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: 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!!!

My first podcast!!!

Three weeks ago I had the privilege to share on discipleship with my friend Steve Bremner who publishs his own podcasts. Follow the link here to listen to it.

I am introduced just before 8 minutes.

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!