God is good!
I have been consistently overwhelmed by the goodness of God. My team has been blessed beyond measure since arriving here in Huaraz. When our bus got to the city, our ministry host was at the bus stop waiting to pick us up and take us to where we are now living for the month.
The people we are staying with, Nancy and Rolando, are a huge blessing to our team. They have served us plenty of delicious food, showed us around town, and just spent a lot of quality time with us. They don’t have any children, but Nancy has already told us that she feels like we are children to her. She’s taken us to the market plenty of times and helped us with a lot of the logistics of getting around town. She and Rolando only speak Spanish and Quechua, but they have been very gracious to us trying to communicate as much as we can through the language barrier. Thankfully, my amazing teammate Ana is fluent in Spanish and is always willing to translate. We have been very grateful for her presence on our team. It’s definitely going to be hard to say goodbye to Nancy and Rolando when we have to leave Huaraz.
Our ministry host, Ade, is a very good English speaker, so that is quite helpful as well. We have spent plenty of time with he and his family. His wife, Rachel, is an American from Ohio, so she speaks English very well, and so do their two sons. It has been a blessing getting to know their family, and they have been very generous, even letting us borrow some of their traditional Quechua clothes to wear.
The ministry we are partnered with is called AWI (meaning Good News), who are partnered with Wycliffe Bible Translators. They have been working for the last 50 years on a translation of the Bible in Quechua, which was just finished two months ago, on August 10. So, we are among the first missionaries to be ministering to the Quechua people in their own language!
We started out by helping translate a few worship songs into Quechua. We learned how to sing them in the language and have done so in front of a few churches and even in plazas and markets, all while dressed up in traditional Quechua clothing from around the area. We were told that Quechua is somewhat of a shameful language to speak, that Spanish is viewed as superior; so, it is really cool for the Quechua people to see foreigners coming in and worshipping in their own language.
We’ve also gone out on the streets to sell some Bibles and other stories in Quechua, and we’ve seen some pretty cool things in the process. The first day of street ministry was a little difficult for most of us. I really had to step out of my comfort zone in order to speak to people in a language I only know a few phrases in. But once I started stepping out in boldness, God has used me to reach people. I did manage to sell a book without the help of a translator, but mostly I’ve been focusing on finding people to pray for. It’s a little easier because people are usually fine if I just pray in English.
While we were in the market in the nearby town of Carhuaz, our team made an effort to pray for healing for people walking by. Zach prayed for a man who was limping, and the man walked away much faster without the limp! Amanda and Steffy prayed for a blind woman whose sight was restored! We had some really cool encounters with people who were just so happy that we would take the time to pray for them.
Today we did the same thing in Huaraz, and after the first time, we were a lot bolder and more willing to step out of our comfort zone in order to pray for people. And we saw results! We saw many more healings, and we even prayed for three women who didn’t know Jesus, who then accepted Him into their hearts! People kept coming up to us in our little corner and asking us to pray for them. As it turns out, they heard us singing Nothing but the Blood in Quechua. God spoke to them through the song, and they just knew that we had the power of God. I’m so thankful that God touched so many hearts through us today, and I’m excited to see what else He has for us in the rest of our month in Peru!
Please continue to be praying for my team and I as we continue to minister to these people in Peru. Pray that God would use us in mighty ways to spread the message of His kingdom. Pray that there continues to be unity (there’s been plenty so far!) within our team, and with our hosts. And most of all, pray that each of us would be growing deeper and deeper into intimacy with God.
Much love,
Ethan
