Mase, Taco Salad & Truth...

TEAM PERU:

I never really know how to start these posts because there is so much to say, then I end up leaving a million things out of it but here I go... :) We have had another great week beginning with Bible College last weekend which was packed, I'll share a few thoughts later on. Saturday afternoon we have the girls over our house for a girl's Bible Study and Age shares with all of us at that time-awesome time then too! She spoke about the difference between TRUST and FAITH... anyone know what that is??? Maybe I'll put that in the next blog but I'll let you think about it for a little bit. Sunday was a great day, it was actually sunny in the afternoon (for those of you who didn't know this, right now its usually cloudy and overcast everyday so when the sun comes out in Lima its VERY exciting for us!). So I went to a park near my house and enjoyed the sun for about an hour. Ha, I actually have a small case of MASE (not sure if that is spelled correctly) but I brought that with me just in case I would need it. Its not a really bad area, no worries. Just thought some of you would laugh thinking about me having a spray thing of MASE and maybe needing to use it some day. ANYWAY, I forgot what I was even talking about... SO we had a fun time with the team this week. For a little backround info, we had Pastor Scibelli and the other visiting adults over for dinner during the conference and we couldn't have the boys over simply cause we didn't have enough room for them in our apt so Pastor Scibelli gave us some money to cook for the boys. :) We made them taco salad on Monday and then we played some basketball (not such a great idea after consuming a massive plate of taco salad but we always have fun playing basketball, its a weekly thing with some of us). I definitely have a slight height disadvantage being the shortest one. We had another great class on Monday night and made a grand plan for Tuesday - our team day off. We made breakfast at our place and had the whole team over, watched church service online from Baltimore-which has been really amazing. I love that we get to watch the services!!! I look forward to it so much! So, we played some more basketball after that a little later then went to P Stans house to get some pizza and watch Saving Private Ryan, definitely not a chickflick... Wednesday morning a group of us went up a Christian School where Myshell (one of our team members) teaches and we did their chapel service for them, music and all, that was a great time, the first time we had done that at that school. Thursday we went to the airport to greet Tyler Yanosky and his friend who will be living in Lima til December or so to play basketball about an hour from our church here. That was fun because he brought down some chocolate chips for us girls, and that is VERY exciting because they are VERY expensive down here, something like $7 a bag. So we had chocolate chip bars today. Mmmmmm. Today we had our team meeting then evangelism up in Mira Flores. As we were leaving the rap (see my definition in post 1) at McDonald's I saw this girl who I thought spoke English and introduced myself to her. Turns out she is here for 3 months and has already been down for 1 (Just like ME!). She's from Norwey and we are going to get together at some point since we go down there every Friday, that was the highlight of my night.

NEWS FLASH: October 9 - 19 I will be going to Argentina and then to Chile!!! SO excited about that, just made the final decision today. Pray for the time with the churches there and the conferences. If anyone wants to come down there let me know, I'm sure we could work something out!

The important part of this post...
So all of that isn't REALLY what I wanted to talk about in this post, I wanted to fill you all in on that but I what I really wanted to share are some of the things that GOD has been doing in my heart and in my life here. All of those things are great and fun but they are outward things and not the focus. :) I am amazed that I am even here, sitting in my bed in our little apartment in Lima Peru but I am here and God called me here for this time. Pastor Stevens said that the geographical will of God is where I can get the most of God and the Bible (His Word). I believe that is very true. God reveals Himself to us by the Holy Spirit and through His Word. Its really an incredible thing to not just be taught about God but to be taught by God in your heart. There is a huge difference, HUGE! It is incredible that when we put our simple, tiny little mustard seed of faith in the Almighty God (TODOPODEROSO in Spanish, one of my favorite Spanish words) and in what He has done for us on the Cross we have His Spirit living inside of us. The REAL, LIVING God. Not just some abstract being in Heaven floating in the clouds but the personal and compassionate God. Its amazing. Faith is the only part that we have and then God fills us and teaches us by His Spirit. Without Him we really are nothing and we can do nothing and we know nothing. There is a song we sing in church called "There is none like You" and it goes like this in the chorus: There is none like You, no one else can touch my heart like You do, I could search for all eternity long, and find there is none like You." Only God through His Word can address the deep things in our hearts and meet our deepest needs. In our weakness and our own insecurity He is strong and we can have confidence in His ability. There are so many thoughts and truths to share, I almost wish I could type out my whole notebook that is full of treasures. I really am so thankful to God. Every day by faith we enter into the grace of God (Romans 5) and its only by faith. In our difficulties and challenges we have a ROCK that is higher than I. Its an incredible thing to cry out to God, our healer and just believe in Him. He is real, He is for us, He loves us and forgives us because of Christ and He will lead us in our lives. That is so encouraging and even more encouraging that none of it depends on me. I just receive it. God is good to us, He really is. :) Love you all.

The last couple weeks

So I have definitely been slacking on my blog as you can see. My first anouncement is that I'll be having my first NEICE!!! After three boys my oldest sister will be having a girl!!!! I'm so excited about that, found out this morning! The team has the day off today since we had such a busy week with the South American conference with Pastor Scibelli last week. I'm sitting at Starbucks which is about ten minutes from our apartment. The conference was amazing, I got to meet a lot of the missionaries from the different South American countries. A couple from Chile stayed with us girls, Rolando & Flavia, they are such a sweet couple. Rolando is the song leader from his church so he did our song service on Sunday morning and I sang with him in SPANISH! I have been singing quite a bit which has been fun. I sang a couple songs in Spanish, its easier to sing in spanish then to speak it. I am having fun learning the language. I'm not taking an official class but learning things every day. I'm speaking like a caveman at times because of the translation. haha, its great. :) Hopefully I'll be able to speak English when I get home... :) So I'm going to attempt to fill you in on the past three weeks...

The trip to the jungle... We took another trip after picking up the gals from the airport (Adrienne and Rachel). We went to Mazamari (a jungle town) where Pastor Jorge lives with his wife. They have decided to affiliate with our ministry and offer Bible College classes there. His daughter lives in Lima and goes to our church. We left VERY early in the morning to drive there since its a 10-12 hour drive, the last hour is SO bumpy because the roads are aweful. haha, we get to the hotel and there is no water so we went to bathe in the river. :) I was a bit hesitant but then said, what the heck and went with the girls, the guys hadn't arrived yet, they would be coming in the morning. We were wearing bathing suits, dont worry. We were a spectacle becasue everyone there was Peruvian, they were washing their clothes and the younger kids were naked swimming in the water, it was quite the experience actually. I wanted to take a picture so badly but that would have been really rude. The river was coming straight from the mountain so it was clean, cold water. I stayed with two of the Peruvians so I blended in better than the other three girls. We spent a few days in Mazamari doing sketchboard in the plaza that was right across from the hotel. The people in this town were very open to the message of the Gospel! It was really an incredible time. We would finish the sketchboard and they would just stay there and ask questions and listen to the different Pastors teach from the Bible. They were like the sheep without a shepherd in Mark 6:30-44, a passage Pastor Stan was talking about quite a bit. Grant Sutton came to join us right before we had left for Mazamari and he was hanging with they guys, one afternoon they decided to rent dirtbikes for the afternoon and go for a ride. It went well the first day, they all had a blast. Then they decided to do it again the next day again. Grant took a little spill and busted his knee open but thank God he was ok. It could have been much worse. They had a blast though. It was great having him with us for ten days. Myself, Adrienne, Pastor Stan and Rachel all got sick towards the end of the trip. Rachel had it the worst. It was a long ride home but we made it. OH! I almost forgot! Some of us went to a local pool and played volleyball then went swimming, I had the silly idea of us four girls doing synchronized swimming and we did for a solid 15 - 20 minutes... well, we tried anyway, it was hilarious. We were probably laughing for most of that time. Sometimes you just have to create fun. Ha! Also, on Sunday morning we went and had church service at a local Indian village whose Pastor just recently died. They really appreciated us coming and then gave us fresh coconut milk after. Rachael is showing her appreciation below with Gustavo:

Well, I ran out of time for this post... I will write more later!!! Love you all!

THANK YOU

This first post is to say thank you to all who helped me in coming to Peru. The prayers, gifts and monies are very appreciated. After two and a half weeks of being here I can really say that the time has been amazing and I'm looking forward to more of what God has for me here in Lima. This blog is to keep you all informed on my time and what is going on. I will be updating it little by little. So, I hope it is encouraging to you and not boring. :) God bless and thank you!!!!!!!

Trujillo and Caja Marca - the first week

The first two weeks of my trip were on the road pretty much. I got in late Wednesday night and then we got up early Thursday morning and got in the van to drive about 8 hours to a city called Trujillo. Julianna and I stayed with Julio and his wife. Julio works all week then takes an 8 hour overnight busride to Lima to come to Bible College classes on Saturday and Sunday then rides back Sunday night to his house. We are starting a Bible College in his house where the classes from Lima will be sent. We did a "sketchboard" evangelism in the plaza near his home and many people prayed to receive Jesus into their hearts. We were there one night and then got up early the next morning to drive further north to Caja Marca, this was another 8 hour ride. It was so beautiful. This is a picture from our van ride.
One of the men that came with us is named Arturo. He LOVES taking my camera and taking pictures. I called him my personal photographer. There are tons of pictures of me on my own camera which is funny but its all Arturo. :) We arrived in Caja Marca in the evening. We stayed in a hotel right across from this towns plaza and we had another night of sketchboard and evangelism. The response was incredible from the people. They are very open to God and talking with us. After telling the story on the sketchboard people would stand around and talk about Bible College. We met a few people on Friday and Saturday that came out to eat with us when we would have our "raps" (rap-time of discussion, its a term that our church uses, we dont actually break out into raps... haha). It was a great time there. I had some fried trout which I am not much of a fish eater for those who know me but I loved it! It was so good. We held a small church service in our hotel on Sunday morning with some of the people we met over the weekend and also some of the people that the team had met in the past trips to the city. We drove back to Trujillo, ate some more trout, woke up in the morning and had breakfast and then we were back on the road to Lima. We got in Monday night around 5pm. Monday night is the night that the men have a meeting with Pastor Stan (our church pastor in Lima) and the girls come over to our apartment. Julianna and I had a great time sharing with a few of the girls after making some homemade chicken soup. Tuesday is our day off each week so we all just relaxed and had some time to breathe and get laundry done which I will explain later in another post :) We picked up Pastor Jon Stambovksy after watching the Count of Monti Cristo (a great movie by the way) late Tuesday night. Wednesday night we had church and they asked me to sing for the service so I sang the Kari Jobe "Revelation Song" The service was really amazing. It was total confirmation to me that I am exactly where God wants me. I cant even explain how personal the messages were to me that night. It was unbelievable. This entire time here has been like that. It definitely doesn't do justice to explain my time in a litle blog but hopefully this will give you all a little insite to how everything is going down here. ITS AMAZING!!!!!! I have a lot more to write but it will have to wait for another time.