Leader's Retreat June 2012

Nancy and Karina

A few weeks ago we had our latest Leaders retreat, which took place at our good friends Wes and Stacy’s house. We had a mixture of fun reflection, teaching, and food, as well as times listening to God. The main focus of our retreat waswas to listen to God for ourselves (we are in a pruning back season), and to be reminded of who we are in Christ, the vision of the church, and the vision for 2012. We were also asking God how we needed to respond in this season until August, as a church, individuals, and as a leadership team.

Amanda and Kaleb

The retreat started on Friday night at our house where I shared the vision again, in order that Saturday we could respond to this vision and God’s promptings.

Saturday began with breakfast pancakes made wonderfully by Stacy, thanks again, and we then moved to team building and divided into three groups to see who could build the best spaghetti bridge to support the most number of cars. Because we used to much sellotape all the bridges were very strong and all supported the whole box of cars.  Well we had fun, even though there was no winner from the three teams.  Every team then claimed they had won for one reason or another!

Personal listening time was followed by Chifa, Peruvian Chinese, which came with far too much rice, which was still be eaten on Saturday night and Sunday lunch and evening.

Angela spends some personal listening time in the plants...

After lunch we spent some time listening to God for the church and it was wonderful to hear some of the testimonies of how God is working in the lives of our leaders and what plans he has for the church. Angela commented that she really wanted to learn to be a better disciple and be faithful even when it is hard and especially in the times when there seems to be no way out.  

We finished the day with our leadership’s favourite game Mafia. As usual there were many mistakes made and Rosa was the nurse at least once. (Rosa is training to be a nurse and the first time she played this game with us she was the nurse 5 times. It makes you wonder if AnnaLou being the murderer five times in one night has any significance)!!!

Accusations flying!

Silvana murdering Karina

We love our leadership and are so grateful to God for bringing all of them, he has heard our prayer. Amazingly, in March last year Lili was the only one of our leadership with us. 

Whole Church retreat, June 2012

  

Last weekend was our first whole church retreat. Regular attendees from Pacifico and Los Cedros came and we had over 30 adults and as many children.  We went to a lovely retreat house in the foothills north east of Lima, where there was loads of space for the children to run around safely and lots of green grass and trees to lay under!

Exploring the grounds

Quiz in groups

Keeping the toddlers entertained!

Mark gave two talks during the day – one on the Father’s heart and the second on the importance of forgiveness.  Both talks led on to ministry times where many gave testimony afterwards to God speaking to them and forgiving others – some taking the opportunity to ask forgiveness from others present in the room – a uniting and humbling time.  Many people began the forgiveness process for the first time – including forgiving their spouses and children for offenses caused.

Jesus said we should forgive 70 x 7 

Meanwhile the children learned about how much the Father loves them and the importance of forgiveness too. 

We also had some games – including the much loved bubble making and racing contest! (I think this game may turn into an Oikos tradition!!)  Each team had a list of ingredients and had to make up a bubble mix and then make bubbles with shoelaces tied together.  The teams had 30 minutes to get as many bubbles as possible across the line (which was about 15m away).  It is actually much more challenging than you would think and the winning team got 8 bubbles across in 30 minutes.   The spectators enjoyed seeing the different ways the teams worked together to try and move the bubble – contorting their bodies to get under them to blow them upwards, and flapping hats furiously to move them along! The losing team was at a situational disadvantage as the wind kept taking their bubbles off course!

In all it was a very encouraging and relaxing time.  It felt like a good mix of spiritual focus and family time together and for many who never get out of their shanty town aside for work reasons, it will be the highlight of the year for many!

We are hoping to do another full church retreat in February….

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Pucallpa May 2012: Uncle Bob

The churches from San Juan

Shaun teaching on teaching!

Another powerful thing we saw was the breaking of the Spirit of religion. One particular man in one of the churches, who we will call Uncle Bob saw an amazing change in his life during the 4 days of the Learning Community. (Uncle Bob is the uncle that is just a little bit akward, seems to have an opinion that is different from everyone else, and at times has little social awareness, or awareness of what others think of him (or her)). The man has been a bit of a pain to us in previous visits as he seems to dampen a lot of what we say, always has an opinion, which is not normally helpful, and also asserts his position, which is extremely unclear. 

Well Uncle Bob was behaving like Uncle Bob at the beginning of the week. Each of the groups had their challenges and there was no exception in Uncle Bob´s group as it felt like walking through treacle at first. However the cracks began to show on Tuesday, and Wednesday the dam opened. Uncle Bob stood up and said Í'm like a Pharisee I am very religious´: I wasn´t there to see it happening but I saw the difference in Uncle Bob after.

Nancy talking about discipline, the slide behind is in Shipibo.

I also saw him being hugged by Shaun 24 hours later during ministry, and this child of God was crying like a child who finally understood the love his Dad has for him. Powerful stuff. I would pay to see stuff like that, and I am being supported to see it.Thank you to those of you who let me do this. Overall the week was an amazing sucess.

Michelle and Nehemias, Marcial and Doria´s two youngest kids

 I could say so much more but we now have joy of supporting this into a complete change in churches across the jungle, one by one, one step at a time. We are planning another one visit in November and then 2 next year, more people, more churches, more lives changed. I love my job.

  

This is all of us involved in the first Shipibo learning community (Sorry about the photo)

Pucallpa May 2012: Shipibo Women

AnnaLou with Ana one of the leaders in San Juan

AnnaLou said to me in our lunch time meeting on Wednesday ´you are starting a feminist revolution with the Shipibo women´. What she was saying is that I was beginning to help a process of empowering women, especially in ministry.

I  have been learning recently about leadership in covenant, and how when we use discipleship as our operating system, and not church the leader of the church is two in one and not just one man (as is the norm). This means that Anna and I are the leaders, not just myself on my own. We have been very blessed in this area as we have done this from the beginning of our ministry here in Peru, mainly due to the fact that until recently it has only been Anna and I in our team, and as an extrovert I have needed Anna´s wisdom and counsel. 
 I was sharing this with all the Shipibo leaders  at most potential opportunities and I could see that  God was doing something special.

The Leaders from Calleria with Vilma in pink.

 He was changing a culture. Normally the Shipibo culture is a male dominated structure where the man is the dominant leader. He has been the hunter gatherer  and the women have had to follow. This actually happens physically as well as the women follows behind the man when they are walking to a destination, and never to the side.  Added to this men receive education and their wives rarely receive the same opportunities. This is now changing but it means that female leaders over thirty are reticient in general to speak in Spanish, only Shipibo, not the case with male leadersIn addition the men have thought that a woman has no role in ministry as they are uneducated and have no giftings. This has now begun to change since this community experience. Nearly every single female leader in the learning community was speaking 10 times more by the end of our time together than at the beginning.

Cazilda sharing her testimony about how God is showing her new things



Doria being prayed for by Nancy



Doria, Cazilda, and Vilma know they have a role now, one that will help not just their lives, and their family´s live, but many other families and Shipibo women, as well as non Shipibo tribeswomen, and even men.

This can be easily highlighted by a testimony from Doria sharing how she now knows she can now teach the women how to love Jesus better. Even though it has been a real struggle for her to even understand the teaching,and especially trying to understand the discipleship mentality of covenant partnership. Her fears have been replaced by faith. She says that she now know what she is called to do for the rest of her life, in her words, ´until she dies´.

Pucallpa May 2012: Introduction

 


The youth of Calleria

 Therefore we really fired up and ready to go when we arrived in Pucallpa and we had seen amazing stuff happen within the training times. However the plan of God is different from ours at times and this was the case this time. When we arrived in Pucallpa we found that many people that were supposed to come, hadn´t for many reasons, and some people had come who were not in the original plan, so to speak.  


Calleria´s main street 

  

Leaders from Caimito, and Junin Pablo far above
Daniel with Marcelo one of the leaders in Calleria

We had some leaders from San Juan, , leaders from Calleria, no leaders from Egipto, and leaders from churches in 2 different villages, 24 hours away by boat, called Caimito, and Junin Pablo. Therefore we had 4 churches represented and by the end of the time this had grown to 5 churches. One of the pastors is planning to move to another village in the next 6 months and plans to start a new church there, but wants to do it under our leadership. This excites and overwhelms me in equal measure as I know it is what we are called to do, but it is happening much quicker than I expected. However more exciting than the churches wishing to be under our guidance and leadership, more exciting than we are touching churches which are in the middle of the Amazon jungle, is what God did and is doing in the lives of the people and leaders in these communities, especially the women, and also the healing we saw and will continue to see.

Pucallpa May 2012: Background

Rosa and her mum Vilma

Last month Shaun, Nancy, AnnaLou, Rosa (her first time flying) and I (Mark) went to the jungle again, this time to do what is called a learning community. We went from Sunday night to Friday night and taught 2 sessions a day Monday to Thursday, and did consultations on Friday morning.

This was an amazing time, and I can honestly say my best trip to Pucallpa, and the Amazon jungle out of the 10 visits i have done. It may not have been the most exotic visit as we were inside 4 walls of a church building for the majority of our time. (Thank you to our friends at Luz Divina church for the provision of their building). However it was the beginning of something really special.

Marcial

However let me backtrack to give you a few more details so this makes more sense.  In January of this year a small team from Oikos went to the jungle for 2 weeks.  This was a time to identify what was the next step for our ministry in the jungle. We had 2 kairos moments (in our language these are moments that define our lives and we have a choice to grow from them or ignore them). The first was that there was an enormous need for supporting and equipping Shipibo jungle churches, and especially their unsupported leaders, in and around Pucallpa. Secondly this would not be even vaguely possible if we did not have a team of Shipibo leaders managing and running this process. We also knew that this team needed to be run by Marcial and his wife Doria.
Therefore when we got back to Lima we started to think and pray about the way forward, and we felt that the correct direction was to start to huddle (in otherwords to coach and/or equip) Marcia and Doria, firstly face to face as they were in Lima, and then by internet as they moved back to Pucallpa, as they had felt the call of God to do exactly what we wanted to support them in. Anyway to try and keep the story short(ish) Maricial formed a team of 3 people with their wives, and 2 young single men.

Erling with Kaleb

The aim in the beginning was that Miguel, and his wife Vilma (Rosa´s parents) would oversee the church in Calleria, Marcial and Doria would oversee San Juan, and Florienzo and Cazilda would oversee the planting of the church in Egypt (yes that really is the name), Erling and Rafael, the two single guys would help with this process. Well this was the idea before we arrived in Pucallpa for the Learning Community.

Miguel being lunch preperation!!!