Novermber Prayer Letter

Dear Friends and Family,
Hello!! It is hard for me to believe, but yesterday marked our sixth month of being down here in Lima!! I am amazed at how fast the time has gone by, and yet it seems like I have been here forever. More and more, the people here are wrapping themselves around my heart, and I find myself loving them more and more all of the time.
The language is coming along. I still struggle with things, but God has really helped me learn a lot. Since finishing classes, things have really picked up and I think that my language learning is improving a lot because I am in Spanish a lot more than before. I also had a lot of opportunities to work on my Spanish this last week, as my mom and Pastor Grotzke (the pastor of my home church in Baxter, MN) and his wife were down here. Seth and I were able to do a lot of translating for them. I had the opportunity to translate a testimony my mom gave in church. I also translated for Mrs. Grotzke as she gave a challenge at the ladies meeting at my church here in Lima, Buenas Nuevas. I enjoyed the time that they were here a lot, and I learned a lot during the week they were here. It was a great answer to prayer that my mom was able to come, and I thank God so much that she could!
My mom really encouraged me while she was down here. As ARRIBA members, we have to fill out paperwork and things about our internship and the things that we are doing for the church. I was filling out one of the papers and there is one part that I am supposed to write challenges from the week or observations that I made and things. I started writing that since my mom was here I wasn’t able to do a lot so I didn’t have much to say. (Which was fine.) But then I started realizing that I did have a lot to say. I realized that I had actually learned a lot during the week that my mom was here even though I didn’t have a lot of time to study and prepare and I didn’t log a lot of internship hours. It suddenly dawned on me how much I had observed in watching my mom while she was down here. I saw her serve the people in the best way that she could. Although she doesn’t speak Spanish, she spent hours with my family here playing games and things, and spending time with them. She helped out with dishes, working in the nursery for the ladies meeting, and whatever else she could do. She wanted to learn the language so she could speak to the people down here and encourage them. I realized by observing her, ministry is also the little simple things in life, maybe the things that many people don’t want to do. She did these things out of the love in her heart, and that was a wonderful example to me. I saw how she wanted to say things to the people here and she couldn’t because of the language barrier, and it made me ashamed knowing that I know that words that could be used to encourage people, and yet at times I fall short and fail to say them. So, it was a tremendous blessing that my mom could come and I could spend time with her and also learn from her example. It was also a blessing to have the Grotzkes down here and spend time with them.
We are into our internship months of our time down here, and it has been really nice. I love being able to focus on ministering to the people. I am still working in the new kid’s club in Manchay. Pastor Evelio would like to start a church in this area, and we go up there on Thursday nights to have a Bible study in a house. Several people have been coming. There are so many problems and hardships in these people’s lives. Yet they are faithful to the Lord through the good and the bad. One lady works for hours almost every day at a school watching little children, and her monthly pay is one sol, which is about equal to 33 cents in American dollars. Learning about the people and getting into their lives and getting to know them has really been opening my eyes. There are so many stories of people with money problems or health problems or broken homes. There is so much need here, and yet we must realize that the biggest need is salvation through the one and only Savior, Jesus Christ.
A few people from church are also starting up a new kid’s club in a different area (Los Parques) just a short ways away from our church. Pray for both of the new kid’s clubs. Pray that children (and perhaps even parents) would come and that they would accept Christ as their personal Savior. The ARRIBA! Group had the opportunity to present the program that we did in the schools in Trujillo to a group of kids in Musa on Saturday. It went well and well over a hundred kids showed up.
There is a family that lives a couple of houses down from me, and the parents are not saved. They have two sons, Henry (18) and Hubert (12). Henry has been saved for a while, but his parents are not very supportive of him doing very much with the church as they are not believers. Within the last couple of weeks, Hubert (the younger son) accepted Christ as his personal Savior! Pray for the parents in this family, as they need to be saved. Also pray for Henry and Hubert as they feel a lot of pressure from their unsaved parents.
Tomorrow, a group of ten of us from the church will be leaving on an eight days mission trip. We will be traveling for 24 hours in a bus, and we will be ministering in different churches in the jungle. Pray for safety for our bus rides and things. Pray that the people’s hearts would be open to the Gospel of Christ, and that we would be able to encourage the believers in these places.
After our jungle trip, we will be back in Lima for a week. After our week in Lima, we will then take off again, this time down south to Cusco.
Please cointinue to be in prayer about the pastoral house. The owners don’t really want to sell it now, and if they do it will cost a lot of money for lawyers and paperwork. Pastor Evelio would like to knock down the house and church and start over, as the foundation is not very firm and it isn’t sturdy enough for us to use the third floor for very much. Pray for wisdom as to what should be done with the church, whether to rebuild or whether to look for other houses to buy.
Thank you all so much for your prayers and support! It is such an encouragement to know that you are all praying for us down here. I was speaking with a man named José from the church in Manchay tonight, and he said that those that are staying home and praying for those of us who are going on the mission trip this next week have just as big in this trip as the ones that are actually going. That is very true. Your part in my time here and the work that is happening down here is tremendous! Thank you for everything you do! Please continue to pray for us as we work here down in Peru!

In Christ,- Mark 10:45