Rich & Ramona Wagner

God continues to answer prayer! If you read this on Monday or Tuesday (January 28 & 29) we will be moving into our new house. Everything we needed and more is in this house. It’s a 2-story house, but all the living area is on one floor, with enough room for an office & guest rooms; it even has a corral, pasture and chicken house! Even better, it has electricity and water 24/7!! You can’t drink the water, but at least we have it to filter & for other normal uses. Currently, we only have water pressure from 6-8 in the morning.

It’s taken all of January to find this house. We have never been anywhere where houses or apartments for rent didn’t have signs in windows, or were advertised in a newspaper. Here, everything seems to be rented by word of mouth.

There is enough room that we will be able to start prototype chicken/worm, guinea pig and maybe even alpaca community development type projects on the property, and then transplant them to remote villages. The idea is to provide protein for the restricted diets Quechuas living in remote areas have, with enough left over to be able to have a small income from selling excess animals.

The seminary class “Building your Theology” is going very well. We have had 11 Quechua adults attend each class. Last week we even had 7 little boys about 10 years old sit through the whole class. I’m still not sure why they were there. (They didn’t know about the refreshments after the class.) One of the adults went back and sat with them, whispering to them the whole time in Quechua.

Also last week, the strangest thing happened during the class. One of the Quechua women had her baby all wrapped in a colorful blanket. The baby started to fuss and she let the baby out of the blanket. No pants, no diaper. The baby waddled up to my chair and peed on it, then went back to mom who didn’t act like anything untoward had happened. Nobody else reacted either. I just went on with the class. If there was some other social or cultural thing to do I sure didn’t know what it was.

I presented a DVD and discussion time on the subject of “Why Do We Baptize Our Children?” to over 90 young people at the Synod’s 2008 Youth Congress. They met at MTW’s Quechua Leader Training Center just outside of Cusco. The 40-minute DVD was followed by a 1 1/5 hour discussion time. Questions were fielded by two Peruvian pastors and myself. These young people are the emerging leaders of the Presbyterian denomination in Peru.

Some of their questions could have been answered if they had paid attention to the DVD from Third Millennium Ministries. But other questions caused us to pay close attention, and think hard before answering. Questions like; “Why weren’t women circumcised in Old Testament times?” Followed up with “Since women weren’t circumcised in the Old Testament, they don’t have to be baptized under the New Covenant, right?” They wanted to know why some churches baptize Catholics that become Christians, and other don’t. That stirred up a hornet’s nest since the denomination’s policy, at least on the Synod level, is to baptize Catholics who have come to know the Lord. (The policy is different in different places in Latin America.) One other result of the discussions is that I will now present the baptism material to new pastoral candidates, and even to presbytery meetings.

The Josephine House, the orphanage we are starting here, became legal this past week. Ramona is Vice President of the legal entity. We are now working on the inside of the building to get it ready to receive children. A generous gift has been given that will allow the staffing of the facility, a critical need before we could move ahead. It’s far beyond anything we could ever handle, but the government says they could give us a child every day of the year. It’s discouraging and challenging all at the same time. Pray that God will give us wisdom as we move ahead with this ministry. Food, clothing, diapers, etc. will be an ongoing need here. You can be a part of it by giving to Project #94721, the Josephine House/Cusco Mercy Ministry.

The Motorcycle Project has been fully funded. I have been able to purchase a 2007 Honda Bushlander. It was developed for use in the Australian Outback, so it should hold up well as we use it for ministry in the rural mountain villages we can’t get to by truck. If you are interested, you can see a write up about it here:

http://www.hondampe.com.au/wps/wcm/connect/hondampe/Home/Motorcycles/
Product+Range/Off+Road/Agricultural/CTX200+Bushlander/

February will see the seminary class continue, getting us settled into our house, the start of the community development projects, work at the orphanage, and hopefully several trips to remote villages. Please pray that God will give us wisdom as we balance all of these ministries, and mentor and encourage those that He has called us to serve.

Thank you for your prayers, and financial support. It is very encouraging to hear from all those who are praying for us.

Lord Bless,

Rich & Ramona Wagner