Since it’s been over six weeks since I started this blog and invited all of you to look at it, and I feel like a brief summary may help to review the experiences with you (virtually, for now). I left for the Atlanta airport on June 1 and there transferred to another plane headed for Lima that night. We spent a few days in Lima, where I first became acquainted with the “Lima mist,” and then went to a small mountain town called Canta for training. We stayed there for about five days and became acquainted with the culture of Peru and met some of the adult missionaries who travel throughout Peru. We learned that when “gringos,” or people with white skin, walk through town, everyone likes to stop and stare. We also learned that this can provide good opportunities to share our mission with people, because they do not get to travel much and they have many questions about where we’re from and why we have traveled to their town. After Canta, we returned to Lima for a day before heading to Huaraz, where we split up into two teams for about three weeks.

My team headed to Aija, where we thought we would be spending most of our time, but after meeting Nemesio, a missionary from Peru who has just started working in La Merced, we moved to La Merced. We traveled to many towns surrounding La Merced, including those on top of mountains, at all times of the day and night. I learned through this that a Peruvian’s estimate of how long a walk should take should be multiplied by at least 2 for a gringo, and I like to blame the altitude for that . We met two wonderful families around La Merced with whom we became very close through church services, soccer games, birthday parties, and just talking with them whenever we ran into one another. We were very pleased to hear that Eloi, the father of one of the families, plans on becoming a pastor of a church in the area iwthin two years, hopefully in a building designated for a church.

We returned to Lima on July 3 and spent the weekend celebrating the Fourth of July (no fireworks, sadly) and preparing for our trip to the jungle. We flew to Iquitos (close to the northern border of Peru) at 5 a.m. on Monday morning, and I decided that no sleep would be necessary the night before, which was an incorrect assumption. We split up into two teams again to travel to two different villages on the Napo river. My team traveled to Yurac Yacu, where we worked in the school there and held church services every night to encourage the people to follow Christ in baptism. On our third and final day in the village, we held a baptismal ceremony and saw six people baptized. We went to another village that night to go to another church service, and we returned to Lima the following night. During our remaining days in Peru, we went to see some different sights in Lima, including the garden of fountains, and we talked a lot about what we had experienced and even how much we missed the places where we were able to serve.

So that’s a brief synopsis of six weeks that leaves out many of th elittle things that make a trip interesting and special, but I hope that you get an idea of our time in Peru and of why prayer is necessary for any trip of this nature. Traveling, ordering food, talking with people, playing sports with them, and many other things become much different in another language, but sharing God’s love with someone transcends these boundaries and connects us with people across the world. I must admit that some aspects of our trip were not easy for our team, but I praise God that we grew closer to Him through our adversities and that other people came to know Him better also. I don’t have much else to say, but I would like to encourage you to pray for the other teams that are traveling to Peru soon to reach people there. I know that there is a group of girls from South Carolina leaving the 17th (tomorrow) to go to the jungle for three weeks after meeting about 10 or 15 more missionaries in Lima. They are going to Shevoja I think, and I ask that you pray for their safety in traveling and in their efforts to take food with them to eat, because there’s hardly any food to buy where they’re going.

Thank you again for all of your support through prayer and for your comments on my blog; they saw me through the mountains and valleys of my trip and I am more and more convinced every day of the power of prayer to bring all of our problems and ourselves before God’s throne. I would like to leave you with a quote from my devotional book as of late, Oswald Chamber’s My Utmost for His Highest. In the devotion for July 13, he says,

“Your priorities must be God first, God second, and God third, until your life is continually face to face with God and no one else is taken into account whatsoever. Your prayer will then be, “In all the world there is no one but You, dear God; there is no one but You.”

There is no one but God who can be given the true glory for all of our efforts, failures, and successes in our life, and that is the goal of my life and I thank you for helping me and encouraging me to reach it for the past six weeks. I pray that God blesses you richly for your faithfulness, but most of all I pray that He blesses each one of you with His daily presence in your life.

In His abounding love,

Blake

P.S. I am going to put up a lot of pictures soon and I will let you knjow how to access all of them on another site then!

Hello again! Here is a picture of the baptism that we had at Yurac Yacu. We baptized six people; three teenage girls and three older men. It was amazing to get to be a part of that, even if the river was a little smelly…

This is a picture of me at Monkey Island with Aurora, a very talkative macaw at the island. She spoke some phrases in both English and Spanish, so we enjoyed testing our bilingual skills with her.

Here´s another picture from Monkey Island. Boots, the missionary that lives and Lima, and his son, Joseph, are taking the monkeys for a spin in this picture.

I´ll try to get some more pictures up later, but I hope this gives you an idea of som eof the amazing things that God has done and also some of the fun things that we have gotten to do.  We have met several other teams in Iquitos and Lima that are traveling to different parts of Peru soon, so please pray for them and for us as we debrief here in Lima and maybe find some ministry opportunities to do as well. Hasta luego!

In Christ,

Blake

I traveled with three other girls and two translators to Yurac Yacu, a small town on the Napo River. We stayed in the school there (in tents) for two nights and held church services both nights. We saw four people accept Christ the first night and six people make the decision to follow Christ in baptism the next night. We held the baptism on the third day and it was amazing! There is no church in the town and only a few Christians were there before we arrived, so we are praying very hard that the new believers will grow and be protected from evil. We also ask that you pray for more mission teams to be able to go there and encourage them. There are a lot of small towns scattered throughout the Napo River alone, and very few of them have churches. We were also able to teach the kids some Bible stories and a few words in English while we were in Yurac Yacu, and one of the teachers there made the decision to be baptized.

We left Yurac Yacu yesterday to go to Oriana, where we had a church service with the believers there. They have a church already built, and it was very encouraging to see a functioning Peruvian church in a smaller town in the jungle. We will be traveling back to Lima tonight and spending the rest of our time there until we all leave late Tuesday night/early Wednesday morning. Thank you so much for all of your prayers and praises that you have offered on our team´s behalf. We were talking with one of the journeyman who was with us in the jungle and she said that she can tell when a team has prayer support and when they don´t, because the Lord focuses their efforts to produce results for His glory. So please know that your prayers have had an effect and they continue to do so as we seek to share His love with others here.

I will hopefully be able to put some pictures up of our time in the jungle over the weekend, especially some of those from the ¨Isla de los Monos¨ (Island of the Monkeys). We got some pretty cool pics of some of the very friendly monkeys and I´m sure you will enjoy them as much as we did. Hope to see all of you soon!

Glory to God,

Blake

Hello again! Here is a picure of our team with a group of kids right after we played soccer and told them the story of David and Goliath. They were a little crazy whenever we pulled our cameras out, especially when they figured out that they could see whatever they did on the camera screen after we took the picture!

This picture is from our visit to the school in La Merced, where we taught the students some English words and told them a Bible story. I think I understand some of the difficulties that our Spanish teachers had now after trying to teach English! It was fun, though, and the kids remembered what they had learned very well.

Please keep our team in your prayers as we travel to Iquitos in the jungle tomorrow. We are losing one of our team members, Rhianna, because she has to go work at a camp in Mississippi, and we added two more girls (from Mississippi!) to our team that will be traveling to the jungle. I hope to get some great pictures from the jungle and I will let you know how it goes!

In Christ,

Blake

The father of the family in Sipza is supposed to meet with the believers while Nemesio is traveling, though, and he hopes to become the pastor of a church there in a few years. One of the biggest things that I have learned from our time in La Merced is how to wait on God and how to look for how He works in the lives of people when we don´t expect it. It amazed me how God worked through plans that didn´t come together in our time there and I know that He received glory through it all.

We left La Merced early yesterday morning on a public bus just like true Peruvians. We bought tickets for the bus on Wednesday to make sure that we got seats, but apparently it´s not necessary to have a ticket, because the bus picks up almost everyone that it passes on the side of the road. We made the 3-hour trip in about 4 1/2 hours with approximately 50 people on a bus with 30 seats. It was definitely an experience I won´t forget tho!

We are leaving for the jungle at 2 am on Monday morning, so please pray for us as we fly to Iquitos, where we will rent a boat to travel on part of the river and share Bible stories from Genesis and Exodus with the people there. We will be staying in tents (hopefully without the company of too many mosquitoes!) and ¨roughing it¨ for about 5 days. Our group just went 11 days without a shower, though, so we may scare all of the bugs away…

Please pray that our group will get some rest this weekend and reunite as one unit for our work in the jungle. Both groups had some amazing experiences in our respective locations and I think that everyone was sad to leave after getting somewhat used to the culture there after 3 weeks. I am very excited about the jungle, though, and I just want to thank everyone for the prayers that you are offering up for us. It means a lot to our group to know that people are supporting us through prayer and I hope that my blog gives you some idea of what´s going on with us here! On a side note, I hope that you all have a wonderful time celebrating the Fourth of July today. We are going to a missionary´s house in Lima later today to celebrate with American (!) food like hamburgers, baked beans, and peach pie, I think. I really appreciate all of your support and I will try to get some pictures up hopefully before we go to the jungle on Monday.

In Christ´s Power,

Blake

Hello again! Here is a picture of me with some kids from the band at the high school. We were waiting on the soccer game to start, but we had to leave before it did because it started an hour and a half late.

Here is a picture of us with the first family of believers around La Merced. Their family tree is a little difficult to explain, but they are wonderful and their faith is extremely encouraging.

This is a picture of us eating at the only restuarant in La Merced. The man at the head of the table is Namecio, the Peruvian missionary, and the guy at the other end of the table is Annibal, our translator.

I just want to mention that some members of our team, including myself, haven´t been feeling 100% lately, so we would appreciate your prayers for our health as we travel back to La Merced tomorrow. Hope that you all enjoy the pictures and I will see you later!

In Christ,

Blake

Anyways, we are leaving tomorrow to return to La Merced until next Friday. I have spoken with the band director of the high school and he said that we could come to his class on Thursdays and Mondays. I hope that this will work out, because the principal has told us that we cannot visit the high school because the priest has told him not to allow us to visit. Please pray that we can get to know these kids better and share the reason for our visit with them. We are also planning on having an evangelism day in La Merced soon, so please pray for opportunities to share the Gospel with people that we have formed relationships with in the town.

We will have one more visit to each of the churches once we return, and we would really like to have a Bible study and/or service in La Merced at least once. I think that I will be speaking at one of the services, but I´m not sure which one. One of our group members spoke to some ladies today about this possibility, but they said that they were too busy to come to any kind of meeting. Please pray that we can continue to encourage the believers in and around La Merced and that we will leave an influence on the town and especially the children. I have been amazed at how interested the children are in Bible stories because they have never heard them before, and this has provided many opportunities to share God´s love with them. I also hope to talk in depth with Alex, a 17-year old believer who is a senior at the high school. He is basically the only evangelical Christian that we know of in the high school and I know that it is difficult for him and his family to be a part of some of the things that happen in the town because they are Christians. One of the mothers sang a praise song at the parade before the professional soccer games on  Sunday, though, and I think that it had a big impact on the town because most of the songs that they use for celebrations are pretty vulgar. Most of all, please pray that we will focus on God and show others the difference that He can make in every life.

Thank you for your constant support through prayer and for your encouraging comments. I look forward to sharing more stories with you and talking with you soon!

With God´s love,

Blake

We have been blessed to get to know some wonderful families that have started these churches. Please pray that we can disciple them and encourage them, because the Catholic influence in the area is very strong and there are very few believers here. Our Spanish skills have been tested in trying to talk to the people, especially the kids, because they speak “slang” Spanish that can be hard to understand. We have found that playing soccer and volleyball with them, however, opens many doors and we have shared several Bible stories with the kids in different towns this way.

Please also pray that our team will remain strong and that we can make smart decisions about what to do with our time here. Namecio is very open to whatever we want to do, so it can be hard to make decisions about where to go and at what time, etc. He is a wonderful missionary, though, and he lives in La Merced for the majority of every month while his family is living in Huaraz. Thank you so much for all of your prayers and support and I wish that I could talk to each of you individually, but my email is failing to work properly at the moment. I will hopefully be able to update again in the beginning of next week!

In Christ,

Blake

The Andes mountains around Canta!

Hello all! We are currently in Lima and we are leaving for Huaraz, which is about 8 hours away, really early tomorrow morning. I will be continuing to travel about 3 more hours the day after that (Tuesday) to get to Aija, where our group will meet up with a translator and spend the next 23 days. Please pray for safe travels as we travel in buses to get to where we are going! Some members of our group have not felt well because of the quick changes in altitude (Lima is basically a sea level, and the mountains are at 10,000 feet), so please pray for health as well.  I am very excited about getting to stay in one place for a while because it seemed like our stay in Canta was too short.

On a side note, I don´t think that I have mentioned the church services that we went to. We went to one church on Thursday night it a town close to Canta, where one of the older missionaries preached. We went to another church on Saturday night, where the worship leader played many of the English praise songs that we know in Spanish! In both services, I have been amazed at how intensely the Peruvian believers worship God and how thankful they are for His blessings, even though they have so much less than we do.  Moreover, God has revealed Himself in some astounding ways and showed that there is no barrier or discrimination in the body of Christ. I am thankful for how He has revealed Himself to me and I hope to share His love with many others that I meet in Aija and elsewhere. Thank you for your continued prayers and please know that they are felt across the world!

Blake

P.S. Don´t be afraid to post comments if you want to! They are very encouraging!

Canta!

Blake