Mark and Lori Berry |
JUNTOS "Together" |
Update June 1, 2006 |
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Dear Friends, Grace and peace to you in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus!!! I trust that you have had a good month. We are all well. Emmett (8), Anna (7) and Taylor (5) are all in school, working hard and enjoying their friends, sports and studies. Abigail (3) is our next birthday girl. She turns 4 on June 27. Lori just celebrated her birthday May 9. All are in good health presently and for that we are very thankful to the Lord. We don't take that for granted. Our first month back we were in team meeting at our house and heard a terrible and strange thud. We ran outside to the sight of a construction worker working lying on our doorstep with blood pouring out into a puddle onto the concrete and he was moaning on his side holding a badly broken wrist. We took him to the hospital and after a full day and into the night of fighting to get him cared for (no insurance, very poor, terrible health care system - chillingly cold and uncaring) he was finally stitched up and had his wrist set and cast put on and he went home the next day to recover. A few weeks later Anna was playing on our back porch and fell on her forehead. Likewise she was pouring blood and terrified, and I took her to the ER for 9 stitches. The next week, Taylor was playing outside on the sidewalk outside garage we meet in and jumped into an outcropping metal bar. She had a nasty cut but it wasn't deep enough for stitches. So when I say we're glad to be healthy, I really mean it!! We don't take anything for granted. Just about every week, while driving, we have serious near misses. The other night an 18-wheeler was barreling down the two lane road that runs up the long hill up towards our neighborhood - straight into oncoming traffic (ME!) with no lights on, passing cars in his lane that weren't going as fast as he wanted. I swerved to avoid being crushed under him. Several times Lori and I have been making a left hand turn and almost been broadsided on our left as cars attempt to pass from behind into oncoming traffic and before you can make your turn. Each time we get into a car we pray for God's protection and thank him when we return safely home. As you reflect on these things, I'd ask you to pray for physical protection for our family, teammates and Peruvian brethren, from the many dangers we face daily here. I'd specifically ask you to pray as crime has increased in Salamanca where our 3 single female missionaries are living in the mission house. Gunshots from armed robberies, attempted break ins and kidnappings are heard weekly and sometimes daily. Drive buy holdups have also increased. We're praying for wisdom on any steps we need to take and for protection for the girls, and would ask you to join us as well in this. Spiritually we are doing well. Lori and I have been enjoying reading our Bibles each day on our back porch that looks out onto the beginnings of the Andes mountains, brown and dry but beautiful, especially in the morning light. We are reading through our Bibles once a year (or close as we can get to that goal) and have found that very renewing and strengthening spiritually. We also spend time praying. Give thanks to the Lord for these times and pray that we would find our ministry more and more flowing out of our communion with our heavenly Father. Remember how I asked you to pray John 7:37ff for the outpouring of the Spirit as we put our faith in our only source of life, Jesus? Well, please keep praying that for us, okay? That needs to be a constant prayer. "Lord, give Mark and Lori more of your Spirit today. Pour him out to them make them holy, to give them spiritual life and vitality, to help them to obey you and trust you and think your thoughts after you and empower all they do in their marriage, raising of the kids, and ministry. Lord, make the Spirit a river of living water flowing into their lives and out from them to all those around them!" Thank you for praying this!! I want to tell you about the team we had from New City Fellowship in St Louis. Three brothers came from our home church (while in seminary in St Louis) and with them we did a VBS in a place called Amauta, where the Huaycán church with our help is planting a new church. We expected 30 kids for the week. We had 60 kids the first day. On the last day there were 180, with another 30 parents, mostly moms, as well. These kids were so hungry for love, and it was a joy to share the love of Christ with them in word and deed. Amauta is a "pueblo joven", which means very poor developing new community. It is a place of extreme poverty and little viable Christian witness. Sunday school will now follow this VBS effort each Sunday afternoon at 3pm. Pray that through this kid's outreach that whole families will be reached and a healthy church will be planted by the Lord in this needy place. You can also pray for Robinson Castro and his wife Elita and their 3 kids as they move into Amauta to be the point people for this new work. Robinson will be a pastoral intern working and being mentoring by me and Adrián and preparing for ordination. I've got some more great news too. Do you remember me talking about Mauro Quispe, who was our seminary student intern in Santa Anita who we'd hoped would become the full time pastoral intern there upon graduation, but then he and his wife took another job in a ministry on the north side of Lima? It was a big loss for us, but they continued to attend as members while working with street kids up north. Well, it became clear that the Lord was closing that door for them over the few months they were there, and although difficult, they made the decision to leave that ministry. This was a loss to that ministry, but a gain for us, because they are now back in Santa Anita and Mauro is full time in that church plant. He is a man with gifts and a calling, and it is going to be exciting to see him develop over the next few years and hopefully, Lord willing, become the pastor of the Santa Anita church. Pray for Mauro and his new wife Haydee in their new marriage and ministry, and give thanks to God that we got a second chance to work with them. I preached last Sunday at a Pentecostal church anniversary at the invitation of a pastor friend of mine. I was very encouraged to see a church in a very poor part of Lima that had with its own resources bought land, built its building and was actively ministering the gospel in its community with a solid group of leaders. The Lord gave me unusual freedom and power as I preached, folks were so hungry and attentive and the place was so clearly full of the Spirit. I long for this in our Presbyterian congregations, a sense of believing God can do great things whether resources are scarce or in abundance. We really need the Lord to work in this way in the Presbyterian church, and I ask you to pray for this. Please pray for me as I have been going pretty hard, we have another team arriving tomorrow night and I need you to pray for stamina and for a window to rest and reconnect with Lori and the kids after a really busy stretch with and a very fast moving ministry stream. I need the Spirit to give me his pace which enables me to answer the call to public ministry each day while at the same time loving my family well. This is a constant prayer need and yet another example of just how much I need the Spirit!!! Call him down to us, please, with your prayers!!! :-) I also start teaching EE again at Santa Anita on June 10. Pray that the Lord will call members of the church plant to want to sign up for the course and learn how to more effectively evangelize, and that the Spirit would bear much fruit through this training, both in terms of growing discipleship of members and leaders in the church as well as in new believers converted as we evangelize and brought into the church. Please pray also for the ministry in Santa Anita to coalesce by the Spirit's working and that both new life and good organization of that emerging life would become a hallmark of this new church. As I mentioned, we also have another team of 6 coming June 2-15 from Dayspring Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Forsyth, GA. They will be doing a VBS and construction work in Santa Anita. Please pray for them and for the Lord to give a big boost to the ministry in Santa Anita through this outreach. Well, I think I've given you quite a lot to pray for, haven't I? Well, if you can't cover it all in your lunch meeting, remember us over your kitchen sink washing dishes, or when you're out for a walk taking in those gorgeous mountains, or when you're sitting in traffic (hey, at least it's somewhat orderly traffic, right, compared to what I've told you about here :-)), okay?!! :-) We love you and treasure your friendship and partnership in the gospel. In Christ,
Mark and Lori
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