"A Neighborhood Transformed" (Peru - April 28, 2003)

our team of 30 north americans arrived friday night in peru all safe and sound. our hotel is about 3 blocks from the pacific ocean which i cannot wait to walk down to. saturday morning we met with the peruvian leaders who we have been coordinating with and learned that as a result of the training that we will provide later this week, they will be staging 9 peruvian only church planting campaigns throughout the rest of this year! these leaders will be going into the whole country training others with the materials and training we give them, and then they will start new churches in those areas. what a blessing to see God at work in this place and to know that He is allowing us (you and me) to be a part of it.

thank you for your faithful prayers . . . God is using them in mighty ways, even in my ability to communicate. i am speaking spanish pretty well this time and understanding even more. how exciting . . . which leads me to report that we had 10 pray to recieve christ sunday just in my group (we have 13 groups working in lima)in 2 hours of door to door! PTL! i love the church that i am working with . . . the Lord has already given me 3 disciples (people i am investing much time in to train them to reproduce the ministry here)the pastor has caught the vision on the first day so much so that he repented in front of the church sunday night for not leading them to do evangelism, discipleship and church planting! wow! i have the same translator as in february and he is now feeling called into missions and says that i am giving him good training. and the last is a missionary from switzerland that is here working in an orphanage. today she
helped with translation and came back and said that is the first time she ever led someone to christ and she was so thankful that god sent me to teach her how . . . a true missionary now!
there are over 20 people from the church that i am working with that are going out with us and i am training them on the job.

i praise God for each of you who have joined me in the battle for souls in peru . . . the Lord if Hosts has proclaimed victory and we are simply marching around the walls and going in to claim new territory (see Joshua 6)

so, today (monday) was awesome. we had 41 receive Jesus just at the church that i am working with! i trained the church in how to do cell groups and we hosted one tonight and 3 new believers came as well as 20 member who were each being trained in how to lead cell groups. it was so wonderful teaching them how to find things in their bible and how to sing worship songs. the innocence and newness was a beautiful sight. i am really enjoying training the members of this church because they are going out. today we had eight teams go out and everyone was able to lead someone to faith in Christ. some in the streets, some in the houses. i even had one receive Christ through an open window! we were walking away from the house and the young girl opened the window and yelled out at us. we went back and did a gospel presentation as she peered out her window. her demeanor changed and she joyfully received Christ. one drug addict tried to sell us some and when we stopped he asked us what we were doing. so i shared my testimony with him and then used the evangecube to share the gospel. he asked Jesus into his heart and went home to change clothes because he wanted to look different! Two young mothers received Christ in their home (2 family house) and they bothcame to the cell group together. the joy on their faces as they realized for the first time that the Bible was accesible to them and written for them.

pray that God would spread a passion for His glory among these churches and that we would be enabled to be humble servants as they step out in faith to start new churches.
thank you for your faithful prayer support! you are fighting the spiritual battle with your prayers and i cannot wait to tell you all that the Lord does because of your faithfulness.