home, I do wonder how the two years I committed to ReachGlobal has gone. My church-planting coach asked me a series of questions a while ago to help me process through the upcoming change and transition. He asked me:

Where do I want to go before I leave Peru?
Who do I want to spend personal time with?
What is the mark I want to leave on Tarma?
What can I do to help my team before I leave them?

These were valid questions that I have spent several weeks thinking through. The places I want to go are generally restaurants so that I can eat the typical food of Peru that isn’t widely found at home. The people I want to spend time with is a small group since I still do not have personal friends apart from my team and my tutor, Diana. I do anticipate that the hardest goodbyes will be with Stephen Hawking High School and my 60 students for whom I have come to care deeply.
When I think about leaving a “mark” on Tarma, my mind really draws a blank. How can one person really “mark” a community in just a year? What would that look like and how would it be accomplished. To be perfectly honest, I’m not all that concerned with leaving my mark on this place. What I want most of all is to have done all I possibly could to help this team and this ministry advance and grow. I want to come back three or four years from now and see that what I helped start has developed into a consistent, solid and God honoring ministry that is changing the lives of the people of Tarma. Could that be called a “mark”? I suppose. It is really the only mark I am interested in leaving.
As far as helping my team, I have discovered a few practical ways that I can spend these last weeks as I phase out of ministry responsibilities and start packing up my things. The house that Elsa and Meredith and I rent is a three-bedroom, without any closets. When we moved in we realized that we would need some place to store our suitcases, boxes and ministry materials. So we decided that in addition to our apartment, we would rent one room from the apartment next door that would serve as our storeroom. Obviously once I leave Tarma, there will be no need to rent the extra room since there will be one in our own apartment – so one of the things that I want to help my team with is to move out of my room and help move all of our ministry supplies and extra stuff into an organized space in the soon to be spare bedroom. It seems like a silly way to spend my last days in Tarma, but I thrive on organization, and I know that this is something that I can leave my team and my roommates with - something practical.
So there you have it, the grand plan for the final weeks of my life and ministry in Peru.

Stop! Oh wait, oh please Mr. Postman!

Well this is your official notice – To those of you who have taken it upon yourselves to encourage me with boxes of goodies and letters sent to our P.O. Box here in Tarma, I thank you from the deepest part of my heart. Getting mail is always fun, especially when you’re far away from home and when it’s not junk mail. But due to the few weeks that I have left in Peru, the Christmas season being upon us, and the general slowness of the Peruvian post, I would like to ask that no more letters/ boxes be sent to me while I’m in Peru because - - - I may not get them! Last year my Grandmother sent me a box the last week of November, and I didn’t get it until my birthday in mid-January. So unless you are okay with just my team receiving your goodies, I thank you for your generosity and love these past two years, and inform you that there is no need to send anything more :)

Satisfied

When I think of the word ‘satisfied’ I think about the many ways we use it. I am a satisfied customer. I am satisfied with the work. Or in Spanish, estoy satisfecha, to describe that I’m full and don’t want any more food. When I think of this past week of ministry with the Faith E-Free team from Wisconsin, I think of the adjectives happy, pleased, content . . . satisfied. The adjective ‘tired’ comes to mind too, but mainly I am satisfied.
It was an interesting change to go from working with youth teams to working with a team of adults, but I will confess that overall I enjoyed the adult team more. Maybe that is because any ministry we would do with an adult team fits better into where we are as a missionary team at this point in the Tarma ministry than a team of youth. The 6 days of ministry included cooking classes, basketball seminars, workshops on Administration and Finance, English classes, visitations, a painting project and workday as well as a final event. Our goal was to use this team of professionals to reach out to the professionals of Tarma, and in some ways, announce our presence. In the process of all our activities we got to know 3 English teachers from a public all-boys school in town that we had not had the opportunity to meet before. As a result, Meredith and I will be doing our Christmas Bible studies with them in English. We also met and have begun to coordinate with two social workers that work for the city who are dedicated to the graduating seniors of poor and broken families, to teach them values, finances, good decision-making skills and the belief that they can rise above their situation and circumstance. Because of the team and these events we are now able to coordinate with these social workers to give values classes and teach on the love and forgiveness of Christ in the schools of Tarma.
As the week went on I was able to spend time with and get to know individuals on the team and I was encouraged by their willingness to help and serve where we needed them to serve. They were very gracious with me as I learned how to lead in this context, and they were patient with me as I made mistakes. We worked hard together and by our final event we had made several new contacts and reinforced some old ones. It will be interesting to see how many new Bible studies will be started as a result of this team.
As I enter into my final two months of ministry and life in Tarma I hope that “satisfied” will be an adjective that I can use often. We haven’t seen an overwhelming amount of fruit yet in the ministry, and I’m almost certain that I will leave Peru and not know the full impact of my presence and time in Tarma until years later, yet I hope and pray that regardless of visible fruit, I will leave this country, this job and this season of life, satisfied.