Daily thoughts: Confidence 9/24

^{Isaiah 44:21} "Pay attention, O Jacob, for you are my servant, O Israel. I, the Lord, made you, and I will not forget you. ²² I have swept away your sins like a cloud. I have scattered your offenses like the morning mist. Oh, return to me, for I have paid the price to set you free."

in todays reading we see how God says I will do a new thing in you for my names' sake. How awesome it is to know although we fall into the traps of the devil and through rebellion, sin, or unbelief we get trapped, God still has his plans for us.

Three things that come to mind how the enemy hits us he is called the accusser of the breatheren. first he tempts us then he brings us to a place where we feel there is no turning back second he brings us to a point where we believe all the negative will happen third he alienates us to a point that we feel no one can help us that kind of warfare keeps men daily from entering into God's presence, but as Paul says in Ephesians 3:12 only because of Jesus are we priveleged to confidently enter into his presence. I have come to realize that if the enemy can take your confidence in Christ he can wipe you out as a Man of God. I have seen times in my walk with the Lord that no matter how I try to go around or figure out why something happened or how to get out of this hole I dug myself into, the Spirit of God reminds me to just get on my knees and cry out to him the only one that can truly resolve anything in my life. That right there has taught me to break the pride that the enemy uses to pull me away from God's presence.

to help those that may read this, God has orchestrated for his servant (i.e. pastor, apostle, ministry leader, shepherd, spiritual mentor) to help you see the traps and wiles of the devil in your life. To not use him would be telling God we have a better way or method or plan. If the Apostle Paul, who gave his life so that his spiritual sons could have this information to take over their world, did it; how much more do we that allow all these distractions to come against us need it. HELP US LORD!

My prayer today is for those men who are struggling with confidence in Christ to do all he created us to do!

Ephesians 3 ¹⁴ When I think of all this, I fall to my knees and pray to the Father, ¹⁵ the Creator of everything in heaven and on earth. ¹⁶ I pray that from his glorious, unlimited resources he will empower you with inner strength through his Spirit. ¹⁷ Then Christ will make his home in your hearts as you trust in him. Your roots will grow down into God's love and keep you strong. ¹⁸ And may you have the power to understand, as all God's people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is. ¹⁹ May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God.

And now, what we've all been waiting for

I just spent about 2 hours researching some stuff for a video I'm making for the conference next week. I never, ever thought a phrase like that would be coming from my mouth...er, fingers?
I am now very tired of research and ready to be done with it.
Today is September 30th which means I am leaving in 5 days to visit my family and have a blast at "This is the Real Me" I have been looking forward to this conference for awhile and I can't wait to be there! Plus, bonus: My sister seems to have been blessed with the ability to have a baby girl which so far has been un-attainable for me. (Pray for me ya'll, I have been out numbered for years. This house needs some estrogen ;)
When I go to Houston I get to see her for the first time. Ya'll better believe I'm not letting go of her until I leave...if then. :p

Anyway, the next several days will be busy for me getting ready to go etc... Then I will be in Houston so I may not blog for that time but I get make a special announcement today!

JOSE IS BLOGGING! Prepare yourself for the awesomeness! He will be sharing his daily thoughts right here on our little blog. Now we can finally live up to our name (joseandkat.blogspot) so with out further ado I will hand you over to my very capable husband.

See you in a couple weeks
Kat ~*

Casa Hogar

Today we visited our first orphanage. (we plan to visit some more to get a better picture of what already works before we move forward on anything)
We went intending to take pictures etc...and quickly found out it's illegal to take pictures inside the orphanage :/ So I'm sorry I can't show you what it looked like but I will try to describe it. One side was all living quarters. They have about 8-10 children in each building with 2 mentors. The houses are separated by age and gender. They have 54 children living there right now. (the director said that is way more than normal because they have a second location which was flooded so they had to combine the 2)

The other side is a school. Most of the kids are the orphans, but there are a few students from around the town.
We were able to get a lot of information from the director but I won't bore you with all of it :)
The best part of the trip was when we met the kids. The older kids where in a large assembly but we got to meet the preschool/kindergarten class. (Oh my word I fell in LOVE with 2 of them) When we came to the door they all ran out and hugged us. One little boy named Jonathon melted into my side while all the other children took turns hugging me, Jose, Victor then Jose's Dad. Then there was a sweet bubbly little girl with pigtails named Andreita (here they add "ita" to everything to make it cutesy) She locked eyes with me when we walked past the class and had to climb over the other kids to get to me. I wanted to keep her.
When we were getting ready to leave the class I looked over and Jose's dad had at least 5 little boys hugging him around the neck. It was adorable. I wanted to keep them all. Bring them home and give them lots of hugs and kisses every night. However, kids in private orphanages are not adoptable. :( I guess that's a good thing because we really aren't quite ready to take on 10 more kids. But I cried. No weeping and wailing but a definite ache came over me. I looked at these beautiful little girls and boys who either have no parents, or were abandoned. And they crave love. Little Jonathon, only had one of my arms but he did not move. His teacher had to tell him to come back in to class. I gave him one last tight hug before I let him go. (and I cried)

Did you feel the mountains tremble?

This morning at 3am we experienced our first earthquake. It registered 5.9 on the Richter scale. Here is a news story about it. To be honest it is not that big a deal here. (Jose and my kids actually slept through it..except for when I reached out for Jose, because for a moment I thought I was dreaming)
I find it interesting because the day I wrote my last blog I almost talked about being nervous about earthquakes. All I knew is they start without warning and can be devastating. It scared the living daylights out of me (there's a little bit of Texas slang for you...proof of my roots) But a few days ago I thought. I wonder if there will be an earthquake here? Then I realized I really wasn't as afraid as I used to be. It's awesome the way God prepares us in the smallest ways for things. 

Speaking of preparing for things. Tomorrow (Thursday) Jose, Victor and I will be going to a local orphanage to talk with the director and see how they run things. There are lots of potential good things going on with that so please keep us in prayer. I'm so excited about this I can't even explain it.
God has already been flinging doors wide open everywhere we go. There is no doubt in our minds that his hand is on this ministry and we want to thank everyone of you that has been praying for us and supporting us financially. We are able to do the things we are doing because of your support. We love you guys

Learning my lesson

o.k. I admit it. I did not have the best attitude about my laundry taking 5 hours. I thought it was a pain to wait all the time just for one load. But then we went to the zoo. 

At the zoo we rode a train that went around the perimeter and I was sitting on the side where you can see outside the zoo.

Imagine living by the zoo.

Even in America the zoo smells nasty.

There is no getting around it.

Now imagine living here.

Yes those are "houses"

If you lived there you would do laundry

here

Or here

Which is also where you would bathe

(I saw people doing that but decided not to take pictures of it...I want to keep this blog "G" rated)

Remember all your washing is downwind of a zoo. There are no words. I am so grateful for my impossibly long washer and dryer.

What else can I say? God is good! - an update on us

Jose is out right now taking the men from Houston to the airport. We had fun seeing our friends and Pastor this week. The came for the "Salvamos A La Familia" (saving the family) conference that La Casa Del Padre was hosting. It's a little weird being considered a Pastor. I got to meet and share our testimony with Molly Godzich as we were riding to the convention center. We also got to visit with Pastor Craig and Jan Hill and ton's of other men and women of God who's names I can't remember. :/
Not to mention all our friends, including Jack King from Faithful Men's Ministry, and our Pastor G.F. Watkins. I have to say we are so blessed. We are just starting out in the ministry and God has already begun to place us before kings. (so to speak)

In other news I am really loving our home (have I said that already?) I walk around in it everyday and just thank God for his grace and his love for us. We were talking today about it. You know sometimes God will ask you to do something that may seem like it makes no sense. In our case give away all your belongings...not sell them but GIVE them away. Pack up your family and move to another country. Most people when we tried to give our stuff to them said "No, you should be selling this to buy new over there" Trust me that sounds like the most logical thing to do. And I'll be honest there were times when my faith wavered. I would see all the crazy stuff we accumulated and in my head I would start calculating how much we could have sold the stuff for. I know, I know, shocking! But when I walk around my home, with my new furniture (our fridge still has the label, and the plastic sticker to protect the finish on it!) Stuff that is nicer than we had in America. I think "WOW!" I am so glad we listened and obeyed. We had no idea what God had in store for us! As a blessing for our obedience he has given us a beautiful furnished home. Honestly if we sold all our stuff we could never have bought the stuff we have here. God is so good! I know, I'm gushing. I just wish those of you that read this blog could have walked along side us (some of you did actually) and seen the progression. There is such a blessing in obedience that goes beyond the material things and the meeting famous people. It's indescribable really.
Proverbs 10:22 says "It is the blessing of the LORD that makes rich, And He adds no sorrow to it." We don't have a lot of money but we have the blessing of the Lord. I feel this verse very strongly lately. I live this verse right now. God is good!

When we met our landlady she told us that she was going to get a biopsy done on a tumor she had. Victor prayed for her with Jose and I agreeing that night. The next day she was at a memorial service and began crying. Tears were coming out of both her eyes. The next time she talked to us she told us about it. She said she had just been told by a Doctor a week before, that she would never be able to cry from her left eye again. Jose told her to get her money back from the other Dr because the great physician healed her! The next week when we were moving in we were talking and she told us she was leaving the next day to get her biopsy in the U.S. I prayed for her with Jose agreeing. A couple days later she asked her assistant to let us know that when they went to do the biopsy the tumors were gone! I'm telling you guys it's fun to serve the Lord!

Please pray for my sister. Her water broke over 36 hours ago (at 10:00 am Saturday 9/11) and she is not progressing. I know the baby will be here by the time most of you read this but please keep her in prayer. I know she will appreciate it.
Also, my camera is dying a slow death and I really need a new one. I am believing God for a dslr because I want to get more serious about photography. Please pray for us that God would provide for it. :) THANK YOU!!

Life in Peru

once upon a time I dreamed of owning a washer/dryer combo. I thought it would be amazing to not have to switch the laundry. I thought the laundry would never smell bad because it sat in the washer too long. I thought it would free me up to do so many things...
Oh the naiveity of me (and in case your wondering naiveity is totally a word...at least it is to me)

I got what I wished for. This is my laundry room. The lovely thing on the right is my washer and dryer. It takes a whopping 4 hours at least to wash and dry a  load of clothes that weighs about 5 kilograms. (It says 6 but it lies) So I'm definitely freed up to do other things while it washes and dries my clothes.
Are you wondering what the grey pipe looking thing is that's snaking into the sink?


 
 
                                                   
it's the drainage hose for the washer and dryer of course! Fun stuff!
 
But seriously I am getting a clothesline soon so I can hang up my clothes to dry and hopefully get more laundry done.
 
We have some friends from South Africa and Houston visiting right now so we have been able to visit some tourist spots. This is a 1500 year old temple thing in the middle of Lima. Notice the city skyline behind the ancient mud wall.

Not the most flattering picture of me but hey this is the real me :p

It doesn't rain in Lima so they can build things out of basically dried mud mixed with seashells and it lasts. If we built something like that in houston it would disolve within a month.

One result of the lack of rain is the streets are really dirty. My children look like street urchins when we go out because they just get soooo dirty. Which adds to my laundry problems...

Hand sanitizer is always on my person.

We have been living in our apartment for a week today. Once I find a place for everything I will do a video tour for you to enjoy. I'm really loving our apartment. It's nice to have a place of our own after 2 1/2 months of traveling and staying with people. This place is really beautiful too. God has really blessed us to be able to have a nice home. It's kind of a superficial thing. But one thing God has shown me in this short time is that he delights in giving us the desires of our hearts. Even the seemingly unimportant ones.

  

Fun Pictures

We just got the internet at our new apartment! So updates will be more often hopefully. 
I wanted to post some pictures my sweet friend Jami took when we were visiting in Kansas City. And you should definitely check out her blog she is one of the funniest people I know and does amazing crafts.
anyway here they are prepare yourself to see me spamming the blog and the rest of the internet with their lovely-ness

Thank you Jami!