Go to my Father

This Father's Day I have been thinking a lot about God as our Father.  I thank the Lord for giving me a godly father, a godly husband to be a father to our children, and I pray that our boys will grow up to be godly fathers in their turn.  But the ultimate father to us all is God.  For the first time in my life that I can recall, I wished God a Happy Father's Day.  I thank him for being a father to each one of us.  The familiar story of the prodigal son is only one example from the Bible showing God's fatherly heart toward us.  He loves us with a perfect love, and longs for us to be his children.  He waits patiently for us.  The problem arises in that we often don't want to be his children.  It isn't convenient to obey him, we are too busy to bother talking to him today, we don't want to involve him in our plans.  But all the while his heart is simply for us to come to him as children.  He wants to wrap his arms around us as the father did when his prodigal son came home.  He enjoys hearing us laugh, just as earthly fathers love the giggles of their young children.  He wants to be involved in our plans, our struggles, our daily lives.  In some ways I think that we can all be a bit of spiritual prodigal sons.  We may not take our inheritance and head to a foreign land, but in our hearts we all wander off on our own at times and need to say as that prodigal did, "I will arise and go to my father."  There is no better place for us.  There is no better response.  So on this Father's Day, I want to cherish being His child.  I want to rest in the trust that my Abba Father is taking care of everything.  I don't have to solve all the problems on my own.  I don't have to have all the answers.  I just need to sit on his knee in childlike trust.  I just need to obey my Father.  "I will arise and go to my Father."

We're in Hot Water Now!

We just wanted to share some exciting news with you, at least it was exciting for us.  The house we are renting didn't have hot water, but the owner had a heater that he had never installed.  So we tried to have a plumber guy come and do it, but he didn't actually know anything about hot water heaters.  He hooked it up, but it wasn't working.  We were about to give up, but found out that a friend of ours used to work with hot water heaters.  So he came over, took a look at it, and had it running in no time. (Thanks Jose!)  We were so happy!!!  After 3 months of taking cold showers, and heating water in the teapot to wash my dishes, we now have hot water in the shower and the kitchen.  It is such a blessing.  I know that many in the world live without hot water, so I tried not to complain before it was installed.  But now that we have it I just want to praise the Lord for this huge blessing.  It feels wonderful. 

Praise the Lord for hot water heaters!

Jonathan is two.  He loves to sing and play the air guitar,
so I made him a guitar cake for his birthday. 

Discipleship

I just wanted to ask you all to pray for the church up in Corcona over the next few months.  This is the church where we have been helping out the most.  It is the closest to Lima, and is a little more established than some of the other congregations that we are involved with.  There are about 20 people that regularly attend services.  So it is a small group, but we know that they have a lot of potential.  We believe that this church could be prepared to reach out and help start other churches farther up the mountain in the smaller towns and villages.  Many in the church are eager to help and serve when they see a need, but they haven't had access to much Biblical teaching.  So they have asked Junior to teach a Wednseday night discipleship class.  He will be starting this week and continuing for the next few months.  It is our prayer that God will bring the people that he has prepared for this.  We pray that they will get a firm grasp of who they are in Christ and what He can do in their lives. 



This is the small Corcona church builing.
The sign on top is a verse from Luke 18:27 which says,
"What is impossible with men is possible with God."

Bureaucracy and Birthdays

This past week has seen us spending a lot of time doing paperwork.  My tourist visa is set to expire, so it was time to do something about it. We had been dreading doing it, since we know that paperwork in Peru can be tedious, to say the least.  But a couple of weeks ago we finally started the process.  I looked it up online and thought that I had assembled all of the required paperwork.  But it turns out that we needed a few extra documents because of technicalities.  For example, my passport has my married name, while my marriage certificate has my maiden name.  So they asked me for a document certifying that I am the same person.  Last Friday I went to the US embassy to get that done.  We returned to immigration hoping to complete the application, but were informed that we still needed one more stamp from a different office before we could turn everything in.  So that meant another trip into Lima, and another day of doing paperwork.  All the offices where we needed to do our paperwork are about an hour from our house, down in the center of Lima.  So each time we were required to present more papers, it meant another day spent traveling into town, standing in lines, and lots of waiting.  After going in to Lima three days in a row, we finally had all the required documents, and were able to turn in my application.  Now I am just waiting to be called back in to receive my residency so that I can live legally in the country.  What a relief to have that done.  We praise the Lord for helping us to get it all sorted out.  Now we plan on taking a little break from Peruvian bureaucracy before diving back in to try to get our Peruvian driver's licences.  That should be a whole new adventure. 

Since I don't have any pictures of our time spent standing in line, and since I always like to include a picture with my blog posts, I thought I would include some photos of Diego.  He celebrated his 9th birthday this past week.  We have a tradition in our family that I try to make and decorate whatever type of cake design the kids ask for.  I don't consider myself especially artsy or crafty, so this is the peak of my creativity.  But I enjoy doing it, because they have fun picking things out and challenging me to make them.  Diego loves playing soccer and for now his favorite team is Real Madrid from Spain.  So I made a soccer jersey cake and a soccer ball for him. 

A view of the cakes from the front

The back of the cakes

Diego blowing out his candles (with a little help from Josh)

Tomorrow

About 2 weeks ago, we came home from running errands and discovered that our patio was wet.  We followed the source of the water and found it to be coming from a small storage room off of the patio.  That storage room was packed from floor to ceiling and from wall to wall.  While my parents were here, they had helped us to move all of the owner's stuff out of the house and into that storage space.  Now there was a leak somewhere in there.  I was immediately discouraged and started worrying.  Thoughts of all the work and problems that awaited us ran through my head...Unpacking the room, water damage to the boxes, finding the leak, perhaps having to break through some walls, paying to have it repaired, repacking the room.  How would we ever do it?  Since it was late and there is no light out on our patio, we decided to just shut off the water to the house and leave it for the morning.  I went to bed with a sick feeling in my stomach.  I knew that God had told me not to worry about tomorrow, but I was already dreading what a terrible day it would be. 

Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself.  Each day has enough trouble of its own.  Matt. 6:34

The next morning, we unpacked all the boxes.  It only took us about an hour and to my relief, the boxes that had been on the bottom were full of things that didn't get ruined by the water.  I could check water damage off my list of worries.  When we finally got the room empty we saw that the water was coming from an exposed pipe that had a cap on it to close it off (I'm not a plumber, so I don't know the technical terms).  The cap had simply cracked and water was leaking out.  It was a simple, quick and very inexpensive fix.  No tearing down walls or anything.  Several more of my worries from the day before had evaporated.  Finally, what were we to do with all of the owner's stuff, especially since several of the boxes were now water logged?  When we called them, they amazingly had some time available and were able to come and sort through all of their boxes.  They ended up leaving only about 10 boxes in storage here and they even packed them all away themselves.  So my greatest worry, how to fit all those boxes back in that tiny storage room, was completely relieved.  Then I praised God for how good he is.  Sometimes he lets "bad" things happen, but in reality good comes out of them.  We may have never imagined or expected it, but God knows the future.  We obviously don't.  




This is all that is left in storage.  What a
relief!  You can see the pipe that had broken
on the right hand side of the picture where the
 white paint meets the cement.

 That experience was a huge object lesson for me that we don't need to worry about tomorrow (or any of the days thereafter) because God has them all in his hand.  We may be dreading bad things, when really good is coming.  We just need to keep trusting him and walking with him.  I was encouraged by Isaiah 41:13 that says:

For I am the Lord, your God, who takes hold of your right hand and says to you, Do not fear; I will help you.  

Whatever we may see looming on the horizon of our lives, we do not have to fear.  God is holding us by the hand and walking with us.  He promises to help us.  Wow!  That is amazing to me.  Thank you Jesus.  I pray that God will be encouraging all of us as we walk into our futures with him one day at a time. 

We're still here

I apologize for the long time since my last post.  I can't believe how time is flying.  We moved in about 2 months ago, and it has been the longest "moving in" that I have ever experienced.  The house is kind of a "fixer upper" in the sense that it isn't completely finished being built.  We have installed a door, put in light fixtures, repaired plumbing, painted rooms and a variety of other jobs.  In addition to this, the house was also full of the owner's things, which we had to move out before we could start moving ourselves in.  My parents were here for a few weeks in January and even with their full time help, we weren't completely moved in by the time they left.  But things have settled down now, and we are back to school and working in the small churches up the mountain.  I will do my best to be more regular about updating the blog, so please check back again so we can keep in touch. 

I just thought I'd share a few pictures of our house and vehicle, so that you could imagine us here a little better.

Here is the front entrance to the house.



This is our 15 passenger van.  It is a bit old,
but we enjoy it because there is plenty of room for us all,
plus any guests that we may have.  It is also much
easier than traveling in a taxi. 




This is the peaceful view out my kitchen window. 
This is our back yard and park area behind our house. 

 Thank you for your continued prayers for us.  We are asking the Lord to guide us clearly in what He would have us be doing at this time. 

Tupicocha

Last weekend Junior had the chance to go up into the mountains for 3 days with a team of 12 people comprised of members from some of the nearby churches and a group of doctors. 



A boy they met on the way up the mountain.  
The group stopped and visited with him. 



 They had the opportunity to give some health advice and to throw Christmas parties for the children.  They stopped in 4 villages before ending up in a town called Tupicocha. 

One of the orphan girls in Tupicocha who received

her Christmas gift.

He came back with many stories from the people he met.  Here are a few pictures that show what the area is like.  It is up in the mountains about 5 hours from Lima.  The people are very poor and there is a lot of need.   But they are also very generous and so grateful for anything that you can do to help them.  This is one of the areas where we would like to work in evangelizism and discipleship, but ask for God's guidance and wisdom as to how best to go about it.  Please pray that God will open doors in supernatural ways, because the need is so overwhelming it is hard to know where to start. 



A Christmas party for the children





Junior and Pastor David with the children who have come
to Tupicocha from the surrounding villages
for the Christmas party.