Hey hey!
Oh Peru. ‘A beauty of a whirlwind’ describes this month perfectly.
It wasn’t the easiest thing to be with a team for a week, fall in love with the ministry, and then have to up and leave to travel to be with another team for the second half, to only fall in love with that ministry as well. One month is already too short of time at a ministry site, but to only have 1-2 weeks is pretty rough.
My last two and a half weeks were spent in Cusco, Peru. They were both incredibly great and extremely hard.
We lived with the Anderson’s, who are a family of seven from South Carolina. They have lived in Peru for three years now. Ministry each day looked like walking to an orphanage called The Josephine House, and serving there in the mornings and afternoons. There are 13 children and besides 3 of them, they are all 2 years old. The other three are 6 months, 8 months, and a 6 year old girl. If you know me at all, you know that I was in absolute heaven! It was so much fun!!! We would help feed them during meal times and play with them, either inside or outside on the playground. Our days were spent loving on some really sweet, sweet babes.
Cusco is a spiritually dark place and this made it very hard to live there. We could sense the heaviness surrounding us. On top of the spiritual things we were fighting, we had some sickness move through out the team that I was with, which is always difficult to go through while on the race.
Amongst a few of the hard moments, we had about 100x more beautiful moments! The Anderson’s were an absolute blessing! They opened their home up to us and invited us in almost every night. Their hospitality was stunning! They poured into us spiritually and really just loved us so well every single day. We got to hike Rainbow Mountain with them and then got to take their daughter to Machu Picchu with us for her first time, and it was so much fun!!!
I experienced the Lord in new ways and He taught me so much in Peru! I had been asking the Lord to speak to me through dreams and He did!!! It was incredible. Not only did He give me dreams, He also gave me interpretations of those dreams. He gave me a greater measure of discernment and it was interesting to walk through that with the Lord and figure out how to deal/handle that. It was a really beautiful process with the Lord that I had to kind of wrestle out with Him. I grew in deeper intimacy and dependency with the Father. The hard and uncomfortable times produce perseverance, and for that I am so thankful!
For legal reasons we can’t post pictures of the babies faces, but I was going to post some of the back of their heads and such, because still cute. BUT the wifi is whack here, so maybe in another blog at a different time. haha
After five travel days, including a 24 hour layover in London and Scotland, we have made it to India!!! We had a few days of cultural training and have made it safely to the places we will be living for the month. 🙂
One of my biggest prayer requests right now is fundraising! I have about $9,000 more to fundraise for this season of squad leading. Please prayerfully consider donating. If you would like to donate, you can click the “Donate!” button at the top of the page to do so. Thank you all so much for the support I’ve already received! And thank you for continuing to follow me on this journey. I appreciate each of you!
