Thank you so much for praying for us in Peru. God is doing an incredible work here and in my heart. I know it is only because the prayers of His people and the work of the Holy Spirit. I know I just wrote on Sunday, but I really am trying to keep things more updated this year. Anyway, on Monday Nancy and I finished doing some shopping to move into our house hopefully in the next few days. I was honestly kind of depressed on Monday. Our friends in Surco were busy with other things and could not hang out and we have not gone back to the Community yet to hang out because we have to get some things settled first. I was thinking to myself after a year of being here, it is like I do not know anyone all over again. I have not gotten to hang out with my old friends from Ventanilla because we are staying with a friend in another city, I have not gotten to hang out with the kids from the community whom I love like part of my own family, and I did not have an opportunity to see my friends in Surco. I was getting down about how I didn`t know what God had for me to do and how to do it, even though I knew I just needed to trust in Him. I know it sounds so stupid because God continues to prove himself faithful. Anyway, Monday, I was in a blah mood. Nichola came and picked us up from Surco and we had a great time on the way home from Surco with him. Then Nancy had a great idea to go hang out with the family that we are living with right now. We watched a movie together, ate together, and helped the younger kids with their homework. It was really good to finally get to know the family that I had been living with for the past week.
Tuesday morning rolled around, and I slept in late. I am sure that is not a surpise for those of you who know me well. :) Anyway, I had received a message from one of my dear friends that needed help with some documents. I met up with Alvaro around 12 noon, and together we went on a mission to work on somethings for one of my dear friends. God, literally opened up many doors to get the things that we needed for this situation. While we were going from city to city, Alvaro began to point out all of the cities that we could have house churches in. We started talking about ideas and strategies. We decided that we would take a combi one day and just go explore all the nearby cities. Here in the Ventanilla area there is like a different city or zone literally every five minutes. He showed me where the poorest of the poor go and eat trash in the middle of the night, we talked with a lady who knows in the city where girls get sold for prostitution, and my heart was just burdened for the injustice that happens right where we live.
I was talking to Alvaro about how it has been totally new and different for me to only live in the power of the Lord and not in my own power. He talked to me how he noticed I had changed. I say that not to be proud, but that God has to be doing something for him to notice that. All glory to God. Alvaro said, ¨Lauren give me time, I made a mistake for deciding to teach history classes as well. ¨That was a decision of my human nature. He explained that he would not be able to teach about Jesus in his history classes. This kind of mission (church planting) needs to be 100 % of our focus. ¨I reminded him that it has taken me almost 20 years to figure out, and which I am still figuring out how to rely on God. I told him that I had noticed a lot of changes in him and how I was excited that he was ready to tell people about Jesus. He shared with me that he wanted to announce the good news everywhere. I noticed only months ago he was ashamed or at least worried of what people would think of his beliefs, and now He is ready to tell the world. He also told me that he had gotten a video at the Christian bookstore in the market. I didn`t realize until later on that he had gotten it this past Sunday. He went to the store asking the owner if he had any videos on Peter and Paul. This new mission of starting house churches had intrigued Alvaro´s heart and he wanted to learn more about it. He had already told me previously that this is how the Christian movement was started, but I did not know how serious he was about it. He asked me if I wanted to watch it before Nancy came over. He said it was only 40 minutes. What I did not understand was that it was in sections and the first part was only 40 minutes. It ended up being a 4 hour long video. It was one of the best things I have ever watched. The movie in depth went into the journey of Paul and Peter. It basically outlined what our ministry should look like. It was incredible. To top it off, Alvaro made popcorn for us, and we had a movie ministry night!
After that, Alvaro, started to share his heart and his strategy for reaching the people of Peru. A lot of things were Catholic things he had done before when he was young training to be a priest. He talked about a year long experience he had had working with people that no one else wanted to work with. He explained that for that year he only taught about Jesus and not about the Catholic church. He said after that year, it was like impossible for him to go back to doing the things of the Catholic church and that is why he had to split ways. God, was already working on his heart years ago. He said, ¨I would venture to say that everyone that was in that one year project does not work with the church anymore.¨That really hit me because it was more as if God was speaking to me, not just about the Catholic church but the Christian church as well. It was as if God was speaking to my heart showing me that an experience of church planting movements and true miracles from the Lord will probably not be in the confines of a regular traditional church and that God is calling us out of that. I am not saying that God does not work in regular traditional churches, but I know that He is calling this team to something different than that. Also, Alvaro, talked about how he could relate with Paul so well because just like Paul was so entrenched in Jewish tradition and religion, Alvaro was the same with the Catholic religion. God saved Paul and God saved Alvaro. I know that God is going to use Alvaro to reach the people of Peru because Alvaro has been there with the people and knows what it is like to be entrenched in religion and not have a relationship with Jesus Christ.
It was amazing because for the first time yesterday the tables reversed. Alvaro encouraged me in my faith and the vision the Lord has put before us. He talked to us about what our strategy would be, would we go work with the extreme cases or would we work with the families. He said I believe the Lord is leading me to work with the families. He said we would have to pray about it. I totally agreed, right now the Lord is definitely calling us to the families, and He will show us in his time how to minister to the extreme cases of the drug addcits, prostitution houses, etc. I thought it was exremely wise that he would bring up the extreme cases because Alvaro and I normally always like to run straight to the extreme things and not necessarily the things the Lord has called us to. We like to tackle the big projects, but this time we know that God will take us there in his timing. For right now, God is calling us to work with families, Casa to Casa. Also, we talked a lot about the team from FBC Mansfield that is coming in June. We talked about strategy and the way the Lord was going to open up so many doors for us in that one short week that would help us with our church planting ministry. We are excited to see how God is going to use a small team of young people from the states to make a huge eternal diffence here.
The Lord has grown Alvaro in unexplainable ways in the past few months while we have been gone. He talked about how he felt so good yesterday, it was 9:30 at night but he felt relaxation and peace. Normally, Alvaro and I are the type that run ourselves ragged, but God has been showing him at the same time the power of his Spirit. I can`t count how many times Alvaro said this has to be something that the Spirit does, and we do not do. He said we are only the instruments, the mediators, but God is doing the work. Then we had our first team of three prayer time. We were for the first time in one year all united under the same thought and vision. It was a beautiful night. A chord of three cannot be easily be broken.
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