God at Work -- Journal Entry #3

Life: an adventure, a journey with Jesus!
Wanted: English Speaking Christians in Peru

Another leg of the journey is complete! We have seen Jesus in new ways during the month of December. He orchestrates the paths we take, our steps. He does, if we let Him. We have many God stories to share. Let me share one with you.

We realize how much we depend upon our Christian friends, church body, pastor and Sunday school teachers. We now think….being in a non-English speaking fellowship, how will we know? How will we understand? How will we grow? How will we learn? Oh my goodness. The concerns over being in a Spanish speaking country with only four months of language school to help us communicate. They are real concerns. Maybe these concerns border on worry. But, we are not supposed to worry. We should have our thoughts and emotions under control. Where is our faith? But, but, but. Okay, so this is a big elephant and we have to eat it one bite at a time. We discussed our options. Hire an interpreter to go to church with us all the time. Pray that the Lord will miraculously open our ears and minds to be able to hear and understand. Know that language school will help us more than we realize. Knowledge comes from college but wisdom comes from the Lord. What should we do? What can we do? What will we do?

Acts relates the activities of the first church at Antioch in chapter 2 and verses 42 & 43. “They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles.” We realize this example of the church was given then and is still the guidelines for Christians today. Our desire is to find ourselves knit together with a church group where we can be involved as the Christians in Antioch were. What is the solution to our unique situation? We know that He knows!

In an effort to “do” something (isn’t that what women enjoy?) Joy went on line and contacted the International Missions Board of our denomination. She located a website in Peru and emailed three addresses of groups. The next day there was an exciting response from a man who expressed himself with one word, “Hallelujah” when he read about us! We read on through his email to discover he was also from Georgia, worked in AWANA in his home church, was a member of a Baptist fellowship, and is working in San Juan de Lurigancho! This is the identical way to describe us. We emailed back how thrilled we were to hear from him and wanted to begin communicating more as we knew we could learn from his experience. Do you not regularly hear us say that we know God is orchestrating the musical we are playing in? Watch and listen for more!

The very next evening as we sat watching television, the telephone rang. It was this same man, Jim Neal, calling us from Peru! Talk about a gift. God provided, in this man, a belated Christmas gift that we could never have imagined. We know, however, that His timing is never late, so this was a gift at the right time! You should have seen our excitement…to hear from Jim, to see God at work, to know that He cares about us! This was unbelievable! Jim actually called us! We talked for about 40 minutes and learned that he had spent the day working in the area of Jicarmarca, a suburb of Lima. When we said we knew the area, he wanted to know how. It was his turn to show some surprise and excitement. We told him the girls’ orphanage we work with, Hope House, was located there. It was as if we provided him with the solution to a mystery. He related how he passes Hope House regularly and has been up to the property wondering who lived behind the gates of the campus, who had “hope”, who was this naming their place in English? It was such a delightful time on the phone together.

God has blessed us with new friends we’ve never met, who are ready and willing to meet us when we settle in, have experience which will be invaluable to us, and the blending of all the parts of the body (orchestra) continues. Imagine this, our neighbors (well, almost -- they are from Macon) from the same denomination, with experience in AWANA, we will soon be meeting 3,190 miles from here in Duluth – there in Peru! Thank you Lord!