Dear Friends,
Warm greetings from Lima, Peru! We hope this letter finds you all well. We
are feeling much more settled as we reach the month and a half mark of our
time back in the country. We're still getting reoriented in the ministry
and assessing where things are after our year away. Mark preached Sunday at
Santa Anita for the first time since returning, so it was a good feeling for
him to be back ministering the gospel through preaching.
Lori has been active in helping our new missionaries get oriented. She is
meeting with them weekly to supervise and disciple them. Kiera Hill is a 4
month intern who is helping with the Huaycán at risk children's ministry
using her art skills to teach various type of art to the children. Becca
Bennett is a nurse beginning a lay health ministry out of the Huaycán and
Santa Anita churches. She will also be doing health education in
conjunction with an emerging work in a very poor district known as Amauta,
where the Huaycán session and Pastor Adrián would like to plant another
church.
As we assess the state of the ministry here in Lima, we have been freshly
humbled at the enormity of the task before us. To think that there could be
a church planting movement in this place, to hope for a core group of
committed leaders and missionaries who deeply understand the gospel of grace
and are actively and passionately ministering and planting churches
empowered and impelled by that gospel, and that the poor would be ministered
to with mercy at their point of need as the love of Christ flows outward
from believers filled with and actively following the Spirit's leading,
well, let's just face it: this is impossible if we look only at human
means. So we are freshly returning to our roots: the gospel--
On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and cried out,
"If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me,
as the Scripture has said, 'Out of his heart will flow rivers of living
water.'" Now this he said about the Spirit, whom those who believed in him
were to receive... (John 7:37-39a)
This is the promise we are claiming anew in the desert coast of Lima. It's
a desert physically and spiritually here, and we FEEL it on a daily basis.
So our prayer is, "Lord, we don't have the answers for all the questions,
situations, challenges and difficulties we are facing in the ministry here,
but you do. Jesus, we put our faith in you. Quench our thirst with your
Holy Spirit that we might become springs of living water overflowing to
those around us who have yet to really drink of you and your grace."
Oh how we ask you to join us in this prayer. WE NEED SPIRITUAL POWER.
NOTHING ELSE WILL MOVE THE MOUNTAINS OF OUR OWN UNBELIEF AND THE UNBELIEF IN
THE CHURCH AND THE UNBELIEF IN THE WORLD AROUND US, AND CAUSE THE THEORY OF
A CITY TRANSFORMING CHURCH PLANTING MOVEMENT TO BECOME A REALITY. CLAIM
JOHN 7:37-39A WITH US FOR AN OUTPOURING OF THE SPIRIT IN OUR HEARTS AND
MINISTRY.
Here's how we need you to be praying this month:
- You all know we have been working in Huaycán with a mother church,
and planting a church with the same pastor, Adrian Fernandez, in Santa
Anita. The church plant in Santa Anita is two years old now and as I have
been back and assessing its health I am sensing that it is ingrown and
floundering, to put it bluntly. There are many explanations for this: the
area is real poor, we lost the man we hoped would be the future pastor of
the church Mauro Quispe, who decided with his new wife to work with kids at
risk in another part of the city rather than continue as Adrian's pastor in
training - he and his wife are attending as members but ministering full time
in another location, we lost also our seminary student Jorge Centeno who was
also on board to contribute with us this year in Santa Anita but decided not
to go to seminary nor work part time at the church as originally planned...so
all that, which are real challenges and set backs, but my sense as I said
before is that at root there's just ingrownness in the congregation and we
need the Spirit to begin to break that up. So I need you to pray for me as
I take steps to address this with Pastor Adrián. WE NEED THE SPIRIT TO MOVE
IN THIS CONGREGATION. Pray for that please.
- I am going to be taking a more active role discipling and
mentoring Adrián, as well as Enrique Matamoros who is an emerging leader in
Santa Anita. I am going to focus with them on the gospel, utilizing the
Sonship material developed by one of our spiritual fathers in the faith Jack
Miller. I WANT YOU TO PRAY THAT THE GOSPEL WILL GET AHOLD OF THESE MEN.
Pray also for me that the Lord will help me step up to the task of doing
more spiritual inquiry, asking probing questions and being willing to "rock
the boat" to get people thinking about what they are doing and why, where
God is in it, and helping them to distinguish between doing it "because
that's the way we've always done it" and learning to actively seek the
Spirit's leading and power through faith in Christ. We desperately need
leaders who understand grace and who can develop ministries in the church
that are deeply rooted in the truth of the gospel of grace. Lori and I are
talking about the best way to also get this material to these men's wives,
who are also key leaders.
- Pray for this opportunity in Salamanca to do a church plant. I've
met with the lady there who has opened her home and she is actively
recruiting us to make it into a church, but for several reasons which I
can't go into I have some pause still about aggressively pursuing it. But
we need WISDOM AND A SENSE OF GOD'S TIMING for this one. Quite frankly,
number 1 and 2 above are probably enough to keep me REAL busy, so until we
get some good leaders to take this opportunity we've got to keep it somewhat
back burner (but front burner for prayer:-)!!!)
- Continue to pray for the Cristo Salvador children's ministry of
tutoring and feeding. Specifically I'd ask you to pray for the development
of leadership within the church which can effectively lead this ministry.
Right now there are only one or two who do the lion's share of work for it,
and a more solid team needs to be developed. Secondly, pray for the
economic growth of the congregation, so that they might as a church be
enabled by the Lord to sustain with their own resources this diaconal
ministry.
- Give thanks for the Lord's work in the life of our second, Anna.
She is doing much better in Spanish. The school has arranged for her to
have her own class with one of the Peruvian teachers to bring her up to
speed on her Spanish. For the hour her classmates are in Spanish, she is
working on last year's Spanish with her own teacher. The hope is she can
re-enter Spanish class with her other 2nd grade classmates in 3-4 months
time, all caught back up.
- Lastly, please be in prayer for the Ross family. Jeremy and
Amanda, with daughters Kayla and Bella, are career missionaries who arrive
April 25 to begin language study. Please pray for them as they say their
goodbyes these next two weeks and make the transition to Peru. Pray also
for housing in Arequipa where they are to live for language school.
- The Ward family is our other career missionary family that is
Stateside raising support. Please pray for the Lord to bring in their
support so they can get to the field and to have his hand on them to bless
and protect in the long and arduous support raising process (Jim and Sara,
children Caroline, Chloe and Elijah).
We are thankful for your prayers for us and the ministry. The Lord will use
them powerfully.
In the grace of Jesus Christ that gives us our strength,
Mark and Lori
Contact information:
mberry@mtwla.org
http://limanewcity.mtwla.org/
Support information:
Mission to the World
P.O. Box 116284
Atlanta, GA 30368
Support Acct #10541
