someday we'll laugh about this

I'm sure you've heard someone say "someday we'll laugh about this" maybe you've even said it yourself. 

A few days ago we had a mid-week servolution. We went to this area called "El Indio" and gave clothes and shoes away in a school.

so many clothes were donated by people in our church! it was awesome

one of the kids peeking through the broken door while we set up

this little guy was so sweet, he kept asking me to take his picture

Waiting to pick something out

It was a great day and we got to help a lot of people. It broke my heart to see some of the people looking for something for their kids and happily taking newborn size clothes for their toddler or boy clothes for their girls. Really they took what we had because at least it was something. 

One of the little girls came in at the end when we had barely anything left and she took clothes for her baby sibling and shoes for her mom. She didn't want anything for herself. 

the team

We always leave these time elated and exhausted. It's a lot of work ya'll! 

We were in an area where there aren't a lot of taxis and it's at least 2 miles to the street 

where you can pick one up. 

Out of all the people working we had one car between us...ours.

Now, our car was given to us when we first got to Peru. 

It has been through a lot, we have loaded it down with people many times. 

(I should add there are no laws about seatbelts in the back seat and the speed limit in piura is something like 30 mph) 

This time it was a little trickier than normal since we had 7 adults, 2 children 1 infant with a car seat, a stroller and about 5 folding chairs. (plus all the stuff that was in the car before we started)  

Somehow we managed to all fit inside our car. 

We got most of the way home when the car started to stall out. 

This happens sometimes...

well, a lot...

ok, lets be real it happens every time we drive the car.

So nobody worried, Jose just put the car in neutral and tried to restart it. 

Did I mention we were on a bridge? 

Yeah, that.

So anyway, the car does what it always does. It makes it's little pre-starting noise

kind of like this "ngggngnngngngnng" but it never turns over. 

We have been coasting this whole time which seems like it was maybe an hour but was probably a lot more like 5 minutes. People just pass us and keep going. That's Peru for you. Nobody is fazed in the least by the dying car full of people.

Right about now I was thanking Jesus that we had a car full of grown ups, 3 of whom were men. 2 of them jumped out and started pushing until we got off the bridge then Jose jumped out and did the push and steer until we got to a "parking lot" (more like a parking space) on the side of the road.

From here we all went our separate ways. The plan was to get a mechanic to come look at it (tow trucks are not the norm here.) So we got a Taxi to go home. 

We got home and paid the Taxi driver with the only money we had between us.

It was a counterfeit bill, we didn't know. 

Thankfully, Logan has a piggybank and is a saver. 

We paid the Taxi driver. 

Peru is not exactly a country where urgency exists. Mechanics work certain hours no more, no less.

So our car had to spend the night on the side of the road. 

The next morning Jose went to try to figure out what to do about our sad little car. 

This story just writes itself.

Someone broke the window and stole everything inside, 

from the phone charger plugged into the cig. lighter to the toolbox in the trunk. 

Even Logan's Astros cap (but they left his shoes...can't say that I blame them, those things are toxic) 

We finally got the car to the mechanic (I'm not even gonna' tell y'all how. Some things are just too hard to believe if you don't live here) 

The car won't start, that's true, but theres nothing wrong with it. 

It just doesn't want to work anymore.

 It just turned 30 maybe it's having a midlife crisis? 

I guess it lost it's will to live. 

Now, I would love to tell you I responded at each step with some of the grace that Job had when he lost his stuff. 

I sound so spiritual and wise right?

 But seriously Job may have temporarily reacted with grief but in the next verse he's all 

well I came into this world naked I guess that's how I'll leave. 

!

(warning, do not read this next paragraph if you like thinking I'm perfect and selfless. 

It might ruin things for you) 

Nope, that's not me. I had a nice little pity party. 

I don't love that car I actually have been praying we could get rid of it and get one that is a little more reliable. You know little things like not stalling every time we drive it.

A working air conditioner too.. Those are my top 2 requests. But I digress. 

I started telling God all the things we have done for him. 

I'm all, we left our friends and family and church God. 

We came here were we have no guaranteed paycheck.

We've given so much  

We built this thing you told us to, 

we've been obedient and we were actually driving home from helping people when this happened. 

It's not fair! Why do selfish people get nice cars and we are giving everything just to drive this car that needs to be pushed 90% of the time. (yeah, I'm not selfish *rolling my eyes at myself*)

Then this thing happened. I don't know how to explain it.

 It wasn't instant but it did happen. I stopped caring.  

I started thinking about the lady with a baby that took the outfit that Zoe grew out of for her child who was clearly older than Zoe. 

She actually smiled when she picked it up like it was the cutest thing she had ever seen, and it was hers.  

The baby is on the right (her mom has the sleeper in her hand)

I thought of the pregnant woman who made a beeline for the baby clothes pile and 

I remember how I had to get rid of some of the clothes I was given for Zoe 

because she was given so much and I couldnt bring it all.

I think about the basket of baby clothes I have. Full of stuff that fits my little one.

The other basket with stuff for her to grow into.

And then I told someone else the story of the car. 

I laughed. I kept laughing. My "someday I'll laugh" happened today. 

I joked "next time I'll be more specific when I pray we can get rid of something" 

God answered my prayer. Ok, so we don't have another car. 

Yes our car is basically worthless now. 

But is that a surprise to God?

Is that more than he can handle?

Is that the worst thing that has ever happened to me?

No, no, no. 

The theme of my life seems to be letting go of control. 

Letting God be in control and not freaking out when I'm surprised.

Sometimes I get it right but most of the time I don't.

Most of the time I freak out.

I'm a control freak. 

I "need to know" what is going to happen. 

 Someday I'll learn.

By the way, does anyone want to buy a "classic car" for display only? 

it needs one new window

 

 

What a difference a year makes

We started last year with about 10 people in the church (yes that is including us) 

By the grace of God we started 2013 with about 150 people and we have new visitors everyday.

We've been able to show the love of Christ to many different parts of Peru through our servolution campaigns. 

We hosted our first ever "Save the Family" conference in September

All of this because you sent us here to serve Piura Peru. 

Thank you for being a part of our ministry and vision. 

This is a short year in review video we made 

Enjoy!

Christmas Outreach 2012

This year we are really excited to partner with Salvemos A La Familia

in the fight against child sexual abuse.

In Peru 4 out of every 10 children are sexually abused.

In Latin America 224 cases of sexual abuse are reported per hour.  

This totals 2 million children abused sexually every year. 

Most sexual abuse is committed by someone the child knows. 

The impact of that abuse is life altering. 

We believe that education is key in helping to prevent child sexual abuse.

Our plan is to give the book "Cuentos Que No Son Cuentos" to children ages 2-9 years old.

This book will help them to prevent sexual abuse, understand how to react if they are in a situation of abuse, and build their self esteem.

The publishing house has made the books available to us at cost.

 Would you like to partner with us?

For every $1 that you give 2 children will benefit. 

Our goal is to reach 2000 children in Piura and the surrounding area. 

This video is in Spanish but it gives a lot of the information I posted above. 

To give to this outreach please donate through the paypal link on the right. 

Our deadline to order the books is December 15th. Every dollar we collect through paypal until then will go directly into this outreach.

Thank you in advance for your part in impacting the lives of the children of Peru. 

life and times

Life has had many twists and turns the last few months.

Last Month we were able to have an important part of getting our visas done.

Hopefully at the end of June we will be able to go back to Lima and have them finalized.

Please pray that everything goes smoothly and we can get that out of the way!

Once that is done we will be able to get all the church paperwork taken care of 

which will help us in many ways. 

One of them being that we will be able to receive the land for the orphanage!

This is kind of what life feels like right now. 

A lot of pieces have come together but we are still waiting on the missing ones. 

 Our church is growing really quickly and is mostly full of new believers. We have outgrown our home already which is about 6 months sooner than we expected. Right now we are praying for a larger place to host our church and the provision for it

About half of the members of Powerhouse Peru

The next few months we have a lot of exciting things going on.

In June we have a vision campaign. We will be going into a neighborhood near us and providing free eye exams and glasses to 100 people that need them. 

In August we have a team from La Casa Del Padre in Lima and they will be helping us build houses.

The daughter of one of our members lost everything including one of her children in a fire a few months ago. We are trying to collect some items for her family and help them build a new home and fill it with some of the things they need. We will also be building a few other houses that weekend.

Every servolution outreach so far has been amazing! 

We always look forward to the next one with anticipation

In September we will be having our first ever Saving the Family conference. 

This is a huge undertaking and to be honest a little overwhelming. 

A team from Powerhouse Church in Katy will be coming to help us and we are so looking forward to the "family reunion" that will be, along with seeing what God does that week. 

We are really excited about some of the doors God has opened and people that will be speaking. 

Once we have everything finalized I will give some more details.  

If you are interested in coming with the team from Katy please let us know. 

We would love to have you!

In other news I turned 30 last month. It was a wonderful day. 

We started it in Lima and I was surprised with a breakfast party 

then we ended it by coming home to Piura and my ladies group surprised me with another party!

I can honestly say that is the first time I've had 2 parties in my honor in one day 

I want to offer my thanks to all of you that have supported us in this venture. 

We know God brought us here and the harvest was ready for us. 

It is hard work but we love it, and we couldn't do this without you. 

Every prayer and every dollar sent is hugely important to us. 

We love you guys!

Servolution.

A couple years ago Jose and I had the opportunity to hear Dino Rizzo speak at "The Remnant" conference in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. He is the author of "Servolution" a book which sprang from something his church actually does. They go out and serve their community. Serving is very important to us and actually a part of how we met. So when Mr Rizzo was finished speaking Jose went up and told him "You wrote my book." Mr Rizzo responded "That's awesome, you should write one that's better than mine." Now our church here has become a part of Servolution. Every month (and sometimes twice a month) we go out into the community and do something nobody else here really does. These are the things we've been doing this month.

Refrescate! - Refresh yourself

Peru is south of the equator so Summer just ended for us and we have now entered into Autumn. The beginning of the year is the hottest time here. So we collected 1000 bottles of water, went to one of the busiest intersections in town and handed them out to everybody that wanted one. We gave ourselves 2 hours to run out. It only took us 30 minutes. Obviously this was a hit with the people of Piura. We saved 100 to give to the car washers and attendants at a local shopping center parking lot. The car washers pay 40 soles a day to work. Then they get to keep whatever they make. They make about 5 soles per car they wash and there are about 40 car washers all fighting to wash every car that comes into the lot. Even so not every person coming into the lot wants a car wash. You can imagine these people having to work so hard to make money don't really get to take breaks to go buy water. So they were really excited to get this water.

Operacion Utiles Escolar - Operation School Supplies

             Y                                      &

Operacion Mochila    -    Operation Backpack

This school is run by some local pastors. They felt the need for this school because these kids would have to cross a very busy street to get to the school the city provides. The year before the school began 21 kids died just trying to cross the street to go to school. It's a free private school so they work entirely off of outside donations. We were able to get a good portion of the school supplies donated from people in our church and local businesses. We also had 75 backpacks donated by 1 friend in Lima. In total we were able to bless 97 kids with their very own backpacks & bottle of water plus the school supplies I mentioned.

 

We have more things planned in the months to come. 

Please pray for us that God would continue to provide for these outreaches. 

Also the need for a van and possibly a truck has become increasingly apparent. (we rented the truck in the first photo set) Most of our church members don't have cars so we are just stuffing people wherever they fit and taking a few taxis. But some of the areas we are going to are really difficult to find taxis to come back. It would just be a huge burden lifted if we had a van big enough to fit about 18-20 people. So as you pray for us please put that on the top of your list. We need a van! 

Thank you so much for continuing to support us and lift us up in prayer!

You are a part of what we are doing here. We couldn't do it without you

I want to remember

It has been a crazy 5 months since we moved to Piura. In some ways I feel like we have been here forever. A lot has happened in our lives and with our church. Last Sunday we had 17 people in church! That is huge for us. Especially considering we didn't know any of those people 5 months ago.
We are really excited about several things we are working on right now and I wanted to share them so you can pray for us as we move forward.

As of last week week I started a women's group. I had 3 people (not counting me) on our first night and 9 on the second. I believe there are a lot of women that will want to be involved. We are going over the book "Captivating" by John and Stasi Eldridge. If you've never heard of it or read it I highly recommend it. (It is one of my all time favorite Christian books) The main thing I need prayer for here is that we can find a girl to interpret at these meetings. Jose has been doing it and while I like having him around I think there will be more openness with just women present.

In February we are having our second outreach as a church. "Operación Mochila" or Operation Backpack. We will go back into the same area we went to for Christmas and hand out *hopefully* 100 backpacks with school supplies inside. As far as we know this is totally original here. And just in case you think our timing is strange the school year begins in March.
Our goal after this is to have a monthly kids club so that we can build relationships with the kids/families in the same area. We will go in on a Saturday every month and have a Jesus centered fun time with the kids. As our team grows we hope to either go more often or spread out and bring the same idea to different areas of town
We are planning more outreaches either monthly or bi-monthly and I will share about those as we get closer to them.


*****

I'm 2 weeks away from my due date with this pregnancy. I have been pregnant for 38 weeks or 9 1/2 months (the way pregnancy is measured each month is 4 weeks so you end up saying you took 10 months total...yes, it's very confusing) This honestly has seemed like a very fast pregnancy and I 'm probably one of the only pregnant women ever who kind of wishes it would last longer. I would just ask that I not have to have contractions or heart burn. Those are the absolute worst part of being pregnant at this point. That and I miss Sushi. But we don't have that here in Piura anyway so it's not much of an issue right now.

The first picture lost it's caption in the process of putting these together but I'm 6 weeks pregnant in it. 

This pregnancy has been a huge trial of my faith. I know I talked about it a little here I'm just going to expand on it a little so I don't forget. Every time we have seen the Dr he has found another problem or concern. Lately there is some dilation in what he thinks is her kidneys and her head is measuring right on target but her abdomen and femur are several weeks smaller than they should be. I was put on bed rest the week before Christmas because my body was trying to go into labor and and I was only 33 weeks. I have so little amniotic fluid that even if my water did break I probably wouldn't notice. All of these things are cause for concern and make my Dr frown quite a bit. The papers they send home with me start with the statement "unique pregnancy." I know that God is taking care of me and the baby and even the fact that we've made it this far is a miracle. But that doesn't mean I haven't freaked out quite a bit. I'm actually embarrassed how many times I've started crying while listening to my Dr talk. He must think I'm the worlds most emotional woman. I want to remember this feeling though. When she is 9 months old if I'm struggling to get her to sleep through the night I want to remember that it's a miracle she's here. That I couldn't sleep through the night a year before because the Dr thought she wouldn't make it. When she's 3 years old if I can't get her to listen or be still I want to remember that 4 years before I wasn't listening to God or being still. I was all over the place emotionally. When she's a teenager and doesn't trust me or believe I know what I'm doing I don't want to be mad at her. I want to remember that when I was 29 I had a hard time trusting the one who made me and her. I need to remember these things for so many reasons but mostly because I want to always treasure the gift that God has given me in this baby and in the things he has taught me while I've carried her.

*****

The other day we did show and tell as a part of school. Both of the boys got very excited. I told them that I wanted them to bring something that is special to them and tell me why they like it.
Logan's was his playmobil Nativity set. In telling me about it he said "I like this because it's a very special birthday. It was Jesus birthday. Something very important to know is Jesus is the son of GOD! That is why this is special to me. Thank you." (I was pretty impressed with his presentation considering it was his first show and tell ever)
Timothy brought his bag full of jenga's (He has like 3 sets of the game that he uses as blocks. This is by far his favorite toy in the world) He held the bag up as high as he could and said "I have jenga's! all together they make credits, and castles, and special features. I play with JENGA'S! OK!" While Timothy didn't really have the poise Logan did he did understand and completed the assignment which is a win in my book. I never want to forget their first show and tell.

Timothy playing with Jenga's

*****

Recently Timothy watched a movie that had a couple of kids running a lemonade stand. Ever since then he has been wanting to do one. We talked about setting one up in our yard and letting him sell us lemonade but had not had a chance to do it yet. So the other day Jose told me that while some of his guys were over they were talking out in the yard and Timothy set up a chocolate milk stand. We had a pitcher of chocolate milk already made so Timothy took a table and chair to our yard. Set out cups, the chocolate milk and his piggy bank. He sat there waiting for someone to buy a glass of chocolate milk for a while. I'm pretty sure he didn't make any sales but we did run out of chocolate milk. He's not one to let good chocolate anything sit untouched for long. I wish I had seen it, but just hearing the story makes me smile. He's a funny kid.

Christmas Outreach

We had a great time with our Christmas outreach Sunday Morning. 

We had initially set a goal of giving gifts to 100 kids but because of the generosity of so many people (in the states and here in Piura) in the end we had enough gifts for 160! 

Here are some pictures of the highlights 

Loading up the truck with presents

Driving to Expolvorines it started to rain on the way there

Jose overseeing set up with some help from Logan and Timothy

Jose preaching on the true meaning of Christmas

 60 people raised their hands for salvation!

 Logan and Timothy liked helping...Tim did not want to give up that bullhorn 

These are some of the pictures from handing out the presents. If you look closely you will see Timothy down in the mix with the other kids.

Jose and Patrick did most of the work to make this happen

The whole team plus 3 kids from the outreach

(the shacks in the background are houses. They have no running water or electricity)

People thought we were crazy for doing this on December 25th. 

Most people here celebrate Christmas on the 24th and sleep all day the 25th. 

But God knew what he was doing. We had a ton of help and an overwhelming response from the kids and families of Expolvorines (the area outside Piura that we chose for the outreach)

On our way to the outreach it started raining and it continued until Jose finished preaching.

So our volunteers not only set up but they did it in the rain. Once it stopped raining it got really hot.

We all have sunburns to show for it. 

Most of the volunteers are just getting introduced to us because of this outreach. 

(only 5 in the picture were members beforehand) 

It was awesome for us to work with them and they are all excited about the things Powerhouse Church Peru has planned. 

We were so blessed to be able to be a part of this and just want to say thank you to all of you who donated to this and prayed for it. 

We can't wait until next year!