Hola! Estamos en Corongo! We are here in our village...thank you all so much who prayed for heavily yesterday and today during our travels. The intercessions granted us safety through some of the most narrow mountain roads i´ve ever traversed and the sheerest drop-offs i´ve seen from a vehicle......about 2000ft. Buses careen off the sides frequently....you pass a lot of crosses on the way up. We are staying in a house which we will be renting from a lady here. They usually stay in a hostal when they come up to corongo (the missionaries from our adoptive church- Markham Baptist in little rock, AR- but they have tried diligently to get a hold of Manuel, the hostal owner all month to no avail. and when we got here he was closed, come to find out he was actually down at th soccer fields but during that time we started to ask around about other places to stay. and then we found this woman. the Lord surely has a reason for all of this. the house is open air, the back hallway looking into the garden directly below and the mountainside directly out in front with beautiful flowers growing on it. this all is an open door for sure...the owner, Felecitia, she´s a widow and if she doesn´t already know the Lord we are hoping she will come to know Him through our staying there. Her sister owns the village ¨restaurant.¨ They are giving us a serious deal to provide food and lodging for us daily for the entire summer.
We had egg sandwiches for supper. Our lunch was a soup (sopa) of wheat and butter and broth...chicken gizzards included. And no i didn´t partake of those. I kinda just left them floating in the soup lol. I also had some great chocolate and peanut butter bars (chocolate con crema de mani) -- Cody´ll love this, they´re called ¨princesa¨aka princess lol. We are all pretty tired...strange how traveling 15 hours over rough mountain terrain with four people crammed in the back seat of a hilux can wear you out lol. i feel very at home here. it will be hard to leave....the children took us up to see some ruins this afternoon and we talked witht hem the whole way up and back. they asked me to pray for them after i told them i was a missionary. and sarah and matthew are quickly picking up on the language. pray for all of our ears to be opened. the children also want us to teach them english....we are going to speak with the principal about offering a class to them- another open door. they want us to teach them from books as well because theydont use any here. they write everything in their notebooks that the maestra puts on the blackboard. i am overwhelmed with the peace that i feel here and the Spirit is guiding us so strongly. i feel so at home.
please continue to intercede for us, we have felt your prayers thus far and we know that it is only by His might which you have envoked that we have even made it this far...please do not cease in prayer. my spanish is flowing better now, the enemy was really attacking me with feelings of inadequacy over the last week. please continue to pray for wisdom from the lord, he can cross all language barriers. pray against the curses and witchcraft, pray that their eyes will be opened to the Truth and Freedom in the Lord Jesus Christ. pray that the Lord would break down the laws and traditions in these peoples minds. They practice a lot of traditional catholicism mixed with witchcraft and paganism-- we want them to come clean from any misunderstandings of that and live in th Freedom of th Gospel. pray that He would give us spiritual mental physical emotional strength. that he would continue to form relationships, that the Spirit would discern to us about needs in people´s lives. that the Lord would make us like those we wish to save...that we could become like these Quechua women and sit beside them in the carachas and learn the trades of knitting and weaving (carachas are kind of like terrace farming plots). The women often travel up the mountain to take food to their husbands and to tend lifestock as well.
i pay less than a dollar an hour in this little ïnternet cafe¨ which is a major hang out for the jovenes (youth). pray that we would be able to find common ground with them here. i will probably be updating our adoptive church twice a week and i will try and do the same here. please be faithful in prayer and be missionaries there at home...we are all to testify to this Gospel. please , i beg of you to be good stewards of the Knowledge you have been so blessed to receive. to God be all glory and honor.
en el nombre de jesucristo- JLR<><
