Time in Peru really flies, it even feels faster than any other periods of our lives so far.Taking a short time of reflection may help slow things down a bit, and even more, will help us savor more of how life has been so terrible, so terribly great I mean!!
Our hearts are filled with Christ-"mas" (more) joy writing this, and thankfulness.
We are thankful to:
Team 1's lives: We are grateful for many things, but especially for their lives lived sacrificially and purposefully for Jesus in Hope Lima. They model the spirit of Christian, Christian servant and leader in ways more than we have read from books. We are so amazed at how God matured them as they lived their lives the most biblical way that they know and humbly keep on maturing. It's a good painting of God's transformation through sacrifical living on the mission field. The painting is simply breathtaking like watching the Great Wall from space!
Church members: We are so encouraged by the lives of our coreteam and members. The core invested their time and money sacrificially, with the little money they have earned, with the little time they are left with after school and work. Sometimes I wonder if I can rest. To tell you the truth, I really don't think it's a good idea that the coreteam works harder than the pastor..:). Our members who need to travel for close to 2 hours because of the new distance after we moved, are simply inspiring. They are busy and gainfully tired in their work to survive, yet they find rest in this spiritual home. Wow, God is doing amazing works in the hearts of the Peruvians, the few that we have seen inspire us to want to see more!!!
God's favour: Julian once shared this with me: You'll get to enjoy God's favour on the field more than any other place in your life. You know this is so very true these few months! We have received so many answered prayers, it is like you switch on lights in S'pore, power sure comes, 0% possibility of power failture! We remember we prayed for people that would stay with us. One by one came. One mother who just joined 1 month ago even started to involve in intercession for the church, wow! We prayed for the provision of a mini bus at a reasonable rate. God answered exactly, no more no less! We prayed for kids to join the church camp, eventually more than 20 kids signed up, record breaking in our church history! We prayed for crowds to come in more, it is not torrential yet, but one life after another flow in, AND with great potential to join the church. Our continual prayer is: God's favour go with us, wherever we are, whatever we do, as we know, with fear and trembling, that we will fail terribly without him leading. Yet with his favour, a lot of possibilities can become realities through our asking.
God's anointing: We came not trained (enough) in many ways required of us. God has been using team 1 to train and "refine" us. Culturally, we are "sua goo" (S'pore slang that means greenhorn). We made mistakes. Some funny ones in language, some serious ones because of our personal weaknesses and lack of discipline. The team 2, as a whole, sense the hands of God in maturing us, in character, love and understanding of the culture, servanthood and leadership. We know we are not there, but humbly we submit to God's refining hands. We feel now we have matured (not arrived yet) and progressed forward. I believe God's ministry and church will prosper as we mature. With little Spanish, we have made a new friend in these 4 months. Before Christmas, he wrote a card to us to thank us for our friendship and for our church that is different. This work is spiritual, can't be physical. And.....let me consider to be more spiritual such that we exercise more spiritual tongues than needing to work on our Spanish..:)
Life is as good as it gets when you get it right on track with God's will...we can truly testify to it in 2008:)
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