We have all we need for life and godliness through his divine power… and are promised WE can participate in His DIVINE NATURE to escape worldly corruption. Which comes from? Evil desires. (2 Pet 1:3-4). Then, with your faith ALREADY in place firmly, add in INCREASING MEASURE goodness/knowledge/self-control/perseverance/godliness/brotherly kindness/love (2 Pet 1:5-8). Why? To be effective, productive, be sure of your calling, and to “NEVER FALL/STUMBLE”. (2 Pet 1:10).

Feel free to study that scripture and be blessed!

Abbreviated Update & Prayer Requests:
- Some friends from the states visited, and may potentially be working with Extreme. It was so great to see friends from Iowa!
- We had a fantastic Thanksgiving dinner, yes, even here in Peru with 40+ people
- Counselors that work with Extreme were here this week. Helped every one a lot.
- 1 member of the Cercado team has announced he will not be returning after Christmas break for health/stress reasons. Pray for Patrick, our friend!
- The last 2 weeks we had lots of sickness in our team, and the Cercado team. By God’s grace, I have still not been sick once here in Peru. Continue to pray for health!
- We still don’t have a new church building to move into in 3 weeks when our lease is up. Continue to pray!
- Brandon and I got to visit our neighbors daughter in the hospital to pray & encourage her. Turned into us laying hands on every patient in the room for healing and peace!
- The Lord has blessing my times of running here in Peru with ministry opportunities, and to declare freedom all over the city, and I love it.
- Ron & I (maybe more) are planning to summit ChaChani, a 20,000ft mountain on the edge of Arequipa next Sunday. Pray for…a great time!
- We have a 5th North American team member, Katherine Alvarez (sp?). She’s from California but is Mexican, and is already fluent in Spanish.
- 5 Ecuadorians were approved last week to be our partners for the next 2 years of ministry in Ecuador. We get to meet them in January! Pray for them as they raise funds, support, and prepare for this big change.

Be blessed and encouraged. I post Facebook updates and pictures of what’s going on pretty frequently. My page is open to the public, just click “Subscribe”:
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*Originally written November 19th, 2012, revisions added for the blog today.

For continuous short updates in statuses and pictures throughout the week, click my Facebook below and click “Subscribe”:
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Miguel & Manuel, the 2 ninos that Brandon & I live with

Yes, yes there is NASA in Peru…

Ramiro Priale ministry event:
The last 9 days have been nothing short of great as usual. I’ve been continually finding joy in the scriptures and private time with the Lord, my Spanish has continued to grow even when I don’t notice it, the Kingdom has been expanded more, the Church is still growing and producing fruit even when building circumstances are unsure, and I’m still healthy! I’ve been reminded by a lot of teammates and fellow missionaries getting sick recently that I truly need to cherish my health. Last week we helped with an outreach event at Ramiro Priale Iglesia del Nazareno which is one of the Nazarene churches wayyyy on the outskirts of the city. It’s amazing to me that you can have such a bustling center of the city full of shopping malls, restaurants, and bustling businesses, and then drive 20 minutes outside of town and encounter 1 room houses with people living on maybe $100 a month, if that. So thankful. We loved on people and helped with simple things like lead in childrens activities, gave out lots of clothes from a US donor, fed people, and presented the Gospel. The next day CJ, one of our teammates preached her first Spanish sermon at the church. God was there, and I believe he’s working in that area through the Webbs who are ministering there currently.

Church Retreat
This weekend we had a beautiful time with members in the church. Every 2 months the church invites anyone who’s willing to come, to go on a retreat with the local missionaries and church leaders. It’s a weekend event where they spend Friday and Saturday worshipping, learning from local pastors and missionaries in classes/seminars, team building games, good food, campfires, and fellowship. It ends on Sunday at our evening church service. We had 6 people attend this retreat, and I was privileged to attend the Saturday evening events with Chelsea. We got to sit in on the tail end of Pastor Elvin’s teaching on Sanctification, and praying for a baptism of the Holy Spirit over every individual. It was very powerful! The evening we had worship around a campfire and team dramas that we had to create on the spot. Let me tell you, Bible dramas in Spanish have made me understand the Old Testament in a new light! Haha.

One of the group dramas at the retreat. They had to create & perform this with 5 minutes of planning!

New Christians, & Hallway Baptisms w/Worship!
Last night’s church service was absolutely INCREDIBLE! We have negotiated with the building to have 3 more weeks of services there. Please join us in prayer for the new building. The service was powerful. Pastor Brian gives a Gospel message at the end for newcomers, and we had 2 people accept Christ for the first time. After service we went downstairs and did baptisms in a pool. This was the 2nd baptism service I’ve been privileged to be a part of. Sammy played guitar, I played cajón (small acoustic box drum), and we all sang worship songs and clapped while 6 people were dunking their old selves, and resurrecting their new bodies through the symbolism of baptism. It was extremely powerful. We went way over our scheduled time to rent the building, but God had His way!! I attached a photo of the service and baptisms.

Testimonies from the retreat, & baptisms in the hallway!

I can’t encourage you enough to be in the Word reading your Bible daily, praying daily, and creatively seeking the Lord. If he’s your best friend, He truly must inhabit your everything.

Please continue to pray for a new church building to show up in the next 3 weeks, health for our team and the other missions teams here, against what the devil wants to do and FOR what God wants to do.

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Aside from reading the Bible every day, which is absolutely core to keeping a deep relationship with our Heavenly Father, my Spirit still hungers for more… Entonces (so/therefore/then), I also read more books about God, The Holy Spirit, Spiritual Gifts, Testimonies of what God’s done, Missionary stories, and listen to encouraging music that lift up God.

I started the book “Crazy Love” by Francis Chan a week or so ago, and it’s phenomenal. Thanks for loaning it to me, Mom! The Lord has been teaching me about “love” for the past 2 years, and every day it gets more serious on my mind. It continues to encourage me to press on and look “dumb” to the world, b/c of how “radical” I live my faith. But it really shouldn’t be radical…it’s probably just what a real Christian should look like! Jesus said He’s the standard, entonces (then/therefore), we should look ridiculous and insane to the world.
$8.54 on Kindle (read online or your device) – http://www.amazon.com/Crazy-Love-Overwhelmed-Relentless-ebook/dp/B005MTBJ9A/ref=tmm_kin_title_0

Just finished these 2 incredible books:

• “Simple Devotion: Answering The Radical Call” by Micah Wood.
  

Learn about the depth and simplicity of how to be radical – read your bible, and pray!! This was put things in a whole new light and will change your devotional life.
$8 on Kindle (read online or your device) – http://www.amazon.com/Simple-Devotion-Answering-Radical-ebook/dp/B007ZDNSEA/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1354580476&sr=1-1&keywords=simple+devotion

• “Knowledge of the Holy”- A.W. Tozer

Learning about the DEEP, HARD TO EXPLAIN things of God, the Trinity, and a bunch of big words that will hurt your head. Read digitally so you can define words, or have a dictionary. This book will take you to the next level.
$.99 cents on Kindle (read online or your device):
http://www.amazon.com/The-Knowledge-Holy-ebook/dp/B008X8G9FQ/ref=pd_ys_sf_s_154606011_a1_6_p

Listening to:
These albums will change your worship life and have been rocking my world:
- “Live at The Banks House” by Will Reagan and United Pursuit
- “For The Sake of The World” by Bethel Live
- “Here on Earth” by Bryan and Katie Torwalt
- “God Is Able”, “Cornerstone”, “Con Todo” (Spanish) and every other album by Hillsong in the last 5 years
- Harvest Bashta
- “Love Come Down” by Brian Johnson
- “Awakening” – Jesus Culture

   *After writing – The Holy Spirit just started typing, and I just started watching. I was only trying to write an update about what God’s doing in Peru, and He had other plans. I don’t know who this is for, but I pray it challenges you, and encourages you to be bold, and to have faith like a child.*

Every day here in Peru, I feel more and more blessed. The last couple weeks our team has been attacked a lot on the individual basis, usually in terms of physical sickness. Traveling around the world, ministering in For Today, we prayed for 100′s of people for miracles, and saw well over 100 people receive radical healings. We prayed for a 19 year old girl in North Carolina in 2009 with Leukemia, on crutches, told she had less than a year to live. She started walking immediately after we prayed, and we believed the cancer was gone. She brought us the doctors tests to prove it a year later. God had fully healed her. We laid hands on a girl in Oklahoma who was blind in 1 eye, and after praying for 15 minutes or so, she received full sight in that eye. Amen! That same night, our van would not shift into gear, and we were stranded in Oklahoma for a week. Satan hated us! In 2008, one of the first miracles I ever saw; I felt in my hands, a baby girl’s ankle without achiles tendons, vibrating while praying, and her achiles tendons grew right back in my hands in a matter of seconds.

Needless to say, neither myself or my teammates hesitate a single second before we lay hands and pray/declare healing when we’re sick. Generally, none of them received any immediate healings this last week. Wait, what? That’s okay, we will continue to pray and go after bringing Heaven to earth, always and forever, no matter what the past results have been. If you’ve read my past updates, then you’ve heard of some incredible healings that we’ve seen here in Peru already (tumor gone!). Sometimes it’s interesting how you can lay hands on someone with cancer, declare it gone in the name of Jesus, and it’s gone, and then you get sick and receive prayer, or you pray for somebody else, and they are not healed, or at least you don’t notice a difference. Why?

This is a very controversial topic in the Church, and honestly the devil uses any situation he can to bring us down, so you better believe he loves this one! If we believe that God’s word is true, and that we’re to do what He commands in the Red Letters, then we have to believe that He will heal the sick through our prayers. To be honest, when someone doesn’t get healed, it doesn’t affect my faith at all… I know God’s word is true, and He has confirmed it to me time and time again. I’m sold, I’m in, and I’m in love.
God has transformed my faith to be that of a child, to depend fully on God, to believe that He will always give me what I ask for in His will (John 14/15, 1 John 5:14-15), and to still believe, trust, & love Him no matter what happens. He’s still Dad.

Matthew 18:3 **Jesus talking** “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”
Matthew 19:4 “But Jesus said, “Let the children come to me. Don’t stop them! For the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to those who are like these children.”

Jesus often repeated the same thing over and over throughout the Gospels. I can think of over 10 times in the 4 gospels when Jesus said “Whatever you ask for in my name, you will have it”. Why did he say things more than once? Probably because He wanted us to grasp them!  In Chapter 18 of Matthew he says you will NEVER enter the Kingdom of Heaven if you don’t become like little children. What do little children do? They depend on their parents for everything; everything big, small, and in between. When you’re sick and you’re 6 years old, who do you run to? Mom & Dad! In Chapter 19 Jesus says basically the same thing again, – move out of the way for the children, for the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to those who are LIKE children. It’s not saying only a bunch of rug-rats will enter the Kingdom of God, but only those who are like children. I want to be like a child. Do you?

Continue to crave spiritual milk and mature as 1 Peter 2:2 says. God is bigger than us, and if we claim to have Faith, we have to trust Him regardless of the results. If every prayer was answered right away, then many of the major miracles in Hebrews chapter 11, the “By Faith” chapter, would not have happened. The Walls of Jericho would not have come down – that took 7 days of marching, praying, and doing what God said. Do you think anyone doubted after Day 5 and the walls didn’t come down? Day 6? How about part way through Day 7?  Elijah prayed “earnestly” for no rain (James 5), not just once.

Hebrews 11:6 says “And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek Him.”

If you want to please God, then you have to have faith. “IMPOSSIBLE to please God without faith”… WOAH! In Corinthians we see that we can have everything else, and not have love, and have nothing also. All throughout the Bible, Jesus asks for all or nothing. Jesus asks for the whole package.

I believe God’s word, so I believe that. I pray that ministers to you today. Keep the faith, keep believing, don’t ever waver in your responsibility as an ambassador and son/daughter of Christ. Listen to the voice of God, pray for the sick, pray for the sad, pray for your brothers, pray for your family, pray that God would teach you, and regardless of the result:

KEEP. THE. FAITH.

- Enjoyed this week’s day off at the beach for the first time in Peru.
- God is still welcoming new people to His Kingdom every week in Church.
- “Holy Fest” Halloween event had 2 people accept Christ!!
- Doctor said the growth on the uterus of Miluska that we prayed healing over is now “gone”, AMEN!
- I’m now playing the “cojon” (small box drum) in church. Enjoying using that gift, when the opportunity is there.

Drums…
The worship team in our church plant has doubled in size from 2 people to 4 people since last week. Chelsea is now playing the keyboard, which was miraculously donated for the church to use “for 2 years for free” (WHAT?!), by some guy we don’t know. I’m also playing the “cojon” now which is the small acoustic box you sit on and play hand drums on. There’s a part of me that after playing drums for so many years in For Today where you’re practically “adored” for what you do, that has not wanted to play drums while here or even talk about my prior ministry in For Today, as to not boast on anything I’ve done, or receive any glory I don’t deserve. Then there’s another part of me that has been trying to figure out how to use that gift here. Thankfully the Lord gives us the spiritual gifts that we ask for, and I can minister when not behind a drum set as well. Now I get to do both again, God is good.

Numbers…
It’s not about the numbers people, but I really like numbers. Spiritual numbers, Bible numbers, financial numbers. Through my work before the band, I learned to like numbers a lot.. The Bible uses #’s too, in fact CRAZY numbers, like when there would be 3,000 people added to the Acts church in 1 day, or when Jesus fed the 5,000 (which may not include women & children too!). The numbers side of me has been trying to keep track of how many people have invited Christ into their life that we know of while here in Peru. I’m excited to say that it is HARD to keep track! Good problem to have, amen, wow wow wow. Keep praying for the ministry here!

Doctor Confirmation…
I’m blown away by what God does on a daily basis, and I’ve seen miracles many times before, but they never get old! Actually on Halloween night, we found out that Miluska went to the Doctor. They came back with mostly good news. The growth on her uterus that we prayed healing over a week prior, and that she was going to get operated on 6 months later, is now “GONE”, says the doctor! He said now she just has a small infection. He prescribed pills and she’s been sick this week from that. Please continue to pray for her and her whole family that they would abide solely in Jesus, and that she would recognize the miracle was from the Lord and not by our power.

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- New Christians at every Sunday night service & more at an event & a Casa Abierta (10 total since I last wrote)
- 3 Physical Healings. A couple instant one’s, and one that we are believing for the results to come back from the doctor as fully healed!
- We are dealing with demonic spiritual influence at the house our girls are living in due to outside influence from a member of the family. Pray against the attacks of the enemy, and that they would only seek Jesus as the truth. He’s the way, the truth, & the life and NO ONE comes to the Father EXCEPT through HIM!
- Pray for team unity, constant spiritual growth, to be bold at ministering to our taxi drivers, for us to take care of our physical bodies, and that we would excel in Spanish at a supernatural rate!
- Thank you, God bless!

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God has been moving through all of us, and we have been very busy. Our schedule changes just about every week, and unexpected stuff seems to come up constantly. This is something I observed a lot as a Pastors kid, growing up 100 feet from the front door of the Church. There’s always a need, and you’re always to be available to fill it. The most helpful thing when being in such high demand for draining ministry is your personal time with Jesus. If I can’t get away and spend time in the Word, without distractions, soaking in worship, bent over at God’s feet in prayer, then I have no fuel to minister, and really…no right to minister.

Something I’ve been thinking about recently, and really been impacted by is this – When we can’t physically HEAR the voice of God sometimes, then we should be spending even more time READING the words from God that He already wrote for us 2,000 years ago in the Bible. Sometimes we’re waiting for a phone call from God, and He’s just saying “Why don’t you read my letter first?”.

This is our 6th week in Peru, and God has been teaching me a lot every day. Constantly growing into the man of God that He wants me to be. At some point in our life, we all stop growing physically, but we were not meant to stop growing Spiritually – ever. I challenge you to accept that truth today!

Left to Right: Ron – our host “Dad”, & Brandon (one of my teammates).

….Physical Healings & Demonic spiritual influences:
A couple weeks ago at Church, I shared the testimony on stage of a lady’s stomach getting healed at an outreach event. After the service, a lady in our Church asked Brandon to pray for her for healing for a condition of not being able to sleep – and she went home and had no issues! Immediately afterward, another lady asked Brandon to pray for her stomach and she said the pain left immediately. AMEN! All glory to Jesus.
Generally when praying for physical healing over someone, when finished we ask them “Do you feel better, the same, or worse?” so we know if we need to pray more, and what God has done. If the person says “Worse”, then it’s very likely that they are being oppressed by an evil spirit or demon. I’ve never had anyone tell me that they felt worse after praying for them until this weekend. We went over to the girls’ host family’s house to pray over the mother over a growth and blood flow issues. She’s been told the doctors can’t operate for 6 months due to scheduling, so we thought it was a perfect opportunity to pray healing over it. We did, and it was very very powerful. Lots of tears, and the Holy Spirit was absolutely touching her in a way she had never experienced before. She said it felt like there was literally surges of lightning going through her body and showed us 2 places specifically that felt very hot and intense on her body while praying.

After that, we prayed for her daughter who has been having daily headaches after falling and hitting her head a couple months prior. Her head felt fine before we prayed, and after we prayed, she said her head hurt. What?! So we prayed again, and against any tormenting spirits and rebuking demonic influence over the household, and after that she said she felt fine. Continued to pray for the rest of the family, and shared wisdom about seeking the Lord and the Christian walk. They’re very hungry for Jesus, and have been searching for truth. 2 days later the girls felt a very strong demonic presence in the house so they left, and began to anoint the house, rebuking the demons and evil spirits. We found out the next day that the mother had visited a Spiritualist the night before, and have been learning of some prayers to “arch angels” and other things that can open the door for demonic influence. The girls haven’t had any issues at the house since praying that night, and we are praying for the doors to swing open for us to share truth with the mother, for her house to be covered in the blood of Jesus, and for total protection over their family. Please join us in prayer against the devils work!

….God’s Church, lots of fruit, and changing my outlook:
We have Church services at our church plant on Sunday nights. Beginning to average about 50 Peruvians in attendance. I mention Peruvians specifically because Arequipa, Peru is the base city for Extreme Nazarene Ministries right now, so there about 25 gringos in attendance as well from Extreme. We meet in a rented building, right next to the local Arequipa 40/40 missionary team. They’re called the “Cercado Team”, as that’s the side of town they live in. They’re the team that we are interning under while we’re here. Every Sunday I’ve just been falling in love with Church more and more. On tour with For Today, we didn’t get the pleasure to attend Church and enjoy worshiping Jesus corporately as much as we should have. Combine that with me traveling a lot in between that, and my spiritual walk with the Lord was mostly in bible studies and on my own with Jesus. There is a reason that God wants us to fellowship with believers – because it’s incredible! I’ve been re-learning that since this Summer, and I just love it. From attending long weekends of prayer, worship, & teaching at International House of Prayer – Kansas City, to Bible studies and services in Sioux City, to missions conferences around the Midwestern U.S., and now to our services here in Peru – I love God’s Church!

For every Sunday service we’ve been a part of at our church plant since we got here, we have seen new visitors every week, and new people commit their lives to Christ for the first time. I spent months in prayer over Peru & Ecuador since I found out my call to move here and be a Missionary, and I can’t tell you how fulfilling and exciting it is to see it all come to life in front of my eyes! I’ve seen God do miracles through prayer hundreds of time, and IT NEVER GETS OLD! AMEN! JESUS – POUR OUT YOUR FRUIT, WE’RE HUNGRY!

2 Sundays ago I was assigned to work with the kids every 2 weeks. The selfish part of me was sad that I wouldn’t get to be in the service because I long to worship Jesus more than anything else…and in song is when I feel most in tune to His spirit. Jesus has been teaching me the importance of ALL parts of the body. Yes – you are just as extremely important to the Kingdom while running around with kids, teaching them foundational Biblical truths, and taking them to the bathroom. Was I able to sing beautiful songs to Jesus and learn from Pastor Brian’s teaching? Not that week, but God was smiling, and my heart is changing to be more like His.

…Outreach Event
A couple weeks ago we hosted an outreach event out on the street in front of one of the houses we have a Casa Abierta at. We provided a grill out of sausages and potatoes, had music & balloons for kids, showed the Christian film “Courageous” for free outside on our Jesus film equipment, and presented the gospel during an intermission of the film. The grill out was a success – after we finally got the grill lit! The most common way to grill here is to use a Carbon version of charcoal. It’s about the least efficient way I’ve ever seen anyone try and cook meat, but “Do as the Peruvians do”, right? I got the privilege of manning the grill – I love to grill! It was kind of funny spending over an hour fanning the silly Carbon, trying to get hot coals. Part of me wanted to catch a taxi to a hardware store and purchase the first gas grill I saw, but I think God enjoyed watching our patience be tested as we failed over and over again to get anything to light!

Sheena & Eli fanning the Carbon…this is probably after an hour!

In the end, we were able to bless over 50 people with free food and entertainment. I think we waited too long to present the Gospel, but God had a plan as we prayed with a few people to accept Christ at 8pm out in the cold, dusty street during the movie break. Fulfilling work, I tell ya! Lo Siento. Apparently I didn’t take any pictures after we got the grill going, because I was grilling all night.

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It has it been an INCREDIBLE 3rd week of training here in Peru! So amazing, that I wanted to start off this update with the word “Woah” instead of anything else.
This week I really felt like a true missionary, as we saw over 77 people give their lives to Christ in a period of 5 days! WOW. What excites me even more is that with the model of missionary work that we do over here, they will all be followed up with by the local missionary team (we will help), and will be given opportunities to learn more about the bible in home bible studies, discipleship classes, and leadership classes. PRAISE THE LORD!

I was praying on Monday, and honestly I couldn’t think of anything that I wanted to tell Jesus, or ask for besides phrases like “Thank you!” “You’re incredible!” “You deserve all of this and more!” “Thank you for this!” “Thank you for that!”….. and on and on.

If you have spent any time in prayer or donated any money to my work as a missionary. THANK YOU!
Know that your time and money is being spent on the most valuable thing of all time – The Kingdom!

PRAY.FOR.SINCERE.DECISIONS.  FRUIT.THAT.LASTS

Here’s a recap:

- 11+ Salvations Saturday Baking Demo: There’s been a short term team of missionary volunteers here from Nashville for the last 2 weeks. They’ve been building a temporary church building for another city in Peru, and helping us with evangelistic outreach events.  Saturday morning the short term team and the local 40/40 team hosted an American cooking demonstration in a market, baking American style treats and sharing for free. At the event the gospel was shared, and 11+ people were prayed with to receive Jesus as Savior….AMEN! We couldn’t be at this event b/c we were in our Spanish classes, but we rejoice with them, and are praying for fruit that lasts.

- 9 Salvations Sunday am Roulette Trivia: The short term team, our team, and the local 40/40 team hosted a “Roulette Bible Trivia” event that was supposed to be in a market… the police didn’t want us in the market, so we moved to a large street corner/intersection. We had a wheel to spin to select a category, and homemade bible trivia questions. Correct answers received large American candy bars. After we drew a large crowd (50+ people), Heyner presented the gospel and we prayed with 9 people to receive Jesus – just right there on the street corner! I’ve been amazed at how creativity and boldness pays off down here. I’m not sure how effective these kinds of events would be in the states, as usually street preachers are looked upon as “Crazy” or “Freaks”. Here, people embrace it and really listen!

- Packed Sunday night service & more salvations: With the short term team of 7 people and all of the new invites to church that showed up (incredible!), we PACKED the house on Sunday night. An altar call was given at the end to receive Jesus as savior, receive prayer for addictions to be broken, or for healing (anything really!)… 7 people accepted Christ for the first time, and about 20 total people came forward for intense prayer. We went Wayyyyyyy over our time that we rent the building, and it was phenomenal!

taking very early – before it filled in.

- 20+ Salvations at Tue Bible Trivia outreach: The short term team and local 40/40 missionaries hosted another Bible trivia roulette wheel game on a different side of town while we were in school, studying Spanish. This time they prayed with over 20 people to receive Jesus as their savior. WOW, AMEN! I get so excited just typing this out.

- Jesus film showing, 26 salvations, clothing donations: Yesterday all of us hosted an event for kids and parents way on the outskirts of town, out in the poor areas of the desert. The residents on this side of town live in 1 room houses the size of most American bathrooms. Be thankful for what you have – whatever it may be! We began the day at 3:30pm walking the dusty streets, knocking on doors, and inviting families and kids to the event on the cement. Within 20 minutes the soccer court packed in with over 100 people and screaming kids excited for balloons, games, face paint, free clothes, and more.

Brenda fearlessly sharing the gospel to kids and their parents

Extreme has a large donor from the states who ships crates upon crates of clothes donations for us to give away in South America. Due to government regulations in Peru, we can’t just give them to anybody, we have to distribute tickets w/numbers to the attendees and they have to write down their ID # on them and it is reported to the Gov’t. Why? Who knows… At night we showed part of the Jesus film and Pastor Elvin (local pastor here) presented the Gospel, and 26 people came forward to receive prayer for Salvation. AMEN! Watching Jesus shed his blood on the cross in the Jesus film, and laying hands on the men and women in the dusty, dark, remote village was an incredible moment for me. I am truly a missionary!

Pastor Elvin sharing the gospel in the desert after the Jesus film

Miraculous healing:
Pastor Elvin received a word from the Lord for someone with a stomach illness/pain to receive healing. So he invited anyone to talk to us afterward about that. A lady came up and they prayed for her to see a miracle. Brandon and I saw it and walked over to join. She didn’t get healed after the first prayer, but she had received Jesus as savior and was emotional. I asked her in Spanish if she still had pain, what it was, and if we could pray again (she wasn’t healed yet). We prayed again and she was being OVERWHELMED with the presence of the Holy Spirit, and God! Afterwards she said the pain was gone, and was very emotional. Her name is Vilma, and her life was radically changed along with the other 100′s who heard the Gospel this week.

Stunning panoramic sunset during the event!

THANK YOU JESUS FOR WHAT YOU ARE DOING – PLEASE CONTINUE TO PRAY FOR US!

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*originally written and sent out on a newsletter October 6th, 2012
Writing from sunny & calm Arequipa, Peru where it’s 70 degrees, just about every day of the year!
I’ve been seeing pictures from some of you on Facebook of the Fall season hitting the U.S. right now. For the last couple weeks I had literally FORGOT about “Seasons”! They don’t really exist here in Peru. It’s about the same daytime & nighttime temperatures all year round. The only change we have is that we have a “rainy season” where it rains about every day from January – March. We leave Peru in March, so we will be here for the whole rainy season.

Yesterday marked our 2 week anniversary of coming here. Usually when I would take adventure vacations overseas, it would be a 2 week trip. So now as we transition out of the “vacation” phase where everything is exciting and new, we are starting to really settle in and make ourselves at home here in Peru.
I have all sorts of great news and exciting things to share with you all today!

Major Praises:
It’s been a very fruitful week in Peru. I’m extremely blown away and humbled that God is using our Ecuador team here even while we’re primarily here to study and “intern” more or less under the existing missionaries here. As I mentioned in the last email, we are each partnered with 2 local 40/40 missionaries working here, and we go to their Casa Abiertas (“Open House”) which are home bible studies twice a week.

Salvation & A Physical Healing Miracle:
The first one on Tuesday, we had 2 married couples in attendance, which was powerful and fitting as our lesson that night was on what Biblical marriage looks like. We have a new brother in Christ, everybody! Patrick presented the gospel after prayer time, & Jorge proclaimed Jesus as His savior and King for the first time in his life. After rejoicing in his decision, we laid hands on both married couples to bless their relationship and soak it in prayer. Pati, the host wife who is a Christian, couldn’t stand up b/c she had hurt her foot/ankle apparently. Long story short, the Holy Spirit showed me a vision of her ankle being twisted while we were praying, and then in the vision, God twisted it back. I knew I was supposed to pray for her after that and that God wanted to heal her! Before we left, I asked her if I could pray for it, and she said it was her foot, but I explained the vision God gave me. I laid my hands on her, invited the Holy Spirit to come, declared her ankle twisted back, straight, healed, and no pain in the name of Jesus. Asked her if she could walk, and she shouted “OH! NO DUELE, NO DUELE!” – which means “NO PAIN, NO PAIN!”… She was limping terribly just 1 minute prior, and God healed her instantly, on the spot.

Huge Expansion…
Our 2nd Casa Abierta of the week was last night at Corina’s house. Last week there were 3 people in attendance aside from myself and my 2 partners Patrick, & Heyner. Marleni, an incredible woman of God accepted the challenge last week to lead the Bible Study this week and invite her friends. The goal is that every quarter the group can continue to open new Casa Abiertas, and assign a leader to the group within the quarter as they focus on opening more groups and discipling the leaders in classes at church. This week we had 17 or 18 people in attendance besides ourselves!! We could barely fit in the small living room. The Lord was truly there and His presence was THICK as we worshiped, fellowshipped, studied, and ate together. While eating a little snack afterwards, one of the new ladies in attendance expressed her desire to open a Casa Abierta on her side of town (Arequipa is huge)! We are seeing the multiplication of God’s disciples in true effect here. People are hungry and thirsty for truth, and we have living water to offer, WOO!

This week there has been a short term missions team here building a temporary church facility for a new church plant on the outskirts of the city, and doing outreach events. There was one this morning while we were in Spanish classes & there will be another one tomorrow morning that we will be going to. On Wednesday we are going wayyyy out to the edge of the city closer to the volcano and the airport, and will be feeding people, hosting games, and doing a Jesus Film showing with a Gospel presentation at the end. I’m VERY excited for this event, and am praying for the Lord to bring everyone out who needs to hear of His love for them! Please join us in prayer!

Prayer Requests:
- Salvations, Victory, & The Love of God at the outreach events & Jesus Film showing this week.
- CJ, one of our teammates was too sick to go to school today. Pray for health for all of us.
- For the calling and selection of our Ecuadorian ministry partners & our church pastor. They’re searching now.
- For a Peruvian pastor for the Cercado church that the local Arequipan team has planted that we all work at.
- For continual hunger for Jesus for those attending the bible studies, discipleship classes, leadership classes, and church services.
- Strength and growth in the marriages here

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Abbreviated Update:

I for one signed up for a LOT of cards in 2011. It seems like about every 1-3 months now I’m canceling credit cards that are 12 months old and I’m receiving Annual Fee charges of $89 – $150 per card. By paying an annual fee every year, you will eventually negate most, or all of the benefits of the miles you received, so I generally cannot recommend to consumers or myself that you keep high annual fee cards. Everybody’s situation is different though, so you should weigh it out for yourself.

You should always first ask them if they will waive your annual fee or give you miles/points for keeping the card passed the 1 year anniversary. Sometimes they will do it, sometimes they won’t! They have offers available for each person generally based on what their computer generates.

Here’s some of the cards I canceled recently and how the process went:

Citi American Airlines Visa & American Express cards:

In 2011 I got both of these credit cards for 75,000 American Airlines miles each for a whopping 150,000 AAdvantage miles just for getting 2 credit cards and putting my bills on them for a couple months. Talk about free travel being easy! To this day I still haven’t spent all of these, in fact I have over 200,000. Whoops!

I called Citi and explained to them that I was just charged the $89 Annual fee on both cards and it didn’t really make sense for me to keep both cards. I asked to get the fee waived or receive miles instead. They couldn’t offer me a statement credit, but they offered me a variety of offers for receiving 2 miles per $1 spent instead of 1 mile per dollar spent, based on spending a certain amount. Or else they could offer me 3,000 miles for spending $500 within 3 months. That was the best offer for me as these are not my day to day credit cards anymore, so I wouldn’t want the 2 miles per $1 spent. So I took the 3,000 miles for spending $500 (6 miles per $1!) on my Visa card b/c it had a higher credit limit, and had them cancel my American Express card. Done.

Delta American Express card:

This was one of my first credit cards that I got a few years ago. At the time when I was younger and not traveling as much, it did the job for me, and I took a few free flights b/c of it. I never use it these days. The first year I had it the annual fee was waived, the 2nd year I had it they gave me 10,000 miles for the annual fee when I called to cancel it if they didn’t offer something. This year I called in, and had seriously only used it for no more than $100 charges I would think, so I wasn’t surprised when he couldn’t offer me anything to keep the card. Boom, canceled.

Barclay’s Airtran Visa card:

I’m going to be straight up honest with you. I’ve never flown on Airtran, and neither the Sioux City or Omaha airports fly on Airtran. So why the heck did I get the Airtran card last year? Because they were in the middle of merging with Southwest, so the 16 Airtran “credits” I earned (that’s how their point system worked) ended up turning into 2 free one ways or 1 free round trip AT ANY PRICE on Southwest once the points systems merged! I used one of the one ways recently to fly one of my friends out to see me on a $300 ticket!
I called, & explained my case about the annual fee which has become almost like a pre-written script these days since I’ve been doing it for so long and so much these days. They couldn’t offer me anything and I wasn’t surprised. I had only spent the minimum on the card to get the miles and then never used it again. Canceled.

I’m currently in a debacle with Chase trying to cancel my British Airways Visa card b/c I accidentally PAID my annual fee without noticing it. I’ll post more about that later as well as more card negotiations as there’s more rain falling this summer on my annual fee city!

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