Guatemala Comes to a Close!

In a word:  Time is winding down here in Antigua and soon I will be arriving in Peru!  This past month I had the opportunity to share the creation story with a big group of kids up in Alotenango Guatemala.  I was the Narrator and my friend David played the part of God.  Christine helped get the kids in order with pictures of the different parts of the creation story!  It was fun stuff!  I went to Tikal (one of the most famous Mayan sites) and got to see some amazing ruins!  Plus God opened the door to share with several of my new European friends!  God has provided some amazing relationships in Guatemala: strong men and women of faith and also many others that are hearing the gospel for the first time.  Please read below if you are interested in the details and please continue to pray as I move on to Peru!

Tikal and Sharing with the European Peeps:

I had the opportunity to take a trip to Tikal Guatemala, one of the most famous Mayan sites in the world.  It was cool because I went with 10 other people that are living here in Antigua.  Many of the peeps I went with were Europeans and we became good friends while we were on the trip.  We started in Antigua and went up to Rio Dulce and took a boat out across the river before heading out to the see Tikal.  At Tikal I was blown away by the history of the Mayan people.  Huge temples and plazas covered by jungle for hundreds of years until recently it was rediscovered.  While on the trip God opened the door for me to share with my friend Rasmas and several other of my new friends.  Please pray for Rasmas, Suzanna and Nancy as they search the scriptures for answers in the following month!

Good friendships:

One of the friendships that I cannot go without talking about is my friend Edgar.  He is a Director for Permits (building construction permits) in the capital of Guatemala.  He is someone I have had the joy of getting to know every weekend because he is studying English here in Antigua.  He and I have had the opportunity to share life together as we try to learn each other’s heart languages.  Usually he will speak English and I will speak Spanish so we can both improve!  Edgar has been a huge encouragement and someone that I won't forget!

Bible Storying:

I had the opportunity for the first time in Spanish to tell the story of creation!  I went with my friends Christine Jackson and David Hinds to a mission church in Alotenango and we shared the creation story with them.  It was a great experience as I played the Narrator, David played the part of God and Christine got the kids in order to show pictures of what God was creating!  The church is a huge church of nearly 200!  The different thing about this church is that it is almost entirely children!  After talking with the Pastor of the church who planted this mission he told me that the strategy is to get the peoples kids to start coming first and then the women will start coming because of the kids and then eventually the fathers of the kids will get interested.  It just takes time he said.  After my experience sharing in Alotenango I went to spend some time with a missionary who lives here in Antigua. His name is Keith Stamps and he has written several books about Bible storying.  We talked for nearly 5 hours about mission strategy and story telling and I walked away with a different mindset.  I decided that I would share stories about Jesus instead of just presenting the cookie cutter gospel presentation.  One of the most striking things he said was, “Some people can’t understand the gospel as well if they don’t understand the full story of God.”  It opened up my eyes to the possibilities of story telling and how God could use that where I will be living in Peru!

Close it out and move on:

Welp this coming Monday I will finally board a plane for Peru!  I know many of you were thinking I was already in Peru and what is the hold up!?  But now I will finally start the work I signed up for!  Please pray for many of my teammates and I as we still work on our visas and especially as I go through customs with my video equipment.  On a side note:  I really need your prayers as I transition to Peru because now I am going to live by myself in the mountains and this is where the battle really begins!  Please pray hard as I fight temptation and seek to share the good news with the indigenous people in the Andes Mountains!  Love you guys!

Seeds Planted and Spanish in Progress

In a word:  Life continues here in Antigua as I try to learn Spanish and reach the people around me.  I am learning Spanish but the more I learn the more I need to know.  My friends and I took a trip to the beach on the Pacific side of Guatemala and I can’t tell you how great it was to rest and speak English all weekend!  We ate American food too!  Praise God!  I am now involved in an indigenous Baptist church in a town called Santa Maria de Jesus.  I feel like this is where God wants me to serve while I am here.  Sharing my faith in Antigua seems to mainly be with Atheists, Agnostics and Catholics.  This is a very diverse place and I am excited about the people God is calling me to share with.  Please continue to pray as God works and if you want any other specific details they are outlined below.

School:

I have a new teacher named Vinicio and he has been great to learn Spanish with because he helps me with my grammar.  We are now learning the Future and Conditional tenses and soon I will be into the Subjunctive, which is the final part of the grammar.  I am pumped about this because once I have some idea of the complete structure of Spanish I can then learn all the vocab and such in the street while I am in Peru but still sound like an adult.  Right now I think I sound like an 11 year old still but after a year and half (about the end of my term) I think I will be close to fluent hahaaha.  Please pray for this and for Vinicio as I share my faith with him.  He is Catholic and like most Catholics here they can’t see how you can be saved by faith alone.  Works have to be in the mix somewhere and Vinicio and my host family will always quote me James 2, “Faith without works is dead…”  But I think there is a difference between faith resulting in works and Faith plus works equals salvation.  That is a distortion of the scripture and therefore we have many Catholics hoping they can be saved by not only their faith but what they do, just hoping that God will give them grace.  So pray for Vinicio and my host family that they will climb over this and see that grace is a free gift of God.

A Thanksgiving Break:

I cannot tell you how beautiful it was to just relax and eat food on the beach!   We rented a really nice house out (all 13 of us) and we stayed for 3 days close to a town called Monte Rico on the west coast of Guatemala.  It was an excellent house, and the beach was very clean.  The sand was different though because of all of the volcanoes here.  I think there are like 33 volcanoes in Guatemala alone and therefore the sand on the beach is black!  It was fun though and I got to build a Sand Castle and stuff!  It was great!  I really enjoyed boogy boarding, sleeping, eating American food, and just hanging out!  I got to share Christ with the man that looks after the house and he reads his Bible all the time.  My friend David gave him a tract and I think the tract may help clear some things up for him.  Please pray for Sotero that he may be saved!

Baptist Church in Santa Maria:

I went on a run with Christine a few weeks back and her and I ran into a security guard at a really nice neighborhood near the school I am going to.  He told us he was Baptist and he invited us to come and help them as they remodel the inside of their church.  We said yes and took another friend named Jim with us to see what it was all about.  We helped paint and got to build some great relationships with the church members and the pastor.  The pastor’s name is Gabriel and he has been the pastor at the church for about 3 years now.  He is only 23 and he and his wife have a daughter named Jessica.  They are the most amazing people and they are on fire for Jesus.  The church was down to about 3 members 3 years ago and God called pastor Gabriel to come and start rebuilding the work in the church.

Now the church has about 30 members mainly consisting of men.  God is working and people are getting saved in this church.  The coolest thing about pastor Gabriel is that he is equipping the members of his church to teach and lead as he does.  He preaches once a week but all of the other services are lead by men in the church.  It is beautiful to see organization, passion, and ownership by all the members of the church not just the pastor.  His next vision is to start an institute in the church to train pastors and laymen in his church and other churches in Santa Maria.  This may take some time to put together but Jim, Christine and I connected Pastor Gabriel with an American pastor in Antigua and we are hopeful that this relationship may bring some volunteer teams that will assist in the founding of this institution.  Please pray for wisdom for me as I decide how God would have me respond to this need.  Pray also that God would use pastor Gabriel and the members of his church to reach Santa Maria for the Lord.

Sharing Christ in Antigua:

God continues to be good to open the most random opportunities to share Christ.  I have shared in Spanish twice with my friend Rafael.  Rafael is from Belgium and doesn’t believe the Bible to be true but believes there is most likely a God.  He thinks God is like an energy all around him and he just tries to be in tune with it.  Please pray for him that he would open the Bible for the first time and taste and see how good the God he longs for really is.  Pray also for my friend Craig that I just shared with two days ago.  He is from California and had never really heard the gospel before I shared it with him.  He said and I quote, “Honestly I have never really thought about it before…”  He was open to hearing but was hung up on the God of the Bible and how we could believe that stuff.  Please pray that he would pick up a Bible for the first time and find Jesus is the way.

Special Note:

Special things here:  I really want to learn more about the Catholic church and learn the right questions to ask so that Catholics will begin to consider Jesus as the atonement for their sin.  Please pray as I study and try and to put together some ways to better talk with the Catholics I am encountering here.  Pray also for wisdom, everyday I am faced with decisions regarding safety, future and the salvation of others so please pray that God will give me wisdom in that.  Lastly pray that I can embrace this culture but not forget my own and where I came from.  I am passionate about not becoming the weird missionary guy that no one can relate to.  I want to be an American that embraces the culture I am in!  So anyway please pray for that!  Love you guys.

Starting Language School-Antigua Guatemala

In a word: I am in Antigua, Guatemala! Safe and sound! I am studying Spanish with a tutor 1 on 1 everyday along with all of my other 12 missionary friends on their way to South America! God has opened the door for me to share the gospel with my new friend Carlos who lives in the same house as me. He is a Universalist but he is open to hearing more Jesus! Please pray he would be saved! I just finished climbing a volcano in the middle of the night! Check at the pics at www.tellperu.org They are in the news shed! Continue to pray for adjustment because it is not easy to speak Spanish and be corrected every sentence you speak! Pray for unity amongst all of the missionaries here with me and that God would open the door for us to share!
Practical stuff: So I live in a house with a grandma named Juana, her son named Roberto and her grandson Carlos. It is a bit confusing why they all live there but lets just say that Carlos needs to be closer to school and Roberto is trying to figure out if he is going to marry his girlfriend he has had two kids with. This family is very close knit and has all of the family over very often! Therefore I get to practice my Spanish all of the time with them. Carlos speaks some English but not enough that he and I can communicate real well with it! That is good because I need to practice as much as I can! I go to a school named Appe that apparently is fairly new to the city from what I have heard but it is a great school. I sit and learn 1 on 1 with a tutor who doesn’t speak any English for about 4 hours a day! It forces me to learn and it is very good for me! I eat some vegetables here that I have never seen before and sometimes I have to gag as I eat it. Eating the food placed in front of me is important to these people! So I try as hard as I can even if I don’t like it! For the most part though the food is amazing that Juana cooks for me. I am here with 4 people from the REAP North Team (my team in Peru) Jessica Brooks, Mindy McCord, Christine Jackson, and Jim Gilstrap! Not to mention the other 8 missionaries that are here learning Spanish as well! We have a lot of fun together and it is a joy to have people to learn Spanish with!

City stuff: Antigua is so diverse because there are so many Spanish schools! I had a Norwegian lady living in the same house as me and now I have a British guy living in the same house as me! It is fun because I get to share the gospel with people literally from all over the world! It is a little overwhelming at times but English or Spanish tend to be the default languages for everyone to talk to each other! The city has I think nearly 30,000 people and I think 1,000 of those people are students that are in and out all year. Antigua is a tourist town so it is filled with white people every weekend. Sometimes I don’t feel like I am in Guatemala, but I am quickly reminded of where I am when a huge chicken bus blows fresh pollution all in my face walking to school every morning! This is a great place to visit but just remember to travel in herds and guard your bag because it is likely to be stolen especially on the weekends!
Sharing the gospel: God has opened the door for me to share with my friends here in Guatemala many times. First with my new friend Carlos who lives with his grandmother in the home I am staying in. He is a 20 year old Latino with Universalist viewpoints! I got to share the gospel with him in Spanish and got to talk to him about nailing down what truth is in the world. I also have had the opportunity to share my faith over and over again with my tutor Miguel. He is a strong Catholic man and we have talked about faith in Christ nearly every day for the past two and half weeks. We literally open the Bible and talk about it for 2 hours everyday. As I have asked him questions and studied about Catholicism I have found that Catholicism has some major, major differences from Protestants. Grace is the main thing—Mary apparently is the giver of the grace that Jesus purchased for us on the cross! YIKES! So that would be why Mary worship has started all across the world. Not to mention the Mayan traditions that are mixed into the Catholic Church. If you want to know more of that e-mail me! God has also opened the door for me to share with 6 different foreigners here at the school. Their names are Marium, Lela, Lockey, Benedicta, Alex and another guy that was standing with a group I was sharing with. All of these students are very post-modern and most of them have never even thought about an after life. I think this is mainly because most of them don’t care at this point in their life but please pray that it would become the first thing they think about every morning!

Church: God has blessed us with the opportunity to get connected at a bilingual church named El Camino during the week and as of today a Guatemalan led church on Sunday. The name of the church I visited today is Life and Faith. It was a 3 hour long service that had me on the edge of chair the whole time waiting to hear from God. I was really fed today in church and challenged to go and share the gospel with the Guatemalans that I have grown to love! Please pray for Life and Faith Church, El Camino, and another church I have visited named The Church of Central Americans. These churches are trying to reach Guatemalans in Antigua and in all of the villages that surround the area. Please pray for them as they reach out and reach their own people for Jesus!

Personal Remarks: Ok I will be honest my head hurts me a ton sometimes after school! My goodness it is ridiculous at times! Sometimes I just tell my teacher I have to go to the bathroom because I want to just yell in English for a while hahaha! At first it seemed I was picking up on everything really fast but the more I study the more I realize I don’t know! My goodness there are so many different ways to say one verb hahaha! Please pray for language learning! Please pray for all of us missionary’s here in Antigua that God will open the door for us to share! We are here to learn Spanish but we are Christ’s ambassadors wherever we are! God broke me today at the Life and Faith church. I just had to cry out for a while asking Him that he would save my friends! Please begin to weep in asking for Carlos, Miguel, Roberto, and Juana. Please pray that they would be saved! Finally, pray for a bit of culture shock—I got really angry when I started reading about all of the Catholic stuff. It makes me angry that it is that far off. I mean it seems that Jesus is not enough for the Catholics and it seems that every Catholic thinks something different than even what the Vatican says! So this makes it difficult to get past what people say they believe and what they actually believe! Please pray God will calm my anger about that and would change it to love for the Catholics that I know.

Last Days at the ILC-Onward to Guatemala

In a word:  Training is coming to a close in Virginia and commissioning will be on October 1^st here in Richmond.  I have grown to love my missionary friends and I am pumped to see what God is going to do it in their lives!  I am continuing to share my faith in Richmond—read below for two cool stories.  I am moving to Guatemala for language training on October 15^th and I will be there till January 09! (3 months)  Please pray as I prepare!

Practical  Planning: I finally have my tickets to go to Antigua, Guatemala!  I will be leaving on October 15^th and will be studying there in Guatemala till January 2009 (3 months).  During this time I will go to class for 5 hours everyday and live with a family learning Spanish by immersion.  If you want to check out the school—this is the website:  www.appeschool.com

Plans in Peru are coming along as well!  I have been meeting with church leaders that work in the Huancayo area, trying to figure out what would be the best strategy for reaching the Wanka Quechua people.  From some recent e-mails it seems that my job may in fact send me all over Peru to aid volunteer teams.  So I am pumped about that!  Travel whoo hoo!  I also will have a truck praise God!  That means I can be mobile in the Huancayo area, but the problem is that I have to learn a stick shift!  I practiced on my friend Heidi’s car and I think I am going to need some serious practice before I get to the outrageous streets in Lima, Peru.  So pray for that! Hahaha

My missionary friends:  Can I tell you how cool it is to have friends that love Jesus?  Can I tell you how much cooler it is that I have friends that not only love Jesus but they desire to make Him known all over the world!?   Just to name a few from my region: Mindy McCord, Christine Jackson, Jessica Brooks, Ryan Northup, Karla Turner, Chris Black, Jim Gilstrap, and many many others.  Please pray for my new friends that God would prepare them to share the gospel overseas.

Sharing Christ:  Two stories I would love to share with you.  We took a trip this month to Washington D.C. where we could finally put practice what we had learned.  A team of us from South America went out to eat at a Peruvian restaurant to try and form some relationships.  We met a man named Jorge there who was open to hearing about the gospel, My friends and I shared as much as we could with him but he wasn’t whiling nor could he stop to listen to everything we were saying.  We left him with a tract so he could read it later and with the promise we would pray that God would speak to Him. Please pray for Jorge that he would be saved.

In the Richmond area God has opened up the door to share the gospel with so many people!  I am so grateful that God has answered my cry for people to share with.  One man in particular named Carlos (I have asked you to pray for him before!) is from Honduras and works at a restaurant called El Paso.  He came with us to a local Spanish speaking church and actually knew the pastor!  Apparently Carlos went to the pastors’ house for a Bible Study a few weeks before!  I don’t believe in coincidences, I believe God crossed our paths for a purpose.  We invited most of our new friends from El Paso Restaurant to the local church and we are praying that God will continue to call out Carlos and the many others working there!

Random thoughts:  I am so ready to stop sitting in sessions and learning about this stuff!  I have been praying and thinking about going to the field since the 8^th grade, so the anticipation is about to kill me!  ahahaha  I am pumped about being in San Antonio for the next two weeks just to say goodbye’s and have some quality time with my family.  Plus I get to go to Howard Payne’s homecoming, and although homecoming is a big deal I am far more pumped about seeing my friends! 

Learning, Sharing and Ready...well almost

In a word: Over the past few weeks God has given me an anxious desire to finally move overseas. The training we are receiving is top notch but my heart is ready to get to what I will finally be doing. I will have a truck in Peru and my job description is clearer than it was. I am learning about the people group I will be working with and God is opening the door for me to share in Richmond!

Practical things: Words from my supervisors (Boots and Katie Holder): "There is one thing that they (the national leaders) and the S.C. churches (churches in the states reaching people near Huancayo) lack, someone who sees the big picture and can coordinate better all the activities of the region so that they can mutually benefit each other. That would be you." I am beginning to get a better idea of what I will be doing. From my last e-mail I will definitely have a Toyota truck! So I will be learning a stick shift while I am here at the ILC! I am pumped because a truck will give me the freedom to go where God wants me for the week! I also received a schedule that has me booked from January 09 till the end of summer 09. We are going to have nearly 60 volunteer groups by the end of 09! Praise God that He is raising up people from the local church to come serve! You know what is cool about my job? I get to learn and do a lot of what a Strategy Coordinator does. A Strategy Coordinator goes to a particular area and figures out a strategy that reaches a certain people group the most effectively and then executes it. With my job I get to practice elements of that, in doing this I hope to figure out if I might want to be an SC in the future.

Language school: Please begin to pray for the family I will be living with in Guatemala. It is the Chan family. Sounds Chinese right? I don't think they are...but I guess we will see. I am really pumped that I finally get to really learn how to speak Spanish! If you want to check it out on a map I will be living in Antigua, Guatemala. A cool website is: www.aroundantigua.com

People group: The people group I will be working with is the Wanka Quechua. These people are amazing, loving and open to the gospel. Some have seen some hardship from the past...a terrorist group called the Shining Path used to have dominion over this area during the 90's and they did horrible acts to many of these people-killing many family members of the people that live there now. These are people that have seen awful things in their lifetime and they are in need of your prayers. The religious belief of these people is a mixture of many things. They are descendent's of the Inca's and therefore many of them believe in spirits that they must worship and please. Since the conquistadors came in the Catholic church has been force on them, so imagine having a belief system with weird spirit worship, mixed with Catholic tradition. These two mixed together gives you Paganism and a need for Jesus Christ. Many have never heard the gospel and think of someone totally different when you mention Jesus. They do have high regard for the Bible and therefore this can be a tool but most don't read very well. The lanugage spoken in many of their homes is Quechua. Quechua is a language that has no written characters--it is all oral. I may have to begin learning some of this because this is the heart language of many of the people that live there. If I was to explain the gospel in Spanish many of them they would understand with their minds but never make the connection in their heart.

Church planting thoughts: I was reading Luke 10:1-7 and in this passage the Lord began to deal with me about asking Him to send more personnel overseas, that I will be a target of the enemy, to pack less and to invest in the men and women of peace that He puts in my path. An idea I had for investing in men and women of peace is to go and live with them for a week at time in the 8 villages I will be targeting. Like I have said before I will live in Huancayo Peru but most likely I will be in the 8 villages in that area more than I will be in Huancayo. There are four church partnerships from the states working in the Huancayo area: Immanual Community Church in Colorado, Council Road Baptist Church in Oklahoma, Grace Baptist Church and Cambridge Baptist Church in partnership from Virginia, and Southside Baptist Church from Arkansas. These churches have been investing for some time already coming 4-5 times a year to specific villages in that area. Like I said there are about 8 villages near there and therfore these 4 churches (or partnerships) are investing in 4 of them. Four more need churches to adopt them and I will be researching these villages and looking to mobilize a church from the states to adopt each of the villages. Please pray that God will give me creative ways to help these churches already reaching the Wanka Quechua.

People I am sharing Christ with: My friends and I have been investing at a local Mexican restaurant. I got to share my testimony with a man named Carlos and my friend Karla shared the gospel with him last week. We are going to go back and have a Bible Study there with him and maybe a few others that are interested. He grew up Pentecostal but Karla and I don't think that he really knows Jesus. So please pray he would come to faith.


From the 1 minute update: one of my friends shared the gospel with Sarah and she was receptive! My friend and I are looking to return to the coffee shop so that she can share with Sarah and I can continue my spiritual discussions with my friend Shawn. Please pray they would be saved!

Others: I am eating lunch about every 2 weeks with some firemen that come in and eat lunch at the ILC. We have talked about Jesus and then today I got to know them a little better! Please pray that they might be saved! Their names are Ryan, Matt and Jason.

Other Missionaries: I love these people so much and they are going all over the world! There are so many girls here it is hilarious, so we have decided tomorrow night to have a man night! I am pumped about it! Now we can do some grunting and watch a man flick and each man food! My accountability partner Ryan Northup and I had an amazing meeting yesterday as well. He and I got to share some things that really needed to be shared! Praise God for him because he is the only other single guy about my age that is going to be living in Peru! I will need to hang out with him in my trips back to Lima, the capital of Peru! His job will be to disciple many of the people that are won to Christ after volunteer teams come in. Please pray for Ryan and his partners Brittane and Christi that God would equip them to disciple people's all across Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador.

Train, Stretch and Pull...God is wearing me out!

“Train, stretch, and pull...I feel like God is wearing me out trying to get me ready to go to Peru.  Literally all day long I sit in sessions that challenge everything I have ever learned about evangelism, or church planting.  It is quite a challenge and my head really hurts but I am finally doing what God wants me to do!”

In a word: I am finally getting to the meat of what I will be doing—church planting.  That’s right it is the goal of every missionary (despite your job description) to start what is called a church planting movement in the area where he or she is.  (Read on below if interested).  My friendships continue to grow while I am here and God has opened the door for me to share the gospel with my new friends Shawn, Sarah Carlos, and Dolly.  Please pray they would come to faith.  The visa process is going to start in October while I am in Guatemala, so please pray that everything will work out since the Peruvian government has been weird about visas lately.

Church Planting: I have learned about what is called a CPM or church planting movement.  This is basically where I go into a village, city or wherever (even in the states) and I find a man or woman of peace to start investing in.  Second, I start a small group of people typically in the home of the man or woman of peace and dialogue with them about the gospel and the Bible.  Once a few of them come to faith (including the man or woman of peace) I begin to allow he or she to take over the small group—teaching it and leading it.  My goal the whole time is to train so that everyone in the group can be trained.  It is like my new missionary friend said today, “We see every new believer as a potential church start in their culture.” The concept is that there is no way the world is going to be reached by the amount of pastors that we can train, instead it is going to be won by the national believers that we train in our small house churches.  Have you ever thought for instance that anyone can baptize?  Maybe you have known that your whole life but I have always had this thought in my mind that it would be better if a minister did it or something.  The best thing on the field though is to allow those that lead their friends and family to Christ to baptize them.  It gives them ownership in what God is doing and therefore gives them a passion to go reach all of the other lost people that they know.  I am still learning so much but I am so pumped that we are learning these things!

People I have met: You know what is great?  There are people from all walks of life here?  God truly calls anybody and everybody to go do this missionary thing.  We have people that were saved when they were 5 and people were saved only 3 years ago.  We have a ton of girls and just a few guys, which isn’t surprising in mission work these days.  And most of all we have people that have worked as engineers, fast food cashiers, nurses, and even those with their first job.  So there are always amazing conversations about where people have come from and why they would move to Africa, the middle east, Europe or wherever.

Lost people I am speaking with:

The Lord is increasing my faith and my passion to share my faith as I go.  I had the opportunity last night to share with a lady named Dolly who I don’t think had really heard the gospel before.  She was working at Waffle House and she was raised Catholic but when I told her of how God had changed my life it was something different to her.   She looked at me with such sincerity and hunger but the words coming out of her mouth were almost turned off.  I told her I would pray for her last night and that she ought to ask God to speak to her about Salvation.  So please pray for her that she would come to faith.

I am looking to invest in Sarah and Shawn at the Daily Grind Coffee Company.  Shawn seems to be open to talking all about spiritual things.  He reads the Bible all of the time, along with the Torah and the Koran. Sarah’s band played at the coffee shop one night and we all went to hear her to reach out to her. I have not shared the gospel with Sarah but one my new friends named Katie apparently had the opportunity to share with her.  So please pray that these two would be saved.

Finally I have the opportunity to go to El Paso Mexican Restaurant here in Richmond and share my faith in Spanish.  It wasn’t amazing by any means but my new friend Carlos and another man working with him told me to come back at about 3PM sometime and they would like to talk about Jesus a little more.  So please pray for an opportunity to do this and that God would give me understanding in Spanish that I don’t have.

And finally:

Things are wearing on and I am getting tired.  I am beginning to look toward the field and it is difficult to leave all of this behind.  Some TCK’s (Third Culture Kids or Missionary Kids) got up during a session and shared about how they said good-bye their whole lives because they moved around so much.  They were so disconnected from the US and even from the country that they grew up in that they didn’t have anywhere to call home.  It hit me when they started talking about this that I am going to move around a lot now and many of my friends are not going to live close to me.  That is hard considering I have never really lived outside of Texas before.  I mean I have really only moved once and that was for college.  So this is a huge transition for me!  I am pumped about it, but I am beginning the emotional process of letting go of what I have here—so that I can go serve the Lord over there.  So please pray like crazy for me as I work through this!

I love each of you 

Connections Made and Learning the Missionary Life

In a word: Pray for my visa to come through to get to Peru by October 15th.  I figured out where I am living in Guatemala!  God has been connecting my heart with the body of Christ that is literally moving all over the world.  God has connected me with some unbelievers here in Richmond that I am trying to invest in.  God has been working in the last two weeks by teaching me how to church plant.  God is literally re-wiring the way I think about reaching people. 

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Practical things: My visa is still being worked on.  Please pray that everything goes through correctly.  Peru had closed off all visas for like 2 months before I got up here to the International Learning Center but everything is back up and running.  Just pray that everything goes smoothly.  I have put together my finances, made a will, signed over a power of attorney and even designed my own funeral as I have been here.  That is been a bit morbid and even emotional at times but I am glad to have that out of the way.  I got my packet yesterday for where I am going to live in Guatemala!  The family I will live with has a 19 year old son that I am pumped about hanging out with!  I will be the only missionary living with this family which means I will have to learn Spanish like a crazy man!  Hahaha  Please pray as I practice with Rosetta Stone and other tools to get ready for this experience!

Connections with God’s People: God has provided some beautiful relationships as I have been in training here at the International Learning Center.  There is rarely an evening when I am not up late talking, laughing and going on random adventures during the night.  It is funny though that most of the people around me are girls.  There are not that many Journeyman dudes compared to gals, so it just seems like there are girls everywhere hahaha.  Now I am not complaining about this, it is just an observation haha.  But some of my new friends that are dudes are just amazing men of God namely: Mitch,  Evan, Ryan, Paul, Brad, Josh and many others.  Ryan and I are actually accountability partners for the next eight weeks and we have had some excellent conversations as we work on being well disciplined disciples. 

Connections with unbelievers: In the past few weeks God has provided the opportunity to connect with Jack, Shawn and Sarah.  These three I met at a local coffee shop and all three had different responses to the gospel.  Jack was closed but said he would like to talk to me again if he sees me in the coffee shop.  Shawn talked to me for like an hour about spiritual things.  He is curious but he has never heard God and been saved.  Pray that he would be saved in the name of Jesus.  Sarah has a band that is playing in the coffee shop this Thursday and a few of my new friends and I are going to go hear her play.  So please pray that God would open the door to share with her because of the relationship that we develop.

Church Planting: We had our typical Southern Baptist church planting session in which we talked about the “Biblical model” for church.  I really was having a hard time seeing how planting this Southern Baptist church building with paid pastor, Americanized church in Peru was going to work.  I have spent some time in the Library reading about my people group and about Baptist work in Peru for the past 50 years and this model has failed significantly.  Then I prayed….funny how God hears His people right?  I asked God with Ryan one night to give me someone to talk to about this and I just happened to pass an experienced missionary as he was getting out of his car and God laid it on my heart to talk to him about it.  An hour and half later I saw this amazing picture of what church planting could look like in South America.  We used random rocks and sticks to give examples of strategy as we talked through reaching these unique people in South America.  In a word he said to reach out, start cell groups and link the cells together through fellowships.  This model he said worked beautifully for him in South America and he didn’t need any money for his budget to do it!  That shocked me that you can have small cell or house churches all over the place and then get them connected through fellowships that you have every month or so.  I am still working in my mind what this looks like but after starting some small groups at Coggin Avenue Baptist Church I feel like God has been preparing me to do something similar to this.  Please pray that God will teach me and I will be ready to learn as much as I can while I am here.

Getting connected overseas: Have you ever thought about going overseas?  Maybe as you keep updated and pray for me as I am going through this process God might ask you to come and be apart!  I want you to know that the door is open for you to come at any time you would like to aid in reaching the people of Peru.  Visit my website www.tellperu.org and look under the “Go to Peru” link to find out more about getting involved!

 

This is just a small picture of what is happening, if you would like to hear more just shoot me an e-mail at John77xx@aol.com or call/text me at 210-316-3630.

 

I love you all so much!