Photos Are Out
Posted on Tuesday, August 11, 2009 by Dwayne
All of the photos I took are now available for viewing. YAY! Not that you want to view them, but if you do use the link that says photos to the right. Hope you enjoy.
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Home
Posted on Monday, August 10, 2009 by Dwayne
Well, we are back in the states. Actually we have been back for about a week and it is defiantly nice being home. For me there is a lot that I miss about Peru. I defiantly miss the food, something about potatoes and rice. UMMMMM! Seriously. I miss the Spanish, it is great being in a environment where you are surrounded by another language. I miss the surf/beach. Surfing by the way is really fun, and man is it a work out. The other thing I miss, the cost of living. Much cheaper there. Food, drinks, snacks. Much better price. 
So there are a few things that are hard to get used to. Not hard as in I don’t like it, just awkward. One of those is flushing toilet paper. I have to remind myself every go that I can flush it now. Praise the Lord. Also, showering. You get so used to now showering daily showering seems ridiculous. The other odd thing, often you will find yourself wanting to respond to people in spanish. That just shows you how quickly habits start.
Ever since we have been back, it has been go go. Which is alright. I started work the day after I got back, and I am sure glad to be working again. We did some work on the new church building for fusion, it looks awesome. And I’ve been helping my friend with his house.
I will continue updating our blog so that you can see what our future plans are. Right now we know that our next step is to learn spanish. It is hard to be affective in ministry when you can not communicate. I am also praying about having another go at the soccer ministry in Peru. There are so many mistakes that I made and learned from, I would love another opportunity.
Hopefully in the next couple of days I can add a good deal of pictures to the website for you to see. Thank you again for all of your prayers and support. God has been exceedingly good to us. Please continue to pray that God will clearly reveal the next steps for us.
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5 more days
Posted on Wednesday, July 29, 2009 by Dwayne
That is all that is left. This has been a fantastic trip for Sharon and I, though it has been hard and often times more than trying. Being with 13 people for 2 months is just hard I guess. I am hoping to make another attempt at this next summer, we will just have to see how everything pans out. For now, our next steps involve lots of studying Spanish. Hopefully, we will be closer to fluent next time. This trip we learned a lot as far as language goes, and even more as far a leadership goes.
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Almost Finished
Posted on Sunday, July 26, 2009 by Dwayne
We are back in Lima. It’s kind of refreshing. I really like Lima, especially Miraflores. We will be back home Tuesday of next week, I believe. August 4. Both of us are excited about getting back into a normal routine and working toward going to language school. This has been an excellent trip for us and hopefully we will be able to continue doing these kinds of missions.
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Arequipa and an Update
Posted on Monday, July 20, 2009 by Dwayne
It’s been up and down for the past week. We were in a really great village even though we didn’t have the internet. We are all tired and I imagine that has something to do with all of the up and downs. The last village was Chuppa. There we got to go to the sports park every day and play with children in basketball, volleyball, and futsal. It was a great and lifted our spirits. Our main ministry in Chuppa was to the children and young adults. It was a nice change. The main soccer game was fun, except for the hardness of the field. It was just like concrete, and that made it difficult to play on.
Right now we are in Arequipa, this is our rest city and it is beautiful. There is a really big volcano right behind the city, and the city gives off a European vibe. It is huge, and much like the states. We have been able to go to the movies, eat BK, and have good internet. We will be here just one more day, and then we head off to Caravali. Hopefully. There is a possible strike occurring tomorrow, and we don’t know what that will look like.
Today we went to an orphanage. It was really fun. I also bought some new socks. Praise the Lord. I needed some. We only have a little over two weeks left. Please pray for renewed strength and that we will make the most out of the opportunities we get.
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Recent Pics Ayaveri, Chuppa, Arequipa
Posted on Monday, July 20, 2009 by Dwayne
This is Luciano! Our Peruvian friend and guide.
The view from a mountain in Chuppa.
This is where they sacrifice to idols. Crazy stuff!
I almost felt bad for these guys! But it was really fun.
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Thoughts on Missions
Posted on Sunday, July 12, 2009 by Dwayne
I had a great talk with one of my dear friends the other day and it got me to thinking. It got me to thinking that maybe many of us have a false idea of what missionaries are and what they do. I think most of us would say that missionaries are people who go to other places and share the gospel evangelically. This is all well and good but I would say that maybe we have missed the picture.
We are not here just to share the gospel evangelically. Why should we pick fruit and just leave it to rot? We do not want these people to rely on us for the word of God. No, they are smart and when they become Christians they too are called as we are. It is our desire to see these people come to know Christ in a real way, but also to be able to lead and disciple other Peruvians. We are not here to just teach, but also to encourage. We want these people to be able to teach themselves. Just as Americans taught us, Peruvians can teach Peruvians. This is vastly important so that we void creating dependencies. The people here don’t have, and they must learn how to share and teach the word without having. There are no projectors and few hymnals but they can still praise and teach. I don’t know if this makes all that much sense, but i hope to write more elaborately on this in the future. What is important is that you know that there is more to missions than the evangelist. Without discipleship and encouragement these people will just dwindle and be choked out, as the seed that the sower sowed among the thorns. Because here it is the thorns, just as it is in the states.
We had talked about all this with the REAP south team at our training during the first part of the summer. But I hadn’t really thought too much about it until now. And I hope that it will serve as encouragement to you, because we are all called. And though we are not all called to be evangelists, there is so much more to missions than that. We all have our part that we can play.
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We made it to Orurillo
Posted on Wednesday, July 8, 2009 by Dwayne
I don’t know how you are supposed to say that name. Anyways we made it and all it took was a 6 hour bus ride to Ayaviri, a night there, a Conbi ride which was stopped by a group of people on strike and a wall of rocks, and a 1.5 hour walk down the road. It was pretty cool though, the scenery is WOW!. There are flamingos right outside and the mountains are surrounding. I guess you could compare it to Montana. As I said all the people are on a transportation strike. It is a little weird, and we don’t really know how to take it. Please pray that we will be able to travel to the places we need to. The strike is supposed to only last 3 days, and hopefully that will be the case. Sharon added some more pictures to the photos album and I hope to post some more pics soon.
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It’s Easy to be a Christian When You Win!
Posted on Monday, July 6, 2009 by Dwayne
Lesson Learned! How easy it is to be a Christian when you win! How easy it is to be a Christian when people think well of you! It’s those times when things don’t go quick like you planned, that are disastrous. Though I don’t know that I would say today was disastrous.
So far we have been on a loosing streak. This is fairly frustrating. What’s is even more frustrating is how you loose. When you loose obviously b/c of the playing surface it’s pretty bad. When you loose b/c the ref will not call anything for you it’s worse. But when you loose b/c you get angry due to a rule that is made up during the game it is the worst. Today we lost b/c they got in our heads. We were beating them so bad and it was fun. But then they called a goal for themselves by changing a rules it was not.
You know how you make a decision in you mind to show someone who is boss and then your decision ends up being a moment of humbling. That was today. I think it’s safe to say that, it was today for all of us boys. Today we were clearly better, but today we were clearly humbled. We lost because there first goal got in our head, and our focused changed. It went from being just for fun, to I really want to win. I won’t go into much detail, but it’s safe to say we lost.
It was a lesson learned. We defiantly have to remember to remind ourselves before we play of why we play. And we defiantly have to make a predetermined decision of how we will react. If we have our heart set on humbling the proud before we play, we will surely try. We have to be determined to take each circumstance as a grain of salt.
Just so you know the ending was good. We didn’t get so mad it destroyed our fellowship when the opposing team. But I would say that it was more upsetting then it needed to be. The best thing is, God is bigger than all of us and he has chosen to use us despite our failures!
