We are already almost a third of the way done with the Race, and time is flying by faster than I want it to. As always, I want to tell stories from across our whole squad, and not just my team, so here are some of the highlights from the last month of ministry all over Peru!
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Whitney Munroe – Savage Ministries
This month team valor served with savage ministries. A ministry that provides schooling for children 3-5, has church services 2 times weekly, and participates in sports ministry in the surrounding community.
One amazing thing team valor got to witness was the preschoolers coming to school for the first week of school during their first week of ministry. There were crying children everywhere, scared about leaving their moms for the first time and team valor got to hold them tight. We witnessed the children go from crying when coming into the school to giggling as they ran in. It was great to see the transformation. We are learning how to say Spanish numbers and colors right alongside some brilliant three, four, and five year olds.
After teaching from 8-12 we took a quick siesta before going out to play volleyball with parents of some of our students and more fantastic community members. We are pros at volley now!
It was amazing to see Gods hand in each child’s life and in the life of the community members we got to minister to during sports games. Through volley spikes and laughter we made longtime friends who’s birthdays we will never forget. We even got to celebrate one girls 18th birthday with her, and of course we brought Judy’s famous chocolate cake to share. It was a great month filled with community and loving hearts that feels impossible to leave.
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Maci New – Calvary Chapel, Cusco
One of our favorite parts about ministry this month as a team was working with the girls from the orphanage of Casa Verde. We established relationships with them and just poured out love to them that they so desperately craved. For me personally, one of my favorite moments this month was when Shelby, Em, and I went with two of the church interns to take some of the older girls on what we thought was a trip to the park to play soccer, but actually ended up being a very extraneous hike for over two hours. Just spending time with them, getting to know all about them while picking fruit from the side of the road and complaining about how far away the “park” was, was such a profound moment of joy for me this month.
The main ministry activities we had every week this month included youth service and worship & prayer service. The youth services were held on Friday nights and here we played games, provided a snack, shared testimonies, had a teaching, and we ended with worship. These nights were pretty powerful, especially for our team. We had a few girls teach and share their testimonies that hadn’t done so before (with anyone other than our team) and their obedience produced obvious fruit each time. The worship & prayer service was mostly just a time of intercession. We worshipped and prayed for one another but also for church leaders, the community/neighborhood, and whatever else the Holy Spirit laid on our hearts.
We also put on a three-day vacation bible school in a local park for one hour each day. The kids were just getting out of school and we rallied them up by playing jump rope- Peruvian kids are crazy obsessed with jump rope- and other games like fruit salad. We followed the games with a skit where each one of us (team Poiema) had a role that we ridiculously and overdramatically acted out. We used the Bible stories of David & Goliath, the Good Samaritan, and the Prodigal Son. After we acted them out we asked thought-provoking questions- our hosts explained when we first arrived that religion holds a lot of weight with the people of Cusco. They are more interested in following religious rituals than having a personal relationship with God. Knowing this, we were intentional about preparing questions that dug deeper than religion. For example, with the Prodigal Son, we were sure to ask about relational things: what makes a good father, why was the brother angry, etc. After the skit and questions we had a related craft and then we ended by handing out a snack and a flyer for the church.
Sunday’s were interesting for several reasons: 1. The sanctuary was tiny and we got kicked out of our seats on multiple occasions; 2. The message was delivered completely in Spanish so half of us had no idea what was being talked about; & 3. The door to the compound was left open so passers by could come in, but this always led to the janky street dogs joining the service.
Overall, this was a challenging month but one God used for His glory <3
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John Sanchez – Iglesia Macedonia
Ministry this month was amazing. We spent a total of 2 weeks working in a small community in Lima Peru called Canta and 1 week in a small village in the jungle called Chuiquibambilla. We spent the first week in Lima helping a new Pastor, Pastor Jorge build relationships in his community visiting people in marketplaces, sharing the love of Jesus with them and inviting them to his church, and playing soccer with kids every afternoon followed . After our work in that community we transitioned over to ministry in the jungle where we did a lot of construction work and painting as well as playing with children and teaching them bible lessons. The bulk of our ministry, however, was helping Pastor Jorge build relationships with the local vendors in our community. The ministry was supposed to be us working in a school for two weeks cleaning and making it look nice as a way to open the door for the Pastor to be invited into the school.
However, the principal met him with a lot of resistance when it came to working in the school. So Pastor Jorge shifted gears for us and had us go to the local markets and hand out tracks. This was pretty awkward for me at first. I didn’t really know what the tracks. This was really awkward at first. I didn’t really know what the tracks said so I was sort of just handing them out and telling people Jesus loved them. It felt even more awkward because of the language barrier, I was the only one on my team that was really saying much and I wanted to include all of my team. So I took a pause and shared my concern with my team. Immediately, Michael gave me some words of encouragement and told me that though it seems ineffective, we are just here being obedient and planting seeds and it is God’s job to water them. I believe that is the perfect summary of our ministry in Canta with Pastor Jorge. We were there to plant seeds of love and Hope and the seeds of healthy relationships and many of our results we may not get to see until much later, but those words of encouragement stuck with me for the rest of our time there. After his words of encouragement, him, being the relational wizard that he is, led the next interaction. We met this guy named Robert who was a candy vendor. We asked him about his family and how we could pray for him and we invited him to the church. Already I can tell the difference between how I approached the previous people and how Michael did. This gave me a model for building relationships with these people and sharing the love of Jesus with them. Over the course of that week we met a lot of people and prayed over so many of them.
Perhaps the coolest part of that week, was that we had the privilege and opportunity to go back and say hello to a lot of the same people we talked to earlier in the week. Many of them were really excited to see us and several called us back to pray for them some more. The people that stood out the most to me was this couple called Jimmy and Delia. We met them the second day of ministry. The second day of ministry was discouraging for me. I spent the whole day talking to people who seemed apathetic to anything I had to say. I tried to build people up and be relational, but it just seemed like people were super resistant. So we all stopped to pray and not long after we ran into Jimmy and Delia. Immediately, I saw how inviting they were to us. Of all the people in the whole market, they were the only ones who offered us somewhere to sit. They had stopped going to church for a while because of their busy schedule, however, their hearts overflowed with love. They saw I had a nasty cough and gave me a tea from their business to help open up my lungs. They gave my teammates some healthy coffee and we just sat there for like 30 minutes talking to them about the word and encouraging them. I was walking around that day, exhausted and I found energy and encouragement from their hospitality. We visited them two more times after that and we saw them come to our goodbye church service. Seeing them and the lasting relationship that they built with Pastor Jorge was just a taste of the fruit of all the work we did those two weeks in Canta.
In addition to all the wonderful relationships we built, Pastor Jorge’s vision to get into the school was finally accomplished on the second to last day of ministry. Our team had the opportunity to serve the school by cleaning out the front of the school and they had the wonderful opportunity to play with the kids during their recess. I was not able to make it because I was sick, however, the teachers and staff loved what our team did and the principal told the Pastor that he would be willing to open up the school in the future for him to run classes for the parents about various topics like, drugs and alcohol, sexuality and many more topics like this. Overall, we really had the opportunity to help a brand new church and Pastor effect a whole community for the kingdom of God. The seeds of a thriving church community have been planted and I think I can speak for my whole team as to how excited we are to here about the wonderful things the Lord does in this amazing community of Canta.
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Lauren Kenley – Josephine House
This month my team and I had the opportunity to partner with Blue Castle Ministries and to serve alongside the Josephine House. Blue Castle Ministries was started by Tim and Holly Anderson shortly after they felt the Lord calling them to move themselves and their five young children from South Carolina to Cusco, Peru. The work Tim and Holly do varies from working with existing orphanages and helping to start new ones, discipleship, street evangelism, and various forms of church ministry. One of the main parts of their ministry in Peru is working with the Josephine House. The Josephine House was started by Holly’s parents upon realizing the critical need for orphan care in the city of Cusco. The Josephine House is currently home to thirteen babies under the age of two and a very sweet and energetic six-year-old.
My team and I spent countless hours on the floor surrounded by toys, rocking crying babies, and helping their caregivers feed, clothe, and change all the babies. We took turns washing the never-ending pile of dishes in the sink, folding lots of baby clothes and then trying our hardest to remembers who wore what clothes. In the mornings, we would spend time with the children individually and working on a variety of developmental skills such as walking, counting, hand eye coordination, etc.
This month the Lord taught my team and I so much about his love through working with these precious children. One day, we were helping give the babies their milk when one of the cutest girls walked over to me. A* is super tiny, has the biggest eyes, and carries with her the cutest little smile! She walked towards me and sat in my lap. It was then that I noticed, her white onesie, with blue and purple letters that stated, “Daddy’s Girl”. For a moment, my heart broke. Most of the children in the orphanage have never known a father. The orphanage workers, who are seriously amazing, are all female and based upon what we’ve heard many of the children were brought to the Josephine House as babies, meaning for the majority of children in the home they don’t even understand what it means to have a father.
Looking around the room full of children who have been abandoned by the very ones who God designed to care for them brings with it a full range of emotions. For whatever reason it may be, their parents had to or chose to, or needed to give them up. While there is no judgement for those precious mothers, who graciously choose life for their sweet babies, it reminded me all the more of the brokenness of the world. The world, as God intended it, was not intended to be full of orphanages. Babies were not supposed to be raised by kind “Tia’s” in homes flooded with babies that the state cannot take care of. When God created man, He had a much different idea of family, that sadly the brokenness and sinfulness of the world has corrupted, making it so very necessary for orphanages to open up their doors and love one of the most vulnerability populations among us.
Sitting there holding sweet A*, the Lord quietly whispered to me that I have missed his heart as a loving Father. In the midst of the chaos of giving so many babies, so many bottles he reminded me that she was indeed a “Daddy’s Girl” and the His love for her far surpassed the love I had ever experienced from earthly Father. I sat there holding A* and was reminded that our God is truly a good Father. Of all the places she could have been taken to, she was taken to Josephine House. A home where she is loved, cared for exceptionally well, and where people desire to see her adopted into a good home.
Overall, the Lord used the month of Peru to grow us as a team, teach us so much about His love, and just how beautiful missions can be even when you cannot communicate the Gospel to the very people you’re called to love and serve.
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Tyler Inman – Inca Link
This month we worked with Inca Link Peru in Trujillo. We did a broad range of things from working with the community that lives at the city dump, to teaching a mothers’ bible study and doing kids programs in the evenings and also doing sports ministry. A huge testimony from this month was with the mothers Bible study. Usually only women go to this but we got the privilege of going and sharing our testimonies and doing worship with the moms. We didn’t feel like we were really making and impact all month until the director of the ministry told us that the mom’s loved our testimonies and really related to them and couldn’t stop talking about them. Because of the Jesus story in our testimonies some of the moms started bringing their kids back to the children’s program! It was an amazing example of how God is always working we just don’t always see it.
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McKenzie Murdock – Iglesia La En Torchia
This month our ministry was spent in a quaint beach town called Pacasmayo. It was right along the coastal region and a bit of a distance into the desert. We got to work with Pastor Auden and Wendy at Iglesia La En Torchia. Our mornings were spent serving the church through house projects such as; painting, cleaning and organizing, and organizing medication for a health fair. After lunch, our afternoons were spent working with the after-school program. It was such a blessing to get to pour into the students there! We helped them with their homework, teach English classes, and played lots of soccer. Our nights were spent in a few different ways. Three evenings a night we would teach English at the church. The other nights were spent rehearsing for street evangelism or helping out with the youth services. The English classes were very successful with an average of forty people each class.
Overall, this month was filled with so much love from the community around us! We were welcomed warmly by the church and its people. We really wanted to take time throughout our month here to pour back into the community, and ATL (ask the Lord) was a great way for us. Once a week we would ask the Lord where He wanted to direct us that day through showing us a color, a name, a place, etc. One of the week’s we chose to have two stay behind to remain in intercessory prayer while the others went out on the streets. Julie and McKenzie stayed behind to pray. Through this prayer time they were both given visions to speak out over the town. One of those visions was showing the church as a bright light then transformed into the light extending over the entire town to be a shining light for all to see. It was such a beautiful moment for God to reveal how He is getting ready to turn the heart of these people back to Him. To have an entire city on fire for Jesus and shining brightly. God loves this city and His people so dearly, and how blessed we felt to have been experienced the beginning of the work God is doing there In Pacasmayo.
