Copy cat

Daniel likes to copy Baruj with amusing results...



(Please note no babies were harmed in the making of this video)

New Year New School

In the Uk, Easter is seen as the time for new beginnings, especially as it is Spring. Here in Peru, we are still in a hot summer, (which personally I am loving) and the only new beginning is the new school year, which starts sometime in March or April.

Some of the new students and teachers

Well last Monday Alfredo opened 'Discovery High School' (that really is the name, and in English as well - and it's a primary school!) in Ventanilla, what he hopes will be his first of many schools in very poor shanty town areas. I went along to meet the 7 kids who had turned up as students on the first day (many can't afford the 40 soles or 8 pounds monthly cost to attend, and others thought it wouldn't open with just a few kids, so stayed away)!!!
Alfredo was only charging, as he needs to find a way to pay his teachers each month, but he believes that God will provide the money through other ways, and he will ask parents to pay what they can afford. If you would like to help, please let us know.

The view from outside the outer wall

On the Thursday night before opening on the Monday Alfredo spoke to me by phone, and he said he had no desks, no teachers, and had just had a horrible mosquito invasion. Well God answered all this in 72 hours. By Friday night Alfredo had 5 teachers, saturday he recieved 30 desks, each for 10 soles rather than the normal 45 soles, and on Sunday had the whole sight fumigated for half the price of fumigating a small house. How good is God? In addition it has been amazing how much work has been done in 4 weeks, since my last visit. When I was last there the roof wasn't on. On opening day, the roof was in, furniture was in, toilets had been built, an outer wall built, and the boundary area sorted.

The current state of the school inside

It was a real priviledge to see the school open after only 4 months from vision to opening the school. They still need lots of things to improve the school, but little by little. It is also amazing to see Alfredo's faith growing daily as this massive project, which was impossible in some many ways, has been started, and opened, and will only continue to help the local community.

The oldest children finishing class

Is it really Easter Day?

Happy Easter!

Not that you would know that it is Easter Day here - it is very quiet ( I think most people are at the beach) and it was hardly even mentioned this morning at church (I think the Christian churches here play it down because the Catholic churches (who are different from European Catholics because of the prominence of idol worship) make such a big deal of Holy Week. So all we had to alert us to Easter was that there was a prominence of fish dishes at every place we went to this week (does anyone actually know why fish is the tradition during Holy Week?)

...during...and after:

Easter eggs have not caught on here, although you can buy really small ones (which Humberto described as large!) at elevated prices. We decided to still get eggs and do a small egg hunt for Daniel and Baruj in the garden which they both enjoyed.

Can you spot all the eggs? (there are 2 in the top picture and 3 in the bottom! - Guess whose were easier to find?!) How many did I find, Mummy?

Jungle- Part 3

Well the final day arrived upon us, we (Ian and I) wished that we could have stayed longer, but I wanted to get back to Anna and Daniel, and we felt three days was the right length of time, this time. I plan to go back on a regular basis, and possibly with Anna and Daniel, and probably with a team at the end of the year, to do a short term mission trip.
However this wasn't the end of our journey. Our intention was to go and see one of the indigenous tribes, but it was deemed to far to go there, with our plane due to go in the early afternoon, however God has other plans!
We set off to see one of the other church plants in Pucallpa. (Ian didn’t drive I’d like to add).

Ian on a mototaxi, typical in the jungle of Peru

This was in another poor part of the town, and they were again blessed to meet us, very humbling. Anyway I was asked to preach, again, without warning, great for my Spanish, although I felt it was right to talk about having a vision and Nehemiah, and his vision, but managed to avoid any difficult words or names.The church building from the outside

We then were took, on what we thought was a tour of the village, but no, we were taken to a part of the village where part of a tribe I cannot remember, and evn if I did I wouldn't be able to pronounce it, lives. The pastor of the Peruvian church then said I’m going to find the pastor of this church. He arrives 5 minutes later, along with the elders, and then Ian says to me they’re talking about us on the loudspeaker. Ian said I heard the word iglesia (church) on the loudspeaker. Ian was spot on as after five minutes people started to arrive from every direction, and then Ian and I were asked to introduce ourselves and then preach.

Myself at the front of the indigeneous church

We did this, but for the first time in three languages, Ian in English, myself interpreting into Spanish, and then one of the elders interpreting into their Indian dialect. This has always been a desire of mine, which I can now tick off my list of things to do.
After this we rushed back to the church, ate and then caught the plane back.

At the zoo with the wonderful Oseas (Hosea) and our friend the croc

I have learned many things from this trip already, a greater trust in God for money, secondly that all mission and good church work starts on our knees, in prayer, and we need to be generous whenever we can, despite what we do or don’t have.

Jungle Part 2

My third day in Pucallpa was an interesting one, and further helped to humble myself and Ian in regards to money, and trusting God for money, as well as what is a generous spirit. This happened as we were travelling out to another of the church plants of the main church in Pucallpa. This was a river community located an hour by boat away from the main port in Pucallpa, where all sorts of things can be seen! Anyone fancy a banana?
They don't get this strength by eating Weetabix!

We arrived 25 minutes late for our boat, as we were doing some leadership training, and then got mislaid, as tends to happen in the jungle, when time is a relative concept. However our boat was driven by the church leader and his wife. On our way we saw dolphins, as well as many birds, and really felt as we were arriving, that we were in the middle of nowhere, even though I had a signal for my mobile phone (no permission needed for cell sites out here).
The church leader and his wife

When we arrived the 10 members of the church started to arrive, along with several young adults, teenagers and children, not counted as part of the church, but equalling maybe 30 people all in all, if not more. Ian shared a message, which I translated, as well as praying for the people there, and introducing ourselves. We then received the customary tour of the village, by boat, as for 4 months of the year, the village is flooded. That means the football pitch, the church, and the gardens are out of service from January to April each year. School starts when the waters subside.

The church building under water and where they are meeting currently

We were given 15 bananas each (Myself, Ian and Oseas) as a thank you for coming to visit them. These are people who live off bananas and fish, that they find in their gardens and they catch in the river. They then sell them to try and make a little extra money. This was before we bought coconuts from the only tree on the village, as a little thank you to them. 10 soles for 20, 50 cents for each one, (9p each) and the villagers couldn’t afford to pay this. We were also given 50 bananas from another family, and 5 fish which were still alive until we got back to the church. The village coconut tree.

These guys had nothing, nearly literally, yet they were so grateful to God for bringing us that they wanted to thank us materially and sacrificially for our presence. Ian and I were humbled. We had seen poor people before in Lima, poorer in Pucallpa, (one guy earns 25 soles a day, four pounds a day, when he gets work, and another 10 soles, less than 2 pounds). These people earned a lot less than this, a sol one day, another day nothing. Therefore they were giving out of their poverty, and cheerfully as well, I have so much still to learn.

A wonderful and generous people, but also very poor and malnourished in some cases

After returning, and seeing more dolphins, and other wildlife, we returned home with all our gifts and went for pizza. This wouldn’t have been mentioned but this was only the second time Oseas had eaten pizza in his life. Pizza is a luxury here in Peru, and especially in the jungle.

As it was the last night before we left I preached in the church again, and Ian preached to the young adults in the pastor’s house, with interpretation from Jennifer, the American missionary. These both went really well, and after we had a prayer tunnel. This tunnel took nearly two hours, beause these guys know how to pray for each other, and just as it was finishing the young adults arrived back. (which had grown by word of mouth, no announcements, to thirty people, many not Christians)

The Prayer Tunnel

Jungle Part 1

The four days I (Mark) spent in Pucallpa, a town in the jungle, felt like two weeks and also just a day. I learned so much about myself, my spirituality and how different people do Christianity. We arrived on the Monday and rested as our 'guide' Oseas (brother of Richard, one of the guys we disciple here in Lima) thought we would be tired as people normally travel for 24 hours or more on the bus from Lima to Pucallpa, but due to time restraints we got the plane and it took an hour so we were ready to start work straight away.(3-4 times more expensive, 24 times quicker). Due to this nothing had been planned for us to do the first afternoon, so we went to the zoo and then the city centre to eat pollo a la braza (rotissiere chicken), with fresh guanabana and camu camu juice (jungle fruits). The latest hair accessory in Pucallpa

I preached on the Monday night, at the church, Luz Divina (Divine Light) it has 8 services a week, every night at 7.30 and twice on Sunday. I thought 2 services a week was to many!

The church service times!!

Jennifer the lovely American missionary who works there explained to me that, the options are either to go to church or watch TV, so they have services every night. After my sermon was the 1st time I realised how hungry these people were for God, and how much they loved to pray. An example for us all. After my sermon I asked people to respond to the message and all but 3 people in the church responded, and wanted to be prayed for. The service was followed by a prayer meeting. The church in Pucallpa, paid for by the church and American donations

We were amazed at the church building when we first saw it, as it was located in a shanty town. They had saved and prayed for 4 years for this site and the money to build it.

The next day the commitment to prayer was emphasised again as members of the church, 17 of whom were fasting until 3pm, all week, met for the early morning prayer meeting. This was before we went out to pray at 3 church plants that had just been started. These were up to 50 kilometres away from the mother church. What is amazing is that these guys were praying for 30 minutes on their knees, at each place, on top of their normal 3 times of prayer a day. Both Ian and I realised how much our prayer life lacked, and we have been inspired to increase this area of our spiritual life.

At each church we visited, we prayed and gave thanks for the leaders, as well as praying for new people for the churches. The 1st church building was still being built when we arrived and the leader of the church didn’t know we were coming, and the whole village was in a meeting. (remember this is in the jungle and communication is normally by word of mouth)

The church at kilometre 47, nearly built!

The 2nd church was where we supposed to be having lunch, but this is easier said than done, especially cooking for more than 20 people. We were having cockerel soup for lunch, a speciality here (Caldo de Gallina). Normally this dish is fairly easy to prepare if you live near a supermarket. However they first had to find the 2 cockerels, then kill them, then cook them. What happened was that dinner took about 2.30 hours to make, an hour to find the first cockerel, and then another hour to find the second one, and then we had to find the owner of the cockerel and pay them. We then ate at about 4.30pm. It was very nice though.

Praying in the rain in the second church at km 43

Following dinner, we had to go to see the church before moving onto the final one. This plan was thrown some what however as is the case in the jungle in the winter the rains started to fall, and I mean fall. We managed to get to the church before the rain really started to fall, but we had to leave before it stopped, therefore everyone got very wet.
Vital protection equipment

We then walked from about 2km from one church to another, in the pouring rain, to find no one in the church. We then got a taxi back to the church in Pucallpa. Interestingly there was no church service that night as, I was informed when it rains here, no one goes to church. So like cricket, rain stops play. They still had a prayer meeting though!!!

All the outreach team, guess which one is Ian?

Youth Camp

Well these last few week have been very hectic, with a full house (Humberto, Esther and Baruj have been staying with us since the beginning of Feb, and Ian arrived mid-Feb), with the run up to the camp and then Mark and Ian have been doing mission in the jungle these last few days, so we have lots to update on the blog which we will try to do in this next week.

Firstly though - the camp for 15-25 year olds, (which in reality was 13-25yr olds!) which was last weekend and it went really well. We had 20 young people from the church we are working with in San Gabriel, including a few outsiders - friends of the young people or church contacts.

We had lots of fun and games, in and out of the swimming pool...

(Yes - that's Mark on the left underneath!)And some great worship and talks too - looking at the theme of 'Who am I?' Our prayer was that the young people would get to know each other and God better, and that seems to be the encouraging testimonies coming from the young people who are very thankful for the camp.

Interpreting Ian's talk on 'I'm a child of God'

Ministry time included a time when everyone received hugs!

To read a different perspective and to see some more pics, have a look at Ian's blog: www.hileyboy.blogspot.com