Lauren in Peru: The three gringas

Sheroke's here!!!

Jessi's here!!!

Yes, you heard it right. There has been three of us lately!!! Thank you Lord to such an answer to prayer. Sheroke Meyer came for the last 2 weeks in August and Jessi Miller is here and will be here for the next 8 months!! Yes, you heard right 8 months having an American, Christian girl living with me!!! So exciting! So we have been having a blast. When Sheroke was here, we had a great mix of doing ministry, having time to just talk as girls, doing tourist things, and having several game nights. We got to celebrate Peruvian's birthdays when she was here, her 24th birthday, and just have SO much fun together. Being all three of us together it was like a party every night!!!

It is so cool how God brings things together. The past 8 months of being alone has been good for me to learn and just to have a time of being here in Peru alone, yet God fulfilling my every need. Yet, I am so glad for this new season of God bringing help from my own home country here!!! In June or maybe it was July I was really depressed one day and looking through my phone on my day off of people that I could call and talk to. I decided that I would call Sheroke. We had not talked on the phone in a long time, we had kept in contact a little through facebook, but that was about it. Sheroke worked with me at mission Arlington in the summer of 2008. She was amazing, and we work really well together. Let's just say she can put up with my crazy self and keeps me organized! It is amazing! Anyway, I told her she should think about coming to Peru and she should move here and work with me. God is so amazing! If I remember right, 3 weeks after that phone call she had talked to her church, they had paid for her whole trip to come, went to get her passport, and her shots, and like 3 weeks after that she was here! It was such a huge encouragement from the Lord. What a miracle!!! It was so cool how the Lord brought her to me in the summer of 2008, when I was literally going crazy with trying to take summer school and work full time at mission Arlington, the Lord basically used her to hold me together that summer. She did all the planning for all our Bible studies and summer programs that summer and was the most flexible servant hearted person ever. It is so cool how the Lord once again 4 summers later, when I just needed an encouragement brought her back to my aide again. I love how the Lord works. Sheroke and I only worked together one summer at mission Arlington, and the next summer she came to visit for a few days, and yet God would bring her all the way down to Peru to visit me again for another time in the summer!!

This was her first time to be out of the country and her first time on a plane! She did a great job! She tried all kinds of new foods, connected with people in our discipleship group, made Peruvian music videos haha, really encouraged Fernando in his faith, tried to teach Nicchola about the country life haha and american football, helped prepare everything for our first youth night, was in the skit for our first youth night, gave us the idea to prayer walk a place where we have a lot of spiritual warfare - and did the prayer walk with us, helped with the lessons plans for the week (somethings never change lol), encouraged me, and so much more! We are hoping that maybe God will bring her back long term!!! :) Love you so much Sheorke!!

Sheroke is doing her masters in military history, so we went and tried to do a lot of history things while she was here. We went to the inquisition musuem, the metropolitan musem (which is the history of Lima), Real Felipe (a Peruvian fort), went to the parque de aguas (a beautiful park with all kinds of cool water fountains), went to Centro de Lima, went to the top of a Mountain where there is a big cross that looks out all over Lima, went to like a place that is kind of like China Town in downtown Lima, went to Mira Flores, and I am sure I am forgetting some other things, and not to forget we ate tons and tons of Churros together.

Jessi arrived 2 days after Sheroke. She has been planning on coming to Peru for months now! Wow is she a God send. She has totally blessed my socks off! I love her to pieces. We are literally like the same person. It is almost scary, like all the unusual things about me are like the same with her. For example, we are both allergic to metal, we have the same facial expressions, we both lose things all the time, we are both disorganized, both super flexible and are not super into "schedules," we both have like stalked our favorite musicians, both don't like the word blouse, and the list could go on and on. It is crazy how God has matched us up together. More than us being so much alike, she is just amazing!

She is great with kids, will do anything , she even cleaned the bathroom for me last Sunday because we had company coming over and time was running out (that is a servant because everyone that walks in our door seems like they always go straight to the bathroom), will try any type of food - she is way braver than I am in that area, super flexible, always hangs out and pulls in the kids that are alone or hanging on the outside, always coming up with new ideas on how to reach more people, reached out to a huge group of teenagers on Friday and now we are having a youth night in one of our other Bible study areas, and I could keep going on and on, but anyway she is amazing!

I love both of these girls so much. I am sad Sheroke is gone, but I know the Lord is going to use her wherever she is at. Hopefully the Lord will bring her back to Peru. Keep praying! I am excited for this journey with Jessi that we get to be on for the next 8 months together. Below are some pics of our time together! Thank you Jesus for bringing me a friend, a helper, and a teammate from my own country. You are too good to me.

Yes, we played games at 1 am when Sheroke got back from the airport and we continued that tradition and played games the majority of nights that she was here!