Peru Wengers Youth Site: February 2009

Dear Family and Friends, Greetings in the Name of our blessed Lord Jesus! May this letter find you blessed and growing in your Knowledge of our God and Savior, Jesus Christ. What a blessed thought, to just pause, and meditate on God Himself! How it puts everything else in perspective! A lot has happened since I wrote last, (a good indication that I should be writing more often!). To start with, the Wengers left for Arequipa the last week of January to give birth to their forth child, which ended up being born the twelfth of this month. Over the time they have been gone I have been blessed with the help of two separate brothers, both going by the name of David. As Gordon was getting ready to leave we were praying that someone would be able to help for the three weeks before Merlin Yoder (who goes by David here in Peru) was due to come down in the middle of February. There ended up being a Peruvian brother from Arequipa who was able to fill the gap between the Wengers leaving and Merlin coming down February 14th. I am very thankful for the time spent with David here in Velille, it was a blessing to see the people relate to him in a very natural way. His desire to be of service here was greatly appreciated. His hunger for more of God's Word, and hence, his ability to simply explain the gospel from Scripture, were an encouragement to me personally. I also benefited from three weeks of almost pure Spanish during his time here! As I write this morning I am waiting on the community meeting to start. True to form, I as down there for the ten o'clock meeting at about twenty after and as yet, all of the speakers had yet to arrive. By eleven or so I should probably be heading back down! This is just one of the many little things that makes life interesting here in Peru. Cultural norms make for an interesting study! Going to the community assemblies, (besides being required) offers a good opportunity to interact and just be involved in what is going on in peoples lives, -- always an important aspect of sharing the gospel. One of the adjustments, which has been a little more trying than living on Peruvian rather than Western time has been the power outages which we have been experiencing on a regular basis. During the first two weeks of February there were more days without electricity than there were days with it. Thankfully, there is not much dependence on having consistent power here like there is in the States. Most of the people are used to living without it anyway, since most of the surrounding communities as well as the peoples country houses are all without power. Personally, living without electricity is not a big deal (it definitely helps with, "Early to bed, early to rise…" but, I am not so sure about the rest of the quote!). It has definitely been a problem though, in regard to the weekly radio broadcasts which we started the beginning of February. We have still managed to average one program a week, but it has been on a different day or time each week. Not a good thing if you are wanting a consistent pool of listeners! Well, after March at least it should not be so much of a problem, since the, "time of the rain" will be past. Currently our program consists of an opening song and a prerecorded message from Bob Rich of Arequipa. After the message, if there is time we include an appropriate selection of Scripture followed by a song and closing statement with an invitation to our services. For those of you who know the song, you might find it interesting that our opening always is, "Dios Esta Presente" (God Himself is Present). I guess you could say it is our theme song on the radio, the consistency of which, helps give context as to who we are. This next Tuesday, we plan to use a special program which Merlin put together last week. Originally, we were going to have it as an additional program in the evening, but like I said, the electricity has been sporadic and it has been hard enough to fit in one program a week. Another advancement which we are wanting to make is that of putting Scripture in Quechua on the air. Presently though, it needs to be converted from audio tape to a digital format. With the Wengers in Arequipa and most of the regular attendants out in the country things have been slow with services here in Velille. That does not at all mean that things have been slow with our schedule! We have been continuing to sell Bibles, cake and popcorn (and with Merlin here, doughnuts also, which have been a big hit) on Monday, which is market day and put the broadcast on early Tuesday morning. We have been having our regular services and house visits at the end of the week, and squeezing field work into the remaining days. For something new to add to my résumé, yesterday Daniel helped us put a new dirt floor in the Wengers house. I told Merlin it was a pretty humbling job for someone in the wood floor industry to stoop to, but I guess we have fallen into hard times! This coming Tuesday we are planning to head to Cuzco for a couple of days and visit some friends and fellow missionaries there. I can already see that the time is going to go very quickly, and quickly lead to the time in which Merlin needs to leave. Please do pray for safe travel and a productive time while there. May it always be clear whose ambassadors we are and for what purpose we are here! For the sake of the gospel, Nels "Paul never glamorized the gospel! It is not success, but sacrifice! It's not a glamerous gospel ,but a bloody gospel, a gory gospel, and a sacrificial gospel! 5 minutes inside eternity and we will wish that we had sacrificed more!!! Wept more, bled more, grieved more, loved more, prayed more, given more!!!" -Leonard Ravenhill