What is happening in Pacifico at the moment?

What is going on in Pacifico?

Even though we are now not meeting in Pacifico on a Sunday we still have a regular presence there on a weekly basis. In addition to this we are doing a church outreach there every 4-6 weeks on a Sunday morning rather than meeting formally in our house. Our first one was on the 18th November and we will be doing one this week for Christmas. Hopefully, future blog posts will follow about both of these events!

So what are we doing on a weekly basis in Pacifico?

Llilda, Karina and Elisabeth in the Bible Study

We currently have a weekly meeting on a Wednesday that is slowly growing in number. Attendees vary in number from one week to the next; with between 10 to 35 people in attendance, aside from the leaders.

Steve teaching at the interactive Bible Study

Three Wednesdays a month an interactive form of Biblical teaching is done, in this meeting, which is covering Bible stories in a visual, picture-based forn. We are using this form of teaching, because it helps both adults and children engage. In addition most of the people involved in the group have little or no education, and reading and writing is of a very low standard.  Every participant is encouraged to draw the different elements of the story in a symbolic way to aid processing and understanding of the story and to lead them to application. Think non-academic note-taking! 

This has been a real success and we are excited for the future of this study, not just in Pacifico, but also how this style of Bible teaching to groups of people with low education levels can be used in the jungle.

Nancy, Jane, and Karina buying supplies for Color de Esperanza

Once a month Karina leads the Wednesday meeting with her new ministry Color de Esperanza (Colour of Hope). This is an evangelistic and creative ministry connected to Jane Savaas, a wonderful lady who visited in February this year.  Jane brought a creative ministry with her and Karina has been able to carry it on since her return to the UK.  We are in the early stages with this ministry, but there is no reason why Karina cannot use this ministry all over Peru. She has already been to churches in Chiclayo in the north of Peru. The vision Karina has is to help people work through issues they have had through testimony and creative workshops. The workshops she has begun to do have been very powerful and well received. 

Some of the Pre-teens

On a Saturday Ronald leads our most healthy group/ministry, the pre-adolescents or teens group.  Rosa and Gabriel help him in the leadership. Ronald visits the core pre teens during the week and now has ten regular disciples in his group with maybe another ten who come less regularly and less faithfully. These pre teens are not just growing in their faith in Jesus, but also the practical outworking of this. See this link to see Joana’s healing testimony. In addition to this many of these pre teens are prophesying on a regular basis, evangelizing to their friends in Pacifico and at school. It is very exciting to see how God is using them!

As well as helping lead the pre teens Rosa leads the only other small cell group we have, which happens on a Monday, afternoon and is co led by Llilda. It is exciting that Llilda is helping Rosa, as is one of the first leaders from Pacifico. They are currently doing the Alpha course, which is an excellent tool for discipleship rather than evangelistic tool, as it is used in the UK. (Unlike in the UK, people here often make decisions quickly to follow  Jesus (they already believe in God) but the fall out rate is high - in the UK people are often slower to make a decision but more committed when they do.)

Finally, in addition to all this we also do a lot of visiting of people that are involved with the church. Nancy, as head of pastoral care heads this up, with Ronald and Lili doing a large share of the visiting too.  

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!!!

New Floor

Oikos church continues to grow and this has presented a good problem, that of lack of space at our Sunday gatherings.

Belen, her sister Sara, and her sister in law Miriam

Since September we have been meeting in Jaime and Belen's house and their 22 metres squared front room has been great until recently as there has been no room at the inn.

The floor before we started the destruction!!

Ronald looking on at the end of Monday after we had levelled the floor.

Therefore we asked if we could bless the family and the church and extend the room in some way. Belen and Jaime have sacrificed bedroom and kitchen space and we have gone from 22 metres squared to 35 metres squared. (Apologies to our American readers, but I have no idea what this is in feet) We managed to destroy the false floor, level the floor (more or less) and also lay a concrete floor in 3 days. On Monday we destroyed the floor.

On Tuesday we levelled the floor and started to mix concrete and we laid about a sixth of the floor.

All the sand had to be carried down from the top of the hill.

On Wednesday we had an amazing blessing of a team from the USA who helped us do most of the back breaking work.

Thanks to Justin and Mark (part of the American missionary team whom we are friends with) who brought their 4 interns, and the 9 university students to help us completely lay the floor.

Belen and Jaime ran out of water so we had to get water from the local stream.
In addition to the American contingent we had Stuart an expat friend helping us, and varying amounts of Peruvians at different times

We also brightened up the front of their house with a nice blue paint.

We now have an extended area to meet and are starting the process to find a permanent building or plot of land where we can build a resource centre and have a meeting place on the second floor.