The Start of Something Beautiful

This week has been a blessing, a pain, a lesson, a long walk, filled with surprises both good and bad - but the good has far outweighed the bad!  Here's a taste of what the week was like...

Monday we started out nice and early, headed out to Hunter for a 9am meeting with a 14 year old name Flor (Flower).  Because anything small or young normally has an "ita" at the end, her father calls her Florita.  Flor is one of the contacts from the kids’ festival.  The first time we chatted with her, was after visiting her neighbor - Felicitas.  We decided to knock on Flor's door because we knew they were neighbors.  She was a little more quiet then Flecitas, a little less open about her life.  She had to go to the market to buy liver for her family, so we went with her...and that walk began a relationship - the start to something beautiful.

She asked us to return Monday because she had very little homework for these days.  When we arrived, we chatted with her and Felicitas who was out in the alley too.  I shared a bit of my testimony and we asked them about their concept of God, and just as we were about ready to pray, out came Flor's dad and older sister. Her sister gave us a hard time for disturbing her on a week day when she has lots of homework to do, she told us that they were catholic, and coldly stomped back off into the house.   Her dad, however, was more receptive, though he had many questions because the Nazarene Church is not well known in southern Peru.  Wendy boldly taught from the Bible where it says for children to honor and obey their parents, and for parents to discipline in love.  We all prayed together and her dad said we are always welcome back to be an encouragement to Flor - we hope this is an open door to the whole family in time.

Afterwards, we began to walk to the next appointment with Rosa, about a 10-15 minute walk away.  We made it to her street and decided to sit on the sidewalk at the end of a Mormon church to talk about the last meeting and pray for the next.  While we were sitting there, a young man under some type of influence approached us to start talking about his problems.  Though we were a pair of mixed nationalities relatively close to a Mormon church, we were in normal street clothes - not in suits - and we were just talking at the point he arrived.  Unlike many of the drunks in the streets, he was not fascinated with the fact that I am a gringa, he straight up wanted to talk about what was happening in his life, belief in God - and why he was unable to do so, before we even said we were missionaries.  When we were talking to him, he abruptly had to get up and leave because a taxi pulled up and he said it was his uncle.  I said aloud, "Lord, hopefully it's a seed planted; I'll trust you to do something with it" - but in Spanish.  So Wendy chatted a bit more, just about ready to pray and after 10 minutes or so, he came back.  He talked about his problems and his inability to change and as Wendy said something about a heart in stone, it triggered a verse in Ezekiel that talks about God sprinkling us with water to clean us, removing our heart of stone and giving us a heart of flesh.  Then he will put his spirit in us....well, He was talking to the Israelites, but as Christians we are His chosen people.  I had Wendy read the verse, because my Spanish is sufficient, but not so eloquent just yet.  (I understand better, why we're in pairs.  I could hardly understand him talking; when Wendy repeated what he said, it triggered the verse that we had studied and printed in class during training.  She couldn't think of a verse or word to share at the time. His eyes lit up in response.) So we prayed with him and we'll meet up with him in a local park this Saturday to continue this start to something beautiful.  Because he has a bit of a substance problem and is a young guy, we gave him an appointment card with our numbers.  Pray that he joins us on Saturday at 6pm.

Oh yeah, and after speaking with him we prayed and went to visit Rosa.  She's a single mom who wants to continue being discipled by us every Monday.  We met her at one of the impact events.

There's just so many beautiful things starting up.....Yesterday, we visited Nancy's house further outside of the city.  Nancy is Javier's wife, from our cell group.  She wanted us to meet and share the Gospel with her sons from her previous marriage, as well as other family members.  Her sister-in-law wants to join us for the cell group.  She's a Catholic, whom reads the Bible, but doesn't go to church.  She had many questions, like, there are many religions that say they are the true religion...how do we know for sure?  The lesson that we had prepared for, for the cell group taking place after this meeting gave me a great base to share.  Wendy was impressed with my ability to respond to these types of questions.  God was definitely with us.

Then, it continues to get better; here comes my favorite start of something beautiful. Señor Julio stayed for our cell group!  When we arrived, the futbol game was on - Peru vs. Columbia.  We kept the game on, to keep him with us.  We didn't want him to feel kicked out of the room in his own house...and who doesn't want to watch futbol???  So Wendy then told him we would have a short lesson and would love for him to join us, and he did, after 4.5 months of avoiding us in his own house!  I taught the whole lesson and he was responsive with eye contact and he told Wendy that he understood everything, that what I had to say was very good and he would join us with his family the next week.  Praise God!

We've also had several moments of frustrations this week - we couldn't find a home for over 45 minutes........never did actually, visited people that forgot their appointments or wanted to reschedule, we spend 45 minutes to an hour one way in combis to get where we need to go, we've had misunderstandings in communication, personality differences, etc.  Every second of that is totally worth it, to be experiencing the stories I've just told you.  Today was one of THOSE days: communication problems, forgotten appointments, etc.  Nonetheless, God is sooooooooooooo good.  As a result of the work today, we'll meet with a family tomorrow night with a dysfunctional marriage - ever feel unqualified to do something?  I have experience to share, but no training.  Like the Bible says in Acts 4, "Gold and silver, I have not, but what I do have, I give to you..." My God is an equipping God; He gives us just what we need to fulfill His will.  We weren't promised an easy path, just His presence and the opportunity to see what He is capable of doing.  And what a beautiful start of it too!

Well, that's enough for now, of what's happening in Hunter.  Stay tuned to hear from Wendy and her perspective on the Happenings in Hunter.