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 :)

Leaving SOON!

Here's a quick update before we leave... I may or may not be able to write again before we fly out. We've got one week of classes left where our base director David Clark will be speaking on God's Calling or something like that. He talks about everything under the sun when he speaks so I forget what his actual teaching is called because we go off on so many tangents. So one more week of classes and then on Tuesday, December 13th, we are GONE!

Kinda crazy! I'm gonna be sending out postcards to anyone that wants them (if you do, send me a message somehow, fb or text or at sarah_valentine1@yahoo.com with your address pretty please) that has this lovely picture of our team and it's gonna look all pretty with prayer requests and what ministries we're doing and such. But I wanted to post the picture for those of you who follow my blog and aren't going to give me your address so you can remember our faces and hopefully remember to pray for us for the next 3 months!

Here's the Peru team!
Back row: Brian, Scott, Nate

Front: Debbie, Me, Deanne

Cool Story?

As I told you guys in my last blog, we finally got our tickets to Lima purchased, but I didn't really share the awesome story behind it.

Once upon a time, we (me and Scott) were feeling extremely pressured to purchase tickets from a few different people. Our contacts in both Lima and Iquitos were getting kind of antsy and impatient since we didn't have any set in stone dates of arriving which meant no set in stone plans for any of our Outreach. Our school leaders -Deb and Jeff- needed to know our dates and plans which we didn't have. Students needed to know when we're flying and how much airfare was going to cost, but the cost depended on the day we bought tickets, but we couldn't buy tickets without all the students having their money in. The accounting department was trying to help us work on our budget, but we couldn't do that without knowing the exact amount of days we were going to be there and the exact amount of the airline tickets. So as leaders, me and Scott (well I guess I should speak more for myself but I feel like he would say the same thing) were getting kind of overwhelmed.

It came down to our biggest factor, students having money available to purchase tickets. As we kept waiting for students to get their money in, ticket prices kept going up. So 2 weeks ago, prices were $1345 from Mpls to Lima, then at the beginning of last week, they had gone up to $1473. When it was already a struggle for finances to come in, having them jump that high in a matter of days was pretty disheartening. Basically the only people that had money to purchase tickets on Monday of last week were me, Scott, and one other team member. Even though that was the case, we knew tickets needed to be bought or we were going to run into more problems and higher prices, so me and Scott took some time to pray. We decided to take a huge step of faith. We asked God which day would be best to buy tickets, and we really felt like He was saying Thursday. So we decided to go for it, and trust that He knew this was the best day to do it.

We told the team on Monday -the 21st- that they needed to have their money for airfare in their accounts by Wednesday so we could book the tickets and have them purchased by Thursday. Like I said, most of the team really needed to see a lot of money come in before that was possible, and only having two days to do it seemed kind of intimidating. Especially for one team member, Brian who needed basically every dollar of that price to appear in a matter of two days. I explained that we trusted that God was going to provide funds for every person to be on that Outreach, but if we needed to book separate flights for people who didn't have their money in by Wednesday, that they would just have to come to Peru later. Honestly, it's a scary thought, having one or two students fly separately from the team, but it's been done a lot before so we knew it might happen, especially if Brian didn't have ANY of his Outreach money at that point.

But of course, God provided! Not just for the whole team, but especially for Brian. He made some phone calls that afternoon, and the next day someone came and gave him $3500!! Not just to cover the plane ticket we needed to buy ASAP, but his whole Outreach!! I was completely blown away. I mean I've been telling the team this whole time that if we do the possible, God will do the impossible. It's a YWAM phrase we use all the time, saying basically if we do what we can, make phone calls, send out support letters and such, that God will do what seems to be the impossible and provide everything we need. But to see it take place in such a huge way was such an encouragement! I really felt like God was not just giving a huge blessing to Brian, but for our whole Outreach. I'm still excited about it!

Oh and that's not it. Ticket prices stayed the same steep price up until I emailed our travel agent on Wednesday. Coincidentally, when she booked the tickets after all of our money was provided, the prices went down to $1380. Which meant when our tickets were actually purchased on Thursday (because the airlines have a 24 hour booking period, they have to be booked a day before they're bought), they were about a hundred bucks cheaper than the week before. Uhhh thank you Jesus??? And thank you also for telling us which day would be best and cheapest to buy the tickets?? Yeah, I was pretty pumped. God is so good and even though I thought it was more convenient to give the students a couple days notice and buy the tickets at the end of the week, God knew the prices were going to come back down and because we chose to trust Him, we saved a good amount!

Hooray Ashna!
So the whole team was pretty excited, it was a really awesome way we got to see God provide. Thought I'd share it with you guys. Thanks for keeping us in your prayers, it obviously helped! And please continue to pray for us as Outreach is getting closer and closer! We leave for Peru in 18 days!!

The SOMD Has Graduated!

Weird! My School Of Ministry Development class graduated last night. Well everyone except for us 5 interns. So their outreaches are officially over, and mine is soon to begin!

Speaking of which, the Peru team got our tickets finally purchased yesterday! We'll be flying down to Lima the 13th of December and staying there for about a week. We'll be working with a church in the city there and it sounds like this pastor is more than thrilled we will be there. He's actually requesting that we stay longer than we're planning to, which might end up happening.
After that week (or more?) we will be flying into Iquitos, a city completely surrounded by the Amazon jungle/river. We'll be working with a friend of mine and her women's ministry for the first week, doing CPR training and anything else she needs help with. The next week we will be putting on a youth camp in the city with worship, teachings, games, and building relationships with whoever shows up. "Youth" in latino cultures means anyone from age 8-28, so we're not really sure what range of people to expect, but I am really looking forward to youth camps on this Outreach because they were my favorite part of my Outreach last year. For the rest of our beginning weeks in Iquitos, we will be doing random service projects around the YWAM Iquitos base and working with local churches.

Around January 9th, we will head out on our first river trip. We'll spend about 10 days in the Amazon villages doing another youth camp, we'll have some sort of children's ministries, evangelism, handing out de-parasite medicine, and we will be digging one well. After that trip, we'll go back to the YWAM base in Iquitos for about a week to rest after the strain of living in the jungle, and then we'll travel back to more villages on the river. We'll be doing the same ministries in these communities, and digging one more well if we get the funds to do it. One well costs $1,173 so it's not really money we have in our back pockets but we're hoping to hear back from an organization that has sponsored wells in the past. Be praying for that money to be donated please!

After the second river trip, we will return to Iquitos again and do some ministry in the city for another week or so. We're hoping to do some open-air worship, maybe some dramas, and hanging out with people in the plazas. You never know what you're going to find in the heart of the city there. I'm personally excited to see my hippie friends again that I met last year and I'm hoping to spend good amounts of time with them.

We'll spend our last few days back in Lima doing some debriefing from the trip and hopefully fun outings. We'll come back to Minnesota on February 17th and have a week of debriefing with the DTS staff and the South Africa team as well.


Soooo that sums up what I know about our Outreach so far. I'll keep you guys updated while I'm there as well in their super shady internet cafes. But please please please keep my team in your prayers the next couple months! Me and Scott -leaders- still have lots of planning and preparation to do, so please pray for clarity in decision making, patience, productivity, and restful sleep for us. For the rest of the team, we still need a good chunk of finances to come in to make sure they will all go, and also peace instead of nerves, flexibility as plans change often, rest, and good attitudes for everyone!

Thank you guys so much for your prayers. I really need them and appreciate them :)

Oh and... here's my SOMD class and staff!

Back row: Chris and Jeanne (staff), Jasmine, Jo, Brenden, Scott, Dain (staff), Jenesa, Rachel (staff)

Front then middle: Ahnna, Kallie, Me, Ivan, Caitlin, Becca

10 Things YOU Should Know About Human Trafficking!

This list is from an organization called Not For Sale, an organization focused on the abolition of human trafficking. They have locations globally, including programs in Peru. Dick Wexler, retired father of the co-founder of NFS, came and spoke for a couple hours last week in the DTS I'm staffing. As some of you know, working towards the abolition of human trafficking is my biggest passion and what I plan to do someday in the future. 

This is NFS's list of things they feel North Americans should know about human trafficking. Please note that these are not necessarily the top 10 things I would want someone to know, but I liked the list enough to paraphrase and share with all of you :)

**I starred things when I added my own clarification or examples**

Top 10 Things To Know About Modern-Day Slavery

10. Human Trafficking:
the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring, enticement, provision, obtaining or receipt of any person by any means for the purpose of facilitation of sexual or economic exploitation.

-definition by the Minnesota Human Trafficking Task Force

9. Traffickers use force, fraud, and/or coercion to control victims.

-Ways of force: beatings, confinement, rape (*ie. Beating victim until the victim agrees to do what they ask*)

-Deception/fraud: false offers of employment, marriage, education, etc.

-Coercion: threats to victim or victims’ family, debt bondange, manipulation *(A trafficker can say: “If you escape, I’ll replace you with your sister/best friend/daughter.” A trafficker doesn’t care about your life in particular, they just need a body to use.)

8. The word 'trafficking' is a misnomer!

A victim does not have to be moved to another location for the crime to be considered "trafficking in persons". *If the situation qualifies as modern-day slavery or slave-like conditions, you could be trafficked out of your own home.

7. TIP (Trafficking In Persons) is the fastest growing criminal business activity.

-Over 30 million victims worldwide

-TIP generates about $32 billion per year

-*TIP is estimated to pass up drug trafficking by 2020 as the world’s biggest criminal money-making industry – you can sell drugs once, but humans you can sell over and over again.

-so many more facts at http://love146.org/slavery. Click on the bottom right side of the picture. Love146 is one of my favorite organizations. Or http://www.stopthetraffik.org/uk/page/the-scale-of-human-trafficking

6. Traffickers prey on the powerless:

- 1/2 of the people trafficked are children

- 80% are female

- many live in extreme poverty

- persons trafficked in the USA are usually runaways, homeless, mentally ill, handicapped, immigrants, or refugees.

5. 2 major categories of TIP

Sex Trafficking  (up to 26 different ways such as...)

·                     phone sex

·                     live sex shows and peep shows

·                     stripping

·                     prostitution

·                     pornography

Labor Trafficking

·                     agricultural work

·                     criminal activity

·                     restaurant work

·                     construction

·                     domestic servitude

·                     hotels

·                     mines

·                     street workers (kids selling gum, beggars, etc.)

*These are just some examples, there are plenty more.

4. Average age that girls start to be prostituted in the US *as well as globally* is 13.

3. Countries of origin for trafficked (over borders) victims (as in, trafficked from these countries to other locations):

very high in Asia, India, Eastern Europe. There are lower numbers of trafficked victims coming out of the Americas.

-people are most often (once trafficked) brought to: Europe, the US, some places in southern Asia.

2. The FBI has identified the Twin Cities (Minnesota) as one of the nation’s 13 largest centers for child prostitution.

1. EVERYONE can do something to fight trafficking!

---> pray, become informed, raise awareness, shop wisely, support organizations financially, and come up with your own ideas!

*More ideas/info at websites such as:

notforsalecampaign.org

love146.org

mngirlsnotforsale.org

free2work.org

productsofslavery.org

stopthetraffik.org

callandresponse.com

ijm.org

or just google modern-day slavery or human trafficking!

Hopefully this was helpful to some or all of you. I know I learned new things when I heard all of this and I've been researching this stuff for years, so be informed and share with everyone you can! :)

Social Justice & God's Goodness

That was our topic this past week, mostly having to do with modern day slavery. Our speaker, Karisse Schilling, who I met last year when she spoke in my DTS, works with human trafficking efforts, and as most of you know, this is my passion so I was extremely excited about this whole week. Not only did she talk about sex slavery in particular (what I want to be working with in the future... well with prevention and with girls who have come out of it kind of thing), but slavery on a large scale, and a lot of other injustices happening in the world today.

So she started with her story of surviving I can't even count how many cancers and surgeries (she is a walking miracle every day, let me tell you), and then continued the week talking about pretty hard topics, like I said, modern day slavery -human trafficking is the technical term-, poverty, world hunger, etc. Through that she tied in scriptures and life experiences to show how God is still good through all the evil in the world. I would expand right now but I have to leave in like two minutes so I'm making this a lot shorter than expected. So it's been kind of a heavy week, hearing lots of hard things and statistics but also realizing through it that the evil in the world is not what God intended for us at all and good WILL conquer evil in the end.

Here's a couple videos she showed this week that I really liked. Hopefully soon I can post some more on this because as I already said, working towards justice especially on this specific topic is my life passion so really I could talk about this for days and not be done.

Music video:
World on Fire - Sarah McLachlan
http://youtu.be/FDmPcSWE0WU


Miniature Earth video:
This really puts things into perspective... Appreciate what you have! Like internet!
http://youtu.be/rvTFKpIaQhM