Rich & Ramona WagnerApril 30, 2009Greetings from Rich & Ramona Wagner in Cusco Peru.We pray this finds you well and growing in His grace. April has been a month filled with activity, ranging from wonderful worship to extreme difficulty. The church I am assigned to pastor is supposed to be a small cell group of adults and a larger group of about 50 children. Targeting such a varied group is a challenge to say the least. We worship with prayer and song for about an hour with both adults and children present. Then the adults go into their cell group where we look at the book of Luke. The children go and do crafts, some physical activity and then an age related Bible lesson. I decided that since the “congregation” is mostly children that they needed to be involved in the worship time. I used the “ACTS” model (Adoration, Confession. Thanksgiving, Supplication) to teach them how to pray and explained that praying is “just” talking to God. Now we don’t have a pastoral prayer per se any more. I ask for 6-8 volunteers to come up and pray. Half boys and half girls, I try to pick different ones each week. The depth of what they pray for is astounding to us missionaries. They never pray for themselves, it’s always for someone else and the needs of our overall orphan community. Hearing them thank God for all they have, and to help other street kids and orphans just rips at your heart. Palm Sunday and Resurrection Day were great learning experiences for them. We baptized 1o new believers and had the Lord’s Supper on Resurrection Day. On Good Friday our team presented the Jesus Film to about 125 non-believers in a small pueblo called Conchacalla. Now members of our team go back to the school there every other Friday to teach a Bible class. The Fabiola Update – Fabiola was given to us by one of the local District Attorneys. She was emaciated and close to death. The DA just expected us to keep her until she died. We don’t really work that way. First we put her in our Josephine House where she received medical care and adequate food for the first time in her life. She has Down’s syndrome and a hole in her heart. She is 26 months old but the size of a baby of 6-9 months of age. She grew but not enough for the heart surgery we pray she will be able to get in the states. So Ramona and I have taken her into our home to build her up physically, mentally and emotionally. She had never been held by her 13-year-old mother, She didn’t know how to play, turn over or hold things in her hands. She was unresponsive to almost any kind of stimulation. Now it’s like we have a completely different baby. She has gained 2 pounds. She has her own personality. She laughs, she plays. She gets cranky if I don’t give her a back massage every morning. She avoided skin-to-skin contact, now she loves to be held and loved on. She can hold small toys. It seems that every day she does something new. Please pray that we will hear soon from a hospital in South Carolina that is considering her case. Ramona has just finished a study with some older women and will soon start a new one with younger women. She also made very traditional Quechua skirts for some of the women in the church to use in evangelistic events. I have finished teaching Old Testament prophets in our seminary class and am considering where to go next. Please pray God will show me what next to teach on. I’ll have a while before I can start teaching again because . . . . . . . On April 21st a big dog ran across a rural road in front of my motorcycle and stopped in front of me. I hit him broadside and was thrown off my bike. That resulted in my first ambulance ride in many years and a weeklong stay in the hospital. I just got out yesterday. The end result was a concussion, bruised lung, six broken and completely out of place ribs, and a broken, also out of place collarbone. I can’t do much of anything right now and am in considerable pain. Please pray that I will get past this quickly. I’m hoping that every time the drugs wear off I will be able to do computer type work, like this letter, before I am medicated again. All the physical work I have had to hand over to others for a while. Pray for Ramona especially now that she has two babies to care for. If anyone can do it, she can! Thank you for all of your prayers and financial support. When I get to feeling better I’ll post new pictures on our PhotoBucket page [see link below]. Lord Bless,
Rich & Ramona Wagner
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