What A Week...

 This is me and a new friend from one of our daily kids programs... She was pretty excited about her animal balloon. Actually she refused to have a picture without her 'perrito' in it which is why my face got nicely cut out a little bit :)

So this past almost 2 weeks has been more on the difficult side. We were working with one church that had multiple locations (so one main church with sister churches around the area that are just starting up) and we stayed at each location for 2 days. It was a good set up with kids programs for a couple hours in the afternoon then youth programs in the evenings, with other random things in between like some pastors preferred evangelism in the plaza rather than youth programs at night. But because of communication problems and just a general latino or warm-cultured manner of things, almost every one of our plans was altered or completely fell through every day. From the first day where it was pouring rain which meant nobody showed up to either of our programs so we just went home (which is completely out of our control of course), to a few days later when we arrived at one of the new locations and the pastor had no idea we were going to be there so we had no ministry planned. As challenging and seriously frustrating as it was, the whole team really learned how to think on our feet and make the most out of opportunities.

For example, one night when zero youth showed up for our service, we decided we weren't just going to sit around. We walked a couple blocks to a plaza and started up some conversations with people. I met two younger girls, one 12 and one 19, and we had an awesome talk. The older one whose name was Ana ended up telling me a lot about her life and something she's going through with her parents. It surprised me how much she told me and just wanted to keep talking and the awesome part was I was able to relate to her through my history and pray for her. I shared with her some things I felt God wanted me to tell her and I think she really took them to heart. It was an amazing time where God really spoke to me how much He cares about very specific things. The fact that I, of all people, just happened to sit down with her and start up a conversation as a stranger and was able to relate to so much of her story and then share with her what God wanted to speak to her... I really felt like I was in the right place because He so badly wanted to communicate His love for this girl that He gave us the idea to walk down to the plaza, made sure my group just happened to sit down with these two girls, and that I would be the one talking to her.

Yeah, I was really in awe the rest of the night of how God uses situations that seem like a lost cause to show how immense His love is for his creation and how He uses us when we're available to do whatever we can. Even when it's a last minute attempt at having some form of ministry for the day when everything else has gone wrong, if we're still there to serve God regardless of the circumstances, He uses it for good. He's so cute :)


Sooooo we will hopefully be leaving for our next river trip tomorrow! Word on the street (ok some YWAM Iquitos staff told me) is that there's going to be a protest starting tonight so the roads might be blocked which means we might have to wait a couple extra days to leave. That would be really unfortunate and mess with all of our plans of course, so please please please be praying for open streets tomorrow or some form of transportation that isn't affected by whatever protest is going on! This protesting thing is super typical of Iquitos so I'm not surprised at all that it's happening, it just might conflict really badly with where we need to go. Also prayers while we're on the river for general safety, health since all of us got sick at some point the last trip, for unity in the team, and that we would take even more steps out of our comfort zone to really serve God, each other, and the communities we're in even when we don't necessarily feel like it.

I know this is a relatively long post compared to my last few. Hopefully it gives some insight into the things we're doing here -with God's help- and I'll post again when we're home!
Chau!

So Many Children!

So many kids programs this week... But not a lot of time for me to write anything significant. So I wanted to share a quick picture for you guys, this is me and Deanne loving the clown costumes and having a great time with the kids. We've had a lot of laughs this week...

Hopefully I'll be able to really update on these past few days soon! If not, we leave for our next river trip on the 30th for 9ish days and we will need LOTS of prayer!! Ahhh I really miss everyone lately and I can't wait to see you all and tell you great stories when I come home! Just a few more weeks here!

We Survived!

This is me on the boat ride on the way back to Iquitos. As you can see, I survived our first trip up the river with only one or two (million..) bug bites! Don't worry, I've kept up with my malaria pills so I probably won't die even though my skin looks pretty awful.

I also survived translation! It wasn't as horrible as I expected. I even enjoyed it at times. God spoke to me a lot through those times, and I feel like my confidence as a public speaker has grown a TON. I think God really wants to use that in the future which is intimidating for me but apparently I'm a lot more capable than I give myself credit for. Of course I spent a lot of time making up words I didn't quite know and making a fool of myself but I asked God for a good dose of humility before I went up there each time so I didn't beat myself up about it. Actually it made for some good laughs with the youth that were listening every once in a while :)

So like I said in my last blog, we dug our first well in the community of MonteVerde. We were able to bless them with that and also spent 4 days doing a youth camp sharing teachings -on Purpose, Intercession/Prayer, the Father Heart of God, Committment, and Missions-, performed and taught them how to do dramas, Waldir (YWAM Iquitos staff) led worship, we watched a movie called Fireproof which I actually enjoyed a lot, and we had an awesome dance party to end the whole thing on the last night. It was a really good time and we built really solid relationships with the kids/teens there, we laughed a lot and taught them words in English like... monkey. Reason being = we ate monkey twice.  It was quite the experience! Don't worry, I have pictures of that too :)

Anyways, it was a pretty sweet trip. We'll have a couple days of rest now, then another week of working with a church here in Iquitos. Not sure what we'll be doing yet, but soon enough we'll be leaving for our second river trip! Then home!

Some general prayer requests for the team.
Sickness has been going around again and as you can see there's plenty of itchy bug bites, so physical healing for us would be awesome.
Continued prayer for team unity and love and patience for each other.
And that we would be more than willing to let God use us in ways that will stretch us out of our comfort zones!

Thank you guys so much for all the encouragement as I've been here and for your continued prayers. It means the world!
Chau until next time!

Leaving For Our First River Trip!

So I'll have to write way more about this later, but this picture (below) is me translating for Debbie -yeah be proud :) -  at a church we've worked with the past two weeks. The last couple weeks of work have been really great here in Iquitos, but like I said, I'll have to tell you all about it later because of my lack of internet time.

Basically I have a quick prayer request, but it's kind of a big deal. We no longer have a translator for this river trip coming up of 10 days where we will be doing multiple church services, evangelism, and a youth camp which means about 6 teachings in two days, all of which apparently I will be translating. I am not looking forward to that part. I know that my Spanish has grown a lot since I've been back here, but I do not feel in any way comfortable or capable of translating this much. I know that I need to have more confidence in my ability, but this isn't just me being nervous, this is sincerely a HUGE responsbility, plus the rest of the responsibilities of being a leader on top of that is a lot of pressure. I'm pretty terrified.

Please please please pray that either YWAM Iquitos will find someone today or someone that can meet up with us later... or that God would just crazy bless me with words I never knew before.

Other than this, we are indeed leaving on our first river trip so it will be a new experience for the team and we'll be digging our first well! Please also pray for safety, team unity, and that we would be willing to let God use us to spread his light in dark places!

I'll update when I get back to civilization! Peace out till the 19th!

And I'm Back!!

Back in Peru!! Hooray!
Sorry it's been this long for an update. We've been crazy busy since we've been here!

So our first week we spent in Lima. Techinically we were actually in a city outside of Lima called Cieneguilla staying with host families. The guys and girls each lived in a separate house and both our families were amazing. The girls family especially... They were so good to us. And kind of rich. They bought us chocolate cake and took us to the beach on our day off... Yeah, we kind of wished we could've stayed there for the whole outreach.

Not only were the families really awesome, but ministry that first week was incredible as well. We did tons of kids ministry. I mean, tons. We were set up with a contact from the YWAM Lima base whose name is Jordi and he runs a couple different kids ministries in a slum area. Actually it's kind of hard to explain the area, but I spose you can see in pictures what I'm talking about. Jordi, his wife, and a few other people run Brazos Abiertos (Arms Open) with a couple programs, one for older kids and one for pre-school age kids. Basically our time there working with him was following his programs for the day with the kids -singing songs, playing inside their building and outside (I did so many puzzles those days..), painting with the kids, we did a super funny and super improvised Christmas skit.. pretty much whatever he asked us to do, we did. They were also digging some holes outside the building to eventually become bathrooms (much needed instead of a squatty potty) so everyone did a bit of that and we also wrapped a lot of presents that they handed out to the kids for Christmas.

Like I kinda said, we spent a LOT of time playing with the kids and having fun at Brazos Abiertos. We also did some work with a local church that week called Jesus La Roca (Jesus the Rock). We preached there a couple times, helped with their 60 kids for Sunday School, and helped out with another kids night program they had.

My favorite day though for sure we spent the morning in a nearby orphanage and then the afternoon at a women's rehab center. Me and Deanne cleaned walls at the orphanage all morning while Debbie played with the kids and Brian, Nate, and Scott painted rooms. Even though we were all doing different things, it was a good morning. The afternoon was the awesome part.

Like I said, we went to a women's rehab center. It's a temporary home for women who have drug or alcohol addictions, eating disorders, or have tried committing suicide. Not a lot of them are there by choice, they're mostly pretty young (youngest I met was 12, oldest maybe in her 30's), so a lot of them are sent by their families to 'get better'. We ate lunch with them and found out that over half of them spoke English pretty well, and not only that, but they were hilarious. Then we did a drama for them and Deanne shared her testimony. We broke into groups after that and the girls asked us tons of questions. Some groups talked about our team's personal stories, some asked questions about God, it was a really great time for us to share with them. I soooo enjoyed getting to know the girls in my group and telling them how I relate to them. When some of them heard parts of my story, they were blown away by the fact that I'm a missionary and they wanted information about YWAM so they can do a DTS in the future. It was so so so encouraging to inspire those women that not only can they find a lot of healing, but they can go and help others do the same thing. It also felt like a huge glimpse into my future because if I'm working with girls coming out of sex slavery they will probably struggle with a lot of the same things, and God spoke to me so much about my future ministry that day. I was getting so excited. The rest of the team really loved our time there too. I would love to go back someday.

I know this post is super long and I've still got almost 2 more weeks to catch up on! So I'm gonna end for now since this is a good synopsis of everything we did our first week. Hopefully I'll be able to post about coming to Iquitos soon!

This was one of the girl's I bonded with at Brazos Abiertos. Her name is Milagros (Miracles). After I spun her around and carried her for a couple hours, she really didn't want me to put her down. I didn't mind that much :)