How Deep the Father's Love for Us

I love Sundays in Trujillo.  It is a day full of worship.  I rise early to help set up at Cristo Rey.  Currently we are renting space and so we must set up the room for worship.  After set up, I attend our Sunday School and then there is a break to greet those arriving for the service.  We have church with alabanzas (singing praises to the Lord), palabras de Dios (reading of the Scripture), the sermon (same in Spanish as it is in English), and la cena del Señor (the Lord's Supper).  It is such a worshipful service and I enjoy the singing of the psalms, traditional hymns (familiar tunes, but Spanish words), and praise music.  The fellowship of the saints is a powerful reminder that each Sunday we get a small glimpse of what eternity may be like.  I often think of my churches back home as we worship.  Our service is a little over an hour and a half and so my family back home is worshiping at the same time also.  It is inspiring to think about how all over the world, Christians are gathering to worship our Lord and Savior.  In different tongues and forms, but albeit the same Lord.

After our service at Cristo Rey, I head home to finish preparing my contribution to our mission wide lunch and then head to the host's home.  We gather as a mission to fellowship together each Sunday.  It is good to see everyone (we are spread out among 3 churches) and enjoy this time together.  After lunch, we then have a time of worship in English.  We hear the word of God, sing and then take prayer requests, pray, and finish with a final song.  It is good to worship in your native tongue and is always a time of great encouragement and adoration of our Lord.  One of my recent favorites is How Deep the Father's Love for Us.  I think the melody and music are beautiful and the words are such a humbling reminder of God' grace and mercy to me, a sinner so undeserving.  I believe it was Jerry Bridges who said we should preach the gospel to ourselves each day.  This is a wonderful retelling of the gospel in song.  I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.



Finally, after our English worship, I head home to relax for a bit before heading off to my cell group meeting. We have several cell groups that meet in member's homes and sing, have a short bible study, pray, and a time of fellowship.  It is a great way to end the Lord's day.

I Wish I was as Talented as He

Well, I am jealous.  I'll admit it.  Yes, full of jealousy and green with envy.  I love playing around with photos, but I am not a photographer.  Recently, however, I was blessed to have a professional on one of our teams.  He did a fantastic job of capturing what the team did and a flavor for Peru through his camera lens.  His name is Nate Henderson and he is the one in the front of this photo with the hat on.  This was a shot I got as we were walking through the streets of Los Pinos.

You need to check out his blog.  He has 3 days of photos up so far.  This link will take you to the first day and you can navigate from there to see Days 2 and 3.  It is a great glimpse into life here in Peru.  Enjoy!!  and thanks to Nate for sharing your God given talents and the product of that talent with us.  It is a blessing to be able to share in a little more detail the work the Lord is doing here in Peru and a taste of what it is like here.

Photo Blog of Peru

IPC Savannah

We just enjoyed a great visit from our friends and brothers from IPC Savannah, GA.  They brought down an energetic team that worked tirelessly all week!  Monday we visited Los Pinos and held a medical campaign with Dr. Mullins and Paul Carpenter set up his pharmacy.  This is a neighborhood in Wichanzao.  They are paving the roads--more signs of the progress in these poorer neighborhoods.

Getting ready for our patients in Los Pinos

Signs of progress!

Tuesday we headed out to Magdelena de Cao and held a great medical campaign for the community there.  Hermano Wilson and his wife were great hosts and cooked lunch for the entire team after a full day of seeing patients.  

A few of our patients in Magdelena de Cao.

Lunch at Hermano Wilson's home.

Hermano Wilson and his wife.

Wednesday and Thursday Dr. Mullins treated patients in the clinic in Wichanzao and the other team members were able to do several small projects around the clinic that were desperately needed.  Thanks to this team, the clinic has a new coat of paint in the courtyard, the garden was tended, and a roof put on part of the clinic.  We also managed to enjoy some traditional Peruvian folk music one night with a local band. Thanks to Dr. Mullins for these photos below that captured their week here!

Catherine Mullins painting in the clinic courtyard.

Miriam, who cooks our fantastic lunches each day!

Traditional Peruvian dancing and folk music.

Thanks to IPC Savannah for all of your hard work!  

We look forward to your return visit next year!

A House Becomes a Home

Our office is called Casa San Augustin (St. Agustin's House).  It has been a great house for us to work in and reach out to the Peruvian community.  And now, we have made it more of a home. 

We saved up some money and finally bought some window treatments for our office building.  We are so blessed to have such a great office!  But our furniture was fading in the strong Peruvian Sun and we had zero privacy.  So, we finally got curtains made for our first floor of the office.  I could not get over what a difference they made.  It really is amazing! 

One part of our main living room or reception area (that is the front door open you see).

A view of the entire living room.  Isn't it welcoming?

Come and join us for a visit!

Cristo Rey Update

We had a great day at Cristo Rey.  Another worshipful Sunday.  And we held our first congregational meeting.  The purpose was to nominate Deacons.  We nominated 9 deacons and they had their first training session Sunday afternoon.  We are thankful to the Lord for His goodness and mercy in providing these candidates.  Please be in prayer for these men and our church as we begin this process.

Here is a photo from our service this morning.  We had a great crowd!

Uniquely Prepared

One of my favorite parts of my job is the work I do with the website and communications.  We launched a new website that looks fantastic thanks to Outbox Designs!  Just recently we added Blogs.  You can now read about our Fellowship Program, Medical Ministry and Church Planting on our website.  Check it out here:  Peru Mission.  And just last night I was trained by our friends at Outbox on how to use Emma, our new email system for e-bulletins, newsletters, and surveys.  It is so cool what it can do.  I am excited to see how God will use it help spread the good news of what He is doing here as well providing us needed feedback on our short term teams.  Through this we will be able to better serve the churches and people of Peru as well as the teams that come to visit.

It is cool to look back on my life and see how God uniquely prepared me for all the work I am doing here.  My passion for the past 10 years has been traveling, planning a trip, researching the options, making the reservations, planning the days, but leaving room for adventure.  And then he gave me a job as a Short-term coordinator!  I spent several years on the Board of Directors for a non-profit in Jackson, MS (Operation Shoestring) including 2 years as the President.  That time of learning about non-profits, budgets, etc. has been invaluable as I have enjoyed taking on more and more responsibility with our financial matters and administration of the Mission.  While in Jackson, I was honored to be a part of the Junior League of Jackson.  One of my favorite years was the year I was website chairman.  We completely redesigned the JLJ website and I learned a lot about web design, editing web pages, etc.  Again, quite useful as we recently redesigned the website for Peru Mission and next week we start on a new website for Peru Mission (in Spanish for our Peruvian friends). 

There is a lot going on here at Peru Mission.  It can be overwhelming when I try to do it all by myself, but then the Lord is gracious to remind me that anything I do apart from Him is for naught.  Only through Jesus Christ does my work have any meaning.  And He is the one who prepared me to do this work, brought me to this place, and walks with me each day.  I am so thankful for His love, mercy and faithfulness day by day.