So how about a ministry update? I’m relaxing a bit on our day off at the beach here in Trujillo (with nearly all of the teams in the area – it’s been quite fun) and thought you all might want to know what we’re up to!
We’re living at a children’s home under construction on the outskirts of the Porvenir district of Trujillo, Peru. We’re a bit isolated from the city itself, but the weather is fantastic and we’re surrounded by mountains (and desert, but let’s focus on those mountains, eh?)
Beautiful.
I promise I’ll try to get some more pictures up from this month soon, but I’ve been too busy to get my camera out! Every morning we’re up on the roof at 7:30 for communal worship (we’ve been living with another team for the first two weeks, and last night a third team moved in with us, so the house is ROCKING now!) and then it’s off to work. Most days we’re working at the children’s home. There are a lot of things to do yet before they can open it up to the children, so we’ve been painting (and discovering plumbing problems!) but mostly our work has been outside in the adjacent fields. We’ve done some fertilizing and weeding in the cornfield that will eventually feed several dozen children, and we’ve been making bricks. By hand. Jose is a local brickmaker with 5 years of experience (and he made all the bricks in the area, and I promise you it’s quite impressive) and he’s been apprenticing some of us in the fine art of mixing the local sand with clay via the extremely technologically advanced method of pouring water on it and mashing it together with our feet. It’s incredibly fun. The ‘Gringo bricks’ aren’t exactly as amazing as the ones Jose makes (one passerby commented that our bricks look like we were drunk when we made then!) but together we’ve made a couple thousand bricks in the last two weeks. We’re starting to learn how things go now, so we might get quite a bit more done in this last week of work!
We’ve also been participating in cell group ministry with our local church. Due to travel constraints we’ve had limited opportunity to join them but we have gone out evangelizing in the area, and this Saturday we were invited to join them in their annual sports day! We had a blast playing games and laughing and making friends with our brothers and sisters in the church – a reminder that God speaks all languages even if we don’t!
The main reason we’re making these bricks is for a wall around the area by the children’s home, and the main reason there’s a children’s home is to house some of the many children that live in the Trujillo garbage dump. We’ve had the opportunity twice to visit IncaLink’s daycare right next to the dump, and we’re hoping to actually make a visit this week if the government permission goes through. The children are so beautiful despite the incredible poverty they live in that forces them to look for scraps to live on in the dump – I’m unable to truly express how much it breaks my heart to see these children smiling and laughing and playing when some of them don’t even have parents, and none of them have the comforts of home that we consider necessities in the States. What a blessing God has given us that we can be involved in making a better life for some of these children!
Spiritually there has been a LOT happening for us all this month. Both of the two teams that started the month together spent the first two months on their own, so we have had to adjust to living in a much larger community, but we’ve all been able to see the marvelous things that we can share with each other so it’s been wonderful. We’ve had a roof we can wander up to (or sleep on – there is a small but growing tent city up there) whenever we want, and there have been some amazing close encounters with God in the quiet of a high place with a clear view of the God’s creation. We’ve been seeing fires lit in people to share what they’ve been receiving by God, and many of us have been awakened anew to the realization that we are in a world at war, and every day we must don the armor of God and fight earnestly for everything in our lives to remain holy to God.
We’re the first people to ever live in this house, and it’s been heavy on my heart that we remember how important it is to make God’s mark on the house. It’s impossible to call God’s presence down into the midst of a group of believers without seeing God mark the place for Himself – simply His presence leaves a footprint of holiness – so every time we gather on the roof for morning worship, or collect in a room for team time at the end of the day, or stay up late into the night discussing God’s blessings, we are sanctifying this house for God’s work. Luke, in his gospel, recounts something Jesus said: “When an evil spirit comes out of a man, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. Then it says, ‘I will return to the house I left.’ When it arrives, it finds the house swept clean and put in order. Then it goes and takes seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of that man is worse than the first.” Jesus is saying that it’s not simply enough to drive evil out – if there’s nobody home when the evil comes back you haven’t done anything at all and maybe even made the situation worse! But if an evil spirit comes back to live in this children’s house, I am so glad that it will find God living and active because of all the times He has been present in every room, and being as we are surrounded by arid places (literally, we’re in the middle of the desert out here) there will not be places for evil spirits to rest for a long, long way!
Please continue to pray for all of us as we work to build this home for the children, both spiritually and physically. Thank you all for your prayers, your support, and your comments – God bless you greatly!
