Life without Internet

Well not having internet has meant we have got behind on our updates, again.

As I (Mark) wrote on our last update we are in a season of new beginnings. We now have a very healthy mums and tots group which had 15 mums last week with far too many kids in the back garden, a great problem to have. More team is certainly needed!! Anna is continuing to teach the mums about loving their kids on purpose, and at the moment is helping design things for Peruvian Mother's Day, and I have started to teach the Alpha course with the mums, and we will finish by having a retreat, which I believe for all of them will be a first in their life.

We have also started a church service on a Sunday which is very exciting.

The mums at our first Sunday morning service

Watch this space for further details. This is slowly growing but will be a great support to the other work we are doing.

The most exciting thing at the moment is the deepening or relationships here. We are starting to do a lot of one to one discipleship and are already seeing the difference in the lives of the some of the mums, and the others we are discipling. Last week we took on 5 adults from a church where we are mentoring the pastor and they will be doing something like a secondment (internship for our American readers) with us till December, and then we will re-evaluate. They will be a support to us, but more than that they will be learning practically about mission and helping their church to be more outwards focused.

We are also starting to visit some of the mums at home as well as seeing them outside of the Tuesday meeting.

Melissa (a 19 year old single mum) and Tiago. Melissa is being discipled by Anna.

It is wonderful to live in a welcoming community, and feel that our house will be a centre, like a modern day abbey, or vicarage.

No I'm cooler than you!

Our house is such a blessing and work is well underway for the various visitors we will be having this year. We are getting to know our neighbours, and unlike in our last house (where we lived for 2 years) we know the names of several of them. Anna has even visited one of our neighbours 2 doors down and we have a couple of visitors from the neighbourhood here as well.

Daniel and Joel on retreat where I was speaking.

In summary things are healthy and fun, and exciting at the moment.

Daniel in a post church service activity. This activity has now been banned. No idea where he gets it from!

Last Sunday

Last Sunday was an interesting one. I (Mark) have started to visit some of the churches of the guys we are mentoring. One of these churches is called Fuente de Luz or 'Source of Light' in a shanty town in the south of Lima about 50 minutes away, called Villa el Salvador (town of the Saviour). I went there to spend time with the people there, as well as support the leader, Oscar, and meet some of the young adults there; we were involved with when we were here in 2005. The service passed as normal, although I was told to arrive at seven, even though the official time to start was six thirty. (I’m still not accustomed to Peruvian timekeeping).
After the service Palmira, one of the leaders of the church, and the Mum of Oscar asked me over, and asked me to pray for healing for a couple of the older ladies.
(Palmira’s story is amazing one. She is a single mum, who twenty five years ago moved to the desert area of Villa de Salvador, and with the help of Margaret Saunderson, a missionary who we worked with in 2005, started a kids group. This has now become a church on the site of her house and she has moved elsewhere, with thriving adult, young adult, teenagers, and children’s work).

A picture of Palmira, 2nd from left taken in 2005

A couple of older ladies turned into about eight, but it was an amazing time, as God healed every single of them of something, several ladies of many things, like backaches, painful tendons, and arms that couldn’t be lifted above shoulder height. One lady was completely healed of all the ailments she had, and this all happened in thirty minutes. Amazing what can happen when we ready to do what God is wanting to do.
On the way home I had an awakening to Peru in a different way, as the taxi driver that took me home, started to pour his heart out to me. (He knew I was a missionary, and worked with various churches in the shanty towns of Lima, but nothing more). He started to tell me that life was very hard for Peruvians and that he had been working since 3am and was planning to work for thirty minutes more, or so, as it was 10.30 at night, and then back to home before getting up at 3am again. ‘Why?' I asked,( as you would expect). 'Well I have a family of 4, and I have debts, which I need to pay back daily of a hundred soles a day, (about thirty-five pounds a day, but the equivalent of hundred pounds a day). I end up with enough to feed the family at the end of my day. What a day, a nineteen hour day.
Quite a day for me, as well, the amazing testimony of healings and then the moral and ethical challenge of working in a poor and corrupt country.