Bible study on the sidewalk and then stapling marathon at the house
Today Bible study really blessed my heart. We met again on the sidewalk and had several new kids come. There are several really incredible leaders that are always there. The kids that come are serious about going to invite their friends. I have never seen a group of kids so serious about inviting other friends to come. We had a lot of new kids today. We brought about 10 Bibles and the kids were so excited to read directly from the Bible. We told them we were in the process of getting Bibles for each one of them and they were so excited. One girl Margerie is going to help teach Bible study next week. Then another teenager, Lincoln, is actually a Christian. He seems super interested in starting to teach the Bible and he understands it. He gets that is only by grace through faith that you can be saved. It was so refreshing to talk to someone who is actually a Christian. We hardly ever meet any Christians around here. This is his first time to come to Bible study, but I met him a couple of weeks ago. I really feel like out of all her house churches this is the one that will reproduce the fastest and is growing at a very good pace. The kids just have an eager spirit to learn. A ton of them already know the hand game and the songs. We pretty much shout songs about Jesus together throughout the street. I LOVE it. I am so encouraged by these kids. A lady that has a restaurant right by where we meet gave me a recipe today for a Peruvian dish. I am going to try and make it this week. I am excited. I will let you know how it turns out. She told me each week she would give me a different Peruvian recipe. I am pretty excited to try out some new things even though I do not know how to cook.

After that, we came home just in time for a group of people to come over and help us get ready for our team in June. It is a dear friend of ours and his kids. They came over and stapled 1,000 coloring sheets together, inflated 15 balls for us, and helped count thousands of fliers for the group that will be coming next week. It was so neat to see 7 kids come and work very hard for two hours for kingdom work. Nancy had made chicken body part soup for the kids to eat. That is literally what it is….all the left over parts of the chicken mixed with water and rice. The kids loved it. Nancy is definitely turning Peruvian. It really was a great day! To top it off, I was able to talk to two of my really close friends who encouraged me so much on skype. There are lots of exciting things in store for the next two weeks as well. I am excited! Nancy and I also have our first Quechua lesson tomorrow. We are going to try and learn the native language of Peru so that we can minister to those that only speak that language. Pray for us. We are still trying to learn Spanish…….

Open House

Lately our house has seemed like a revolving door. Peruvians are constantly coming and going and I love it! Last week we had two Peruvians from out of town spend the night. Nicchola and John are constantly coming over. The land lady’s family had been coming over every so often and two other friends came by as well last week. I love having a house where we can be a place where Peruvians can come over and live life with us. I moved to Peru only 2 weeks after finishing with college, after that we lived in the orphanage, so up until 2 months ago I have never had my own place to invite people over to or for people to drop in. I am finding more and more it is very common for Peruvian culture for people to drop in, but I really actually enjoy it! I am also learning to cook for these Peruvians…well not too much. I just learned how to cook rice the other day and how to fry an egg. I have been wrestling a lot with how to disciple people, but lately I have been learning that a lot of discipleship has to do with living life with people. God has truly blessed us and given us a place to live where we really can have people live life with us. Who knows one day soon God might call us to have some Peruvian missionaries live with us and join us in the work! We don’t know all the things that God has in store for this place he has put us right now, but we are willing and excited about living daily life with Peruvians. So thankful!

John - the most passionate NEW believer I have ever known

John, code name for privacy reasons, is the most passionate NEW believer I have ever seen. The changes that God has made in his life are just absolutely incredible. We spend a lot of time working with John, and God has done a lot in his life in the past few months. I just want to share several little stories about John with you.

He has been teaching in his religion classes the Life of Christ and in his other one the major stories from the Old Testament. He has been using all of the cool materials that people from the states help put together for him. One day he said he was using the posters of Creation and reading the story from the Bible of creation and the Holy Spirit just started to move in his class. He said that a girl stood up and told about how the boys had been harassing her in class. Then other girls started talking about the same thing. This came up because he was teaching about how a man should women using the example of Adam and Eve. John then talked to the boys that were harassing the girls, and then led the class in a time of group prayer. They formed a circle and prayed from their heart (huge thing here in this culture) for this situation that was happening with the harassment of these girls.

The next week John and I were walking back from one of our house churches and he casually said, four kids gave their life to Christ this past week in my religion class. Apparently he was sharing with the kids that they needed to give their lives to Christ, and a boy in his class stood up and prayed out loud in front of the whole class to give his life to Christ. Three other students did the same thing after him. John has already been to their neighborhood of these four kids to start a house church. One of these boy’s dad is totally against his son becoming a Christian because he is from a different religion. The son was tired of following all the rules from this other religion and that is why he decided to follow Jesus. John is working on starting a Bible study in the house of one of the other students. He will meet with them weekly, and they are going to invite their neighbors also.

On top of that John has started meeting with two different groups once a month on Saturdays and has a Bible study with kids in his class that want to study more. He completely set this up on his own with his students. They also did a service project together and went and cleaned all the classrooms in the school and hung up Bible verses and encouraging messages in all the classrooms in the school.

The other day, John walked into his classroom and four girls were all crying. He asked what the situation was and found out a girl was upset about a situation with her mom and her mom’s boyfriend. John decided not to teach his lesson that day but to put everything aside and lift up this girl’s family and her in prayer. The whole class got together and prayed for this girl! John is serious about following the Holy Spirit. When the Spirit lays on his heart not to teach what he has prepared and just spend the class time in prayer or deal with a certain situation. He gives up his lesson and focuses on whatever God is leading him to do instead.

He also told me now that every class period he selects two people and prays for them and their family. He told me the students have loved it. He started out with just praying for one person, but the next class period everyone was asking him to pray for them, so he changed it to praying for two different students every class period.

Two weeks ago, it was his turn to pray for the school wide assembly. The normal custom in the school is to say the Lord’s Prayer and a recited prayer to Mary. He instead prayed just to Jesus from his heart, not a learned or recited prayer. This caused a reaction from a lot of different people. The other religion teacher came upset about his prayer, but another head faculty person commented on how much she liked his prayer. It turns out that she is a Christian, and they were able to talk about starting a bible study for the other professors.

One day in class, he asked his students for their ideas on how to evangelize in Peru in this day and time. They talked to him about making stickers that have the symbols that represent: Jesus came, he died, and he rose, went back to Heaven, and one day is coming back again and putting them on the local transportation buses. Not only would the students put the stickers on the bus, but they or one of us would explain with the drivers at the bus stop during their break time about the good news of Jesus. They had a ton of other ideas as well, but it was just so neat to hear about John asking his class about the ways they thought would be effective to evangelize in Peru.

One day a few months back, we were downstairs talking to our land lady about the recent death of her daughter. He directly told her, you need to give your life to Jesus. He is the only one that can help you. This shocked me because he used to give every other humanitarian response he could find to help people before he became a Christian and he even struggled with it after he became a Christian. He has really turned a corner; he tells everyone that Jesus is the only One that can help them. He does not try to give other solutions anymore; he just points them to Jesus. He reminds me a lot of John the Baptist.

The other day he found out about a situation with one of his students parents. They were in a very hard family situation because of sin, so he responded by telling the family the truth, that they needed to repent of the situation of sin they were in. He also met with the mom and had a prayer time with her. He has set up another time to meet with her again and just continue to pray for her and this family. The next time he meets with her Nancy and I will go with him as well. He told this mother there are no other solutions, we must pray.

It is so crazy for me to watch him from months ago, before he knew Christ, saying that people needed this material thing and this psychology session to improve their life to now just saying it is Jesus that they need. We both understand that people need things like food to eat, but our job is to tell others about Jesus and yes help them with their needs along the way, but primarily lead them to Jesus.

John has been working with us for now about 2 months in our house churches. He has really stepped out of his comfort zone and gone with us to ask people in the streets to come to Bible study. It has been a new experience and an uncomfortable one for him. He has been teaching a lot in house churches, and he is a phenomenal teacher. His gift is definitely teaching. Nancy and I are both ready to let him completely start teaching all of our house churches as soon as he is ready.

John and I have had some very serious discipleship discussions. I have had to talk about him what it means to be a Christian man of the household for his family, about the importance of marriage, about not letting fear of others get in the way of his witness, and about seeking God’s will. These discussions have not been easy to talk about, but God has been so faithful and brought up the exact right times and gave John the patience to listen. On the same token, yesterday he sat down with me and talked to me about a lot of things that I needed to do change in my ministry and in my life to be a better example of Christ and for our ministry to grow. God has definitely given me opportunities to disciple him, yet he is now using John to disciple me as well. I will write more about the things that he talked with me about in a later blog post.

The miracles I have seen God doing in John’s life continue to amaze me. I will try and write more about his life on a more consistent basis. John’s life is a constant encouragement to me and a reminder of the great things God can do in anyone’s life if they will just accept Jesus and then allow Him to work in their lives.

Our peruvian dad

Nichhola's 40th birthday party spiderman style!

Always eating........anything he can find in our refrigerator

One morning he just called us and said he was coming over to make breakfast for us. Fruit salad and pineapple juice! yum!

Equipo Maps! Team maps! We always call ourselves equipo (team) insert whatever project needs to be done that day. This picture is when we hand laminated some maps of Lima to help us in our church planting endeavour.

Sitting on the floor in the bus station....a peruvian no no.

The joys of American soft drinks!

Nicchola taught me how to make Maracyua a famous fruit juice.

We both love mayonnaise!

Nichhola's first time to eat at Chilis!


Finally finished with the extreme makeover!

First time to eat at Subway!

Yep, Coke float for the first time!

Our peruvian handy man!

Nicchola, our Peruvian dad, is someone that has extremely blessed my life in these past few months. One of the translators, Karina, gave us the number of this safe taxi over a year ago. When we lived in the community we would use him sometime to take us places, and we got to know him over the months. Each time we rode with him we would get to know him better and he would become a better friend of ours. The thing that really bonded me with Nicchola is when I had a project for the community to buy complete outfits for over 200 kids in like a week’s time span, and also buy all kinds of the things for the group that came this past December such as a sound system, hoola hoops, cookies, etc. We went all over different districts of Lima to find all these things at the cheapest prices. He helped me so much. We spent practically 8 days together just shopping. He is the one that went with Nancy and I to buy the furniture for our house, and then he was the one that helped Amanda and I do the whole extreme makeover for Nancy. He was here working and buying things with us for about 2 weeks. Over the months, I had seen a difference, that no longer were Nancy and I just clients that paid Nicchola to drive us around or help us fix things, but we had become good friends. I told Nicchola that I was going to miss him not coming over everyday now that the house was finally done. What I didn’t realize, was that he would start to come over anyway at least every three days if not more than that.

It really has been incredible what God has done in this friendship. He really is like our dad in Peru. He always checks on us, brings us snacks, and comes over to watch a movie, play games, or just hang out. He always makes comments that when he wants to laugh he comes over here. I am hoping that he realizes the reason why we have joy is because of Jesus. God has also brought up several opportunities to talk about the good news of Jesus with him. When we first met him, we never talked about faith things with him. I remember months after knowing him, I shared the gospel with him, and he was very closed to it and defensive about it. In these past months, we have gotten to talk so much more about faith with him. Actually, we are always talking about things we are doing in ministry and always talking about Jesus with him even if it is not a direct conversation directed at him. I have shared with him the testimony of John as well. Nichhola has gotten to know John well over these past months, and I hope that he can see something different in him as well. He has gotten to come to a couple of our Bible studies, and the other day he told me that he didn’t have any meaning to his life. He just worked and worked and there was nothing else to his life. He is divorced and his kids live in Switzerland, so he has not been able to see them now for over a year. It was a divine opportunity that God brought up for us to sit down and really talk about the reason why he did not have meaning in his life because he did not have Jesus. We went through scripture and really dug into the good news of Jesus. I told him I was not trying to pressure him, and he responded Lauren if I did not want to have this conversation with you I would not be having it right now. He is hungry and searching for the truth, but he is scared to give his life to Jesus because he understands that it costs your entire life. He is a very loyal person and will not make a decision to follow Christ until he knows he is willing to give it all up for Jesus. I encouraged him that he only had to have the faith as small as a mustard seed in Jesus but that God could move mountains with that. I told him he did not have to have it all together before he could trust Jesus as his Savior. It was definitely a Holy Spirit inspired time. Nichhola was really thinking about where he stood with Jesus and how he did not have a relationship with him. He also knows that is what he needs to do.

Please pray for him that he will have the strength to not have fear about the costs of giving everything up for Jesus, but instead will see how much greater it is to give everything up to know the Savior of the world. He also said that he could start meeting one night a week for Bible study! Wow, what a huge answer to prayer. God has been teaching me a lot about discipleship lately, and how a lot of discipleship is just living life with the people and teaching them the Truth of Jesus along the way as well. He has really shown me that with Nicchola that it is important to share the Word of God with him and the story of Jesus, but also just to live life with him. We have gotten to do so many neat things with him, like go to Chilis, introduce Dr. Pepper to him, introduce coke floats to him, play Clue, Dominoes, watch 24 together, etc. Most of my cool things I just listed have to do with food because I am always introducing him to my favorite foods. He is a junk food junkie as well so that is another reason we get along so well. We also got to have a birthday party for him at our house. We had him and some of his family over for a homemade Peruvian lunch. John helped us cook Lomo Saltado and fish for him for his birthday. It was so much fun.

He always is correcting my Spanish and trying to make me say things the right way in Spanish. He teaches us about the culture, slang, and just is a great friend and second dad for us. We are so thankful that God has put Nicchola in our lives. Please pray for his salvation. He would be an amazing help to our team when he becomes a Christian. He already is a great help. He already reaches out to all the people that we minster to, but I can’t imagine how God will use him when he actually knows God. He also then would be able to minister to everyone that he drives in his taxi. Also, please pray for him that he would be able to save up enough money to go visit his kids in Switzerland. For a Peruvian of his social class, a plane ticket to Europe is almost impossible. We know though that with God all things are possible! Please pray that God will provide a way for him to see his 7 year old daughter and 12 year old son that live in Switzerland. Thanks for always uplifting these people in prayer, and I will keep you updated on the things that happen with Nicchola in the days to come.

Another mountain town...another opportunity for God to do amazing things

So we had to leave for the airport at 4 am to fly to Arequipa. From there we had to take a super bumpy bus ride for 6 hours to arrive to our destination city. This was the same bus ride that I had taken a year and half earlier and had accidentally thrown up all over myself. I brought medicine this time! This whole trip brought back so many memories for me because we were visiting the same places that I had visited on the 2nd week of my time in Peru on the walking tour with the kids in the Community a year and a half before. That was such a hard/ amazing week for me a year and a half ago because I barely knew any Spanish, I didn’t know any of the people I was on the trip with, and we were walking literally all over Peru. I literally had culture shock on SO many levels. This time it was so cool to go on the same trip to the same place and see what God has done in my life in the past year and a half. It was no big deal going to the bus station this last month and buying our bus tickets for ourselves. Last year the Peruvian bus station seemed like something that I could not even think about beginning to understand. I couldn’t understand last year at the time how the volunteers knew how to get a taxi, speak Spanish, and just live life here. After living here a few months, I realized there are just things that you have to learn along the way. More than that though, God just has pulled me through and taught me things about how to live here that were not possible for me to do/ learn on my own. I am so grateful for the things that God has taken me through over this past year and a half.

We finally arrived at our destination; our good friend that we came to visit, came and met us at the bus station. We gave him all the surprises that we had brought for him, Bibles, English materials, and Christian resources. He was very content. He quickly left us at a hostel because he had to go teach a class at his job. When he left, Nancy and I took about a 2 hour nap. He came back and we went out to eat at a local restaurant. It was a great meal just to catch up with our friend and him to share with us his heart and what has been going on his life. Then another one of our friends happened to be in the same restaurant and we were able to meet up with him and catch up with him as well. After that we went back to our hostel and all watched a Louie Giglio video together. We all learned a lot!

The next day, our friend came over to meet us, and we had a gourmet Mountain breakfast to go. Nancy and I had gone out to get breakfast and gotten it to go. They packed everything including the coffee in plastic baggies. I love how Peru works! Honestly, I had a bad attitude about going out and getting breakfast with Nancy. I just wanted to stay in the room and be lazy. God always seems to work greater in the midst of my bad attitude and laziness. (In my weakness He is made strong) He laid someone on my heart as we passed by them to tell them about Jesus, but I did not take the opportunity. I knew I had to go back, so after we got our breakfast; I went back and told this woman about Jesus and the other vendedores (salesmen) at their little kiosks about Jesus. We talked with them and set up a time to come back at 2 in the afternoon to teach them a Bible study and bring bracelets that explain the good news of Jesus. We ate a great breakfast with our good friend and then had a great prayer time with him. Our whole point on going down on this trip was to encourage our good friend who accepted Christ last October and to help him start a house church. He really enjoyed the prayer time. He said he had never had a prayer time like that before. Sometimes I forget the reality of the world we live in here. Most people come from a background of knowing a few memorized recited prayers and do not know anything about just praying from their heart. Before we knew it was 2:00 and time to go back to where we had been earlier that morning.



We went to the plaza where the ladies were that morning and the original lady that asked for us to come back and do the Bible study was not there. We met with the women and children that were there though. We got to play the famous hand game with the children in the plaza. We used the proclaimer (a radio Bible) to listen to the story of the crucifixion and resurrection in their native language Quechua. As we were listening more and more people started to come over. As people started to leave and lose interest, we decided to start giving out the bracelets to them and sharing the good news of Jesus with them. A ton of people came by! We were probably there for about 3 hours. It was so neat to have our friend translate things from Spanish or English to Quechua for us. He knows all three of those languages! It was so incredible to watch him share the good news of Jesus with those in his home town.

One lady came by and talked to me. She was SO interested in the gospel. We got to have an extensive conversation about Jesus and salvation. She was an older woman, and her daughter was in the hospital in another town about to have an operation. She was very concerned about her. We were able to pray together for her daughter to be healed. Please pray for her salvation as she is very open to the gospel. Many people asked where we went to church because they wanted to come and we told them that we were just visiting. Please pray that our friend will have the courage to start this Bible study soon and that he will know exactly what location to start it in. While we were there in the plaza giving out bracelets there was a girl named Veronica that asked me if we could go to her house. I honestly did not really want to go, she kept annoying me to go to her house when we were busy talking to other people, but it turned out to be the biggest blessing of the whole trip for me.






We finally got to her after a long time of her waiting for us to get done in the plaza. When we got to her house what we found was a one room shack filled literally with junk with a blue tarp roof where there is a second room where they sleep. The roof could easily cave in at any moment. This is a family of a single mom with 10 kids. 7 of these kids live with her and her granddaughter; the other 3 live at an orphanage down the road. Their conditions were really heart breaking, but this family was so joyful. They did not wallow around in their circumstances but took the time to spend time with us in a small Bible study. We sang Christian songs together, shared the good news of Jesus, and just got to know each other for about an hour. It was such a precious time of singing because the family is so big that we could have competitions between the boys and girls with how loud they could sing, and we got to see a huge family enter into a time of praising Jesus together.



I fell in love with one of the little kids named Cesar. He is five years old and he completely captured my heart. I would love to adopt him. Nancy and I decided to walk the studying kids to school. They go to school only for 3 hours a day from 6 pm to 9 pm. They have to walk a long way to school by themselves in the dark. It is incredible what kids here go through on a daily basis on their own. On our way out to walking them to school, I told Cesar that it was dark and I was scared and that he needed to protect me. He responded, “I will protect you; I am your soldier.” Okay, that statement made my heart melt even more.




His sister began to tell us how they did not have any school supplies. We were already late to school, but it did not seem to be of any importance to the family that they were late. We stopped by at a market and got them some new school supplies. Then I looked and saw that they had 2 old back packs. One was super old, and I just wanted to personally get Cesar something that he could be proud of. We stopped by the back pack store at one of the markets, and Cesar got to get a new Spider Man back pack. His sister also got a new back pack as well. It was such a precious moment for me to see them get something that they never thought they would have probably in all of their lives. A 5 dollar back pack is so simple especially to someone like me who is not at all in need, but I am reminded that a five dollar back pack is not possible for people like Cesar’s family ever. Most of the time I become numb to the reality of the poverty that I live in here in Peru, but it is so real. I need to be always aware of the people around me that are so badly suffering. I need to look at situations through Christ’s eyes and not my own. We left them to finish walking to school on their own in order to meet our friend to go with him to be “guests” in his English class.


It was so much fun getting to see our 2 good friend’s English institute that they started on their own. We did a question and answer session with them, and I thoroughly enjoyed getting to know the students in his class. Then we went out to eat and had so much fun with our two good friends just talking and catching up.

The next day was another day full of adventure. Our two friends met us and we went to the nursing home in the town. Nancy had talked with an elderly guy the day before that had invited us to go the nursing home, so we did! It was incredible, there are about 45 people that come every Monday through Friday 8 am to 12 pm. There is not money for them to stay there, but they do eat breakfast and lunch, get Spanish lessons, and grow their own crops there to have something to eat. It was so crazy for me to see such elderly people still out working in the fields. Each and every one of them that is there in some way helps with the crops so that they can have food to eat. They were so gracious and so happy for us to be there. They loved the bracelets that explain the good news of Jesus! The coolest part was our dear friend translated the entire good news of Jesus from Spanish to Quechua and read the Bible verse out of a Quechuan Bible. It was so neat to see a new believer share God’s word and story. He is incredible with people, and the elderly people there just loved him. His grandma is one of the residents. As soon as we got done with that, we rushed to meet our friends’ English class to go on a field trip to 3 Canyones.

This is actually my favorite scenic spot in all of Peru. I saw it a year and a half ago on the walking trip, and I never thought that I would have the opportunity to go back. Three Canyones is exactly how it sounds, Three huge canyons. It is a beautiful, awesome, breath taking creation of God. It was a humbling and amazing experience for me to get to be back there a year and a half later. Last year I remember just worshipping God for who he was because he made these huge mountains all around me, and God reminded me last year of how he was big enough to get me through that very difficult time of being in Peru all alone. This year, I just reflected on all God had brought me through in this past year and a half, and once again the beauty of his creation. I went off by myself and just got some time to walk along the river, sit in the middle of a small water fall, and read a little bit of the Psalms.

Later as we moved to the next sight in tres canyons, I decided to take some time by myself again to read the Psalms. Before I knew it, this hilarious mountain lady was coming over to talk to me. She asked me if she could have my necklace, I really did not want to give it to her, but I at the same time couldn’t say no to her. She also asked for my English Bible. I explained that since she didn’t know English that it would not be of any use for her. She spoke a few words of Spanish but mainly Quechua. I think she understood Spanish though. Anyway, she just got up and basically started teaching me how to dance. This lady was so spontaneous and a little crazy, but I definitely am glad to have gotten to spend time with her.

After 3 Canyones, our two friends , Nancy, and I all went out to eat together for the last time. Then our friend that we came to visit came over and we went over house church curriculum with him. Please pray for him that he will have the courage to start his own Bible study because the people where he lives are hungry, yet he is still a little scared to start a Bible study for the people.

The next morning, our friend came over and we hung out a little bit and then he had to go to work. We then went and visited another friend of ours that lives in the area. She took us out to her “campo” (livestock field). It was incredible. The men in her family were making mud bricks to build another house, her mom was cooking over a fire, and they had livestock right behind where they lived. She was so precious and put together a little picnic with freshly grown potatoes and homemade cheese. We had a really good time getting to hang out with her and one of her friends.

It was so interesting because one her friends listens to all these English singing Christian artists even down to Michael W. Smith. If you know me, I was flipping out!! He is the first Peruvian I have ever met that knows who Michael W. Smith is. I was so excited. We are hopefully going to be in communication with him through email. We don’t know if he is a Christian, but please pray that God will draw his heart to himself if he is not a Christian already.

We were able to do so much stuff in the those 3 days. We got to see so many people that we knew, people that I did not write about that we have known since last year. God reminded me even though we cannot see everyone that we used to know last year, that he still provides opportunities for us to be reunited with people when we least expect it. Please be in prayer for this young Christian man and his mountain town that he will be the one that God uses to reach the whole town for Christ!