So Blessed!

Sunday morning Pastor GF gave Jose and I the opportunity to speak at Powerhouse. We showed this video of our time in Peru so far and Jose ministered on the attributes of our house. 

I've spoken here before about my dislike for public speaking. I have to say it is getting easier. I still get really, really nervous but I'm doing much better with the whole standing in front of people and talking. The trick is to look for some smiling people and talk to them. :) 

After we finished Pastor got up and encouraged everyone to give into the mission. The things he said were really encouraging and inspiring to me. While he was speaking I could feel the presence of God in the room and I couldn't help it, I started to cry. He asked everyone that would give into the mission to stand up and bring their offerings forward. As people came forward to give they hugged us and told us they are praying for us. I just want to tell you. Many of you read this blog and it means a lot. When things get hard here we have that day to think back on and remember the way God moved and blessed us. It reminds me of the old testament when people experienced a touch from God they would build an altar and remember that place and worship God because of what he did for them. I'm not going to build a physical altar. But I have that place that I can look back and say to myself. "look, remember that day? That is when God showed you tangibly that he will always take care of you. Your church is your spiritual family holding up your arms from America while you are in Peru" I know that I can count on my God and my church!

One of our challenges here has been the fact that we only get 90 day visas. It's not a huge deal if we stay over a visa by a few days, but we get charged $1 a day per person. That adds up fast when there are 5 people. This time we were praying on the way to the immigration agent. Jose told her we are missionaries and are trying to get long term visas. The immigration officer was soft hearted and she gave us each 185 days on our visas! We don't have to leave Peru until we go to Piura which is so much closer to Ecuador and a much cheaper trip! It has been awesome to see God moving in our lives in large and small ways!

Please pray for us that we can work out some things with At&t to save some money while we are here. Thank you for holding up our arms!

By the way, I know a lot of you picked up our new prayer card. If you did or are praying for us and are not on the prayer partner list please leave a comment here or email me. Our email addresses are in the tabs on the top of the page. 

Dream On

I've been thinking a lot about dreams lately because I have some pretty enormous ones. The funny thing about dreams is that not everyone has the same ones. Some people dream of being rich and famous. Some dream of accomplishing a great athletic feat like running a marathon or becoming a professional athlete. There a millions of kinds of dreams and they are as varied as the people that have them.

I know that most people think my dreams are crazy. Who would dream of giving away everything they own, moving to a third world country, (away from most of the people they love) and living totally by faith in God? Not many at all actually. It has to be a God given dream. I can't imagine ever having dreams of being famous, a politician, an athlete...those things seem crazy to me. Necessary (I guess) but crazy. But that's not my dream. Maybe it's yours.

Living your dream, no matter what it may be takes work. Hard work. Sometimes you will feel like it's impossible. Sometimes you will doubt if that dream is really the right one for you. The thing about dreams though is, if it's worth doing it won't be easy. Athletes aren't just born good at their sport. It takes years of hard work and practice to build up the skill and strength to be good. It takes the perfect balance of skill, discipline and talent to do what they do.

Even something like being a parent can be a dream. But any parent will tell you becoming a parent was (for most people) the easy part. Raising kids requires decades of self sacrifice, discipline, and lots of hard work. Which seems to me like its the recipe for living any dream worth dreaming.

A long, long time ago, I tutored 2nd graders. In those class rooms I would always see signs that said things like "go confidently in the direction of your dreams" "if you can dream it you can do it" "DREAM BIG" "Shoot for the stars, if you miss you will still reach the moon" and tons of other little statements about dreaming. I loved it. I'm a strong believer in dreams. I'm a dreamer. But the real world is hard on dreamers. The real world says "be practical" "be normal" "how can you even think of doing something like that?" "Maybe you should rethink this" Strive for a big house, a good job, a nice car (or 3), 2.5 kids and maybe a dog. Or as my Pastor says "get all you can, can all you get, and sit on the can" People long for comfort. I'm not going to lie, one of my dreams involves an ocean view with a bay window and a good book.  Total comfort dream. But I know that God made me for greatness and that is not going to happen if my only desire is to be comfortable.

So if you wonder how I feel really. Overall about everything we are doing. This is the answer. It's hard. Really, really hard. But I am living my dream and I love it. I wouldn't trade it for anything.

What's your dream?

The Exchange

Last night some ladies from Powerhouse had a fund raiser for us called "the exchange" everyone invited brought purses,  jewelry, belts etc... and got to bring home some new things. I thought it was a really cute idea. To raise money they had a small cover charge, raffles, photo ops. It was amazing and so, so fun. They asked me to speak about what we do. I should pause and say I love writing. I love sitting at my blog taking my time to carefully write out my thoughts. When I pause to think about the next thing I'm going to say I do not type um or and uh. So I'm much more eloquent in print than in person ;) Public speaking is very difficult for me just in general. It was really only by the grace of God that I did not faint or get completely tongue tied. I made it! and I spoke for 12 minutes! yikes! I got a little too wordy there (yet another reason I prefer writing to public speaking. ha)

One of the fun things for me last night was getting to talk to Viola (hi *waves*) I'm pretty sure we met before but it was fun to talk to her (as short as it was) because she reads this blog :) I have to admit sometimes I think that only a few people read this and it is fun for me when people talk to me about it. I also love it when people leave comments! So if you read and think I don't know you well enough for you to comment that is so not true! I would love to know who you are. So even if we've never met please, let me know what you think about whatever I'm talking about. If you want to email me (or jose) directly my email is jkmission2peru@gmail.com If you have questions about the mission or anything else feel free to ask. I love it! seriously. Comment, email, go nuts :) I promise we don't bite

What is it like?

I broke our laptop the other day. I'm not sure how, but I must have put something on top of it and cracked the screen. So today I am blogging from my phone. That either makes me crazy or amazing. If there are crazy words in here blame it on a combination of my current brain fog and auto complete on my phone.

Several people have been asking us what it's like coming back to America after being in Peru for 8 months. All we can say is it's different. I've started to understand why there are so many small business owners (gas stations, dry cleaners etc...) that are not from the US. Coming here I can see all the opportunities that I never would have recognized before. Also no matter what the economy is doing America is a blessed country. People with "no money" still own cars, live in houses made out of building materials instead of old shipping containers, and have running water. You can turn on most water faucets and have drinkable water. It may not be delicious but at least you know you won't get sick if you drink it. On top of that I see everyone upset about gas costing $3.47 here and I can't think if that's a bad price because in Peru gas is more like $5.

I can see why so many foreigners want to move to America. For them Americans have piles of money just waiting to be scooped up. One of our first days back Jose was in the foyer of our church and noticed several full trash bags, but they had tons of soda cans in them. He was joking that he wanted to go pull out all the cans and get them recycled because in Peru you would never see bags of recyclables mixed with other trash. I was horrified the first couple weeks there because every time I looked outside someone would be digging through our trash. We finally figured out that those people were looking for plastic bottles to recycle. Just wow. Have you ever been that desperate for cash? I know I haven't. EVER

There is a level of moral depravity that is immediately evident in Peru. Pornography is everywhere. Even billboards have nudity that would not be tolerated in America. As I mentioned in a previous post the law enforcement there is little help in most cases. Here they are protectors, there you never know if they are going to protect you or extort money from you. Honestly, I could go on and on but I'll leave it at this. I enjoy not having to see naked pictures everywhere I go and being able to trust the police (when I'm in the U.S.) :)

I also see a huge difference in the ministry world. For one thing the cost of labor is so low in Peru that you cannot find volunteers for ANYTHING. The people with money would rather hire someone else to do the work than do it themselves. The poor people work all the time to feed their family's so they just aren't available to volunteer. It's so weird to us. Jose has such a heart for volunteers and we both think it is an important part of serving God (J and I met volunteering at our church for what it's worth)
On the other hand. Peruvian christians are SO hungry. Everything we share with them is like gold. I've never seen such open hearts to the gospel and to instruction.

Now to be completely honest. I love Peru and I love America. They both have their own things that make me love them. So it's good to be home (so, so good) and it will be good to go back (but I'm not quite ready yet :p )

Fog heart

This morning as we stepped out of the house to begin the days adventure Logan said "wow, it sure it is foggy" as we were driving his mind was stuck on it and as we were getting close to our destination he said "hey, I just realized something. My heart used to be foggy like this and then Jesus swept all the fog away so that now I can see with my heart!"

He is only five years old but he put it in such a sweet way it stuck in my head and I started thinking about how we do allow things to cloud our vision. We start to see people through the mistakes they made. We see ourselves through our own intentions instead of our actions. We see God through the cloudiness of what we think he should do. A lot of us even Christians allow that fog to seep back in and keep us from seeing things that are right in front of us.

Sometimes I get frustrated with other people. I wish that I could make them love God. I wish I could make them stop doing drugs, drinking, cutting themselves or any number of other self destructive things. I wish I could change the world just by telling people how. It seems simple enough. Most people want the world to change but we all get hung up on our fog. We want to save all our friends but not so much our enemies. We like being wronged because it gives us something to be indignant about.

I was thinking about the verse below that is underlined. I couldn't remember where it was found but when I found the chapter I loved how it fit. One of the biggest keys to "removing the fog" is to live by this chapter


If I could speak all the languages of earth and of angels, but didn’t love others, I would only be a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I had the gift of prophecy, and if I understood all of God’s secret plans and possessed all knowledge, and if I had such faith that I could move mountains, but didn’t love others, I would be nothing. If I gave everything I have to the poor and even sacrificed my body, I could boast about it; but if I didn’t love others, I would have gained nothing. Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance. Prophecy and speaking in unknown languages and special knowledge will become useless. But love will last forever! Now our knowledge is partial and incomplete, and even the gift of prophecy reveals only part of the whole picture! But when full understanding comes, these partial things will become useless.
 When I was a child, I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child. But when I grew up, I put away childish things. Now we see things imperfectly as in a cloudy mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely. Three things will last forever—faith, hope, and love—and the greatest of these is love.
1 Corinthians 13

and before you go thinking your good because you treat all your friends and family like ^that says to remember this

“You have heard the law that says, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy. ⁴⁴ But I say, love your enemies! Pray for those who persecute you!
Matthew 5:33-34