Today was our last day of teaching English at the local elementary school for the week. I really enjoy doing that and it seems like the guys enjoy it to. Every time we walk onto the school grounds, we are bombarded with kisses, hugs, and handshakes. They cheer whenever they hear that it’s their class’ day to learn English. It’s wonderful to be apart of it! This past week we taught about David and Goliath. I would read the story in English, Andy would translate, and Josh would act out the part of David. After the story we would play a game according to their age (game show style for the older classes and a 4 corner style game for the younger) Josh headed up the games and I would keep score. Andy would go over the vocabulary words like: giant, battle, stone, sheep, bear, and lion. En Espanol: gigante (he-gon-tay), batalla (bat-tah-ya), piedre (pee-ay-dra), ovaja (oh-vay-ha), oso (oh-soh), y leon (lee-ohn). I learned all those words this week too! : ) After the class was over we gave each of the kids a rock to remember the story by. We found the rocks up by the train tracks so we figured they were reproducible enough. Yesterday we had some kids on the street come up to Andy and he said they were bragging about how they remembered the story! That was really neat for me to here. After sharing the story a total of 7 times I’m pretty sure I know it pretty well and I think Andy has it memorized in Spanish.
We were able to speak to Felicia today. Please be praying for her and her salvation. It’s been difficult to meet with her bc she owns a kiosk outside of the elementary school, but most of the time she’s not there. We check it out everyday and she hasn’t been there until today. She has cancer in her sinus’. I’m afraid she will not be alive much longer, so every day that I don’t see her I wonder if we had missed that opportunity. Last Saturday, we had a meeting set up with her, but she never came. So today was the first time I saw her since last week. She told us that she didn’t have time to go over a few verses in the Bible but she showed us that she has been reading her Bible. We left her with a few key verses to look over until the next time we talk (which is on Saturday at 11am). When we asked if it would be easier to come to her house, she said no. It’s sad to me to see so much pain in her eyes, I go away wanting to cry. Hopefully she’ll accept Christ and she will be able to live pain free for the rest of eternity.
On a happier note, Andy is teaching the first English class tonight. This whole thing has definitely been set up by God! There’s a man who works in the municipal building who is a Christian and speaks English. His name is Jose. Jose wanted us to teach his workers basic English. Originally it was about 5 workers. It is now up to 25+ workers! Now for the awesome part, he was very adamant about making sure we teach out of the Bible a good portion of the teaching time. He wants us to start with a story then with the lesson and then we will end with a prayer time. I am so excited about it. This will take place on Tuesday and Thursday nights from 6-7:15. Please keep that in prayer as well!
Almost everyday we have been able to meet with a local Christian who we believe is going to be a major part of ministry here in Matucana. His name is Gary Grande. What an amazing breath of fresh air he is! He’s is so in tune to God and has a totally different mentality than most of everyone else we met here. While it seems like we have to spiritually “beat” some people to get them motivated, Gary is so proactive. One time, he brought his friends to a discipleship meeting and he pointed to one of his friends during the prayer request time and said “I pray that you stop doing drugs!” HA! That was AWESOME! He’s so open and highly respected among his peers.
This past Sunday, we were planning on doing the Lord’s supper with another home group meeting, but something didn’t work out and it was postponed until this coming Sunday. I’m looking forward to it.
We went up to Huariquina on Monday at 4 and planned to share a story at that time. Before the story we walked around town and invited everyone we saw. All with the exception of 1 said they’d be there. To bad this doesn’t mean much here in Peru. No one came. We sat there for about 20 minutes then a little girl came by and I began the story of creation. Another little girl came and I started over began to retell it. They were so interested in it! There were a few sentences that I would skip just for the sake of their attention but they were reading over Andy’s shoulder and ask why I was skipping stuff. I began to read it word for word. I was so excited that they were excited about this story they never heard : ). We weren’t able to finish however bc a lady came out yelling at them bc they were suppose to be doing something else. After that we all prayed and went back home. Josh suggested that we go up there on the weekend instead of Monday bc there might be more people around. We will try that this Saturday I think.
A lot of stuff had happened this past week! We were able to meet with Leonel who is also a Christian. He works up in Marachanca and is a very helpful person and willing to get the word out about us coming in 2 weeks. We wanted to go up this Sunday, but told us that there was a town meeting that day and no one would be around. So we planned for the following week. I’m looking forward to going up there. We would like to send a couple people from the 2 church groups that are coming this summer up there for a couple days. We will be working on that.
Last Friday, both the soccer team and the Barnabas team arrived. This is the day after the Brown’s and Mary left. We were expecting the soccer team but not the Barnabas team. Barnabas teams are groups that come town to town wherever the summer missionaries are. Like Barnabas from the Bible, they encourage the groups and see if they need help with anything. At the time we did not bc the Brown’s gave us a pretty good jumpstart, but still they were very encouraging and gave us great words of advice. We got to know Greg, Ryan, and Janelle. Greg and Ryan gave us more great pieces of advice bc they both have served in Matucana. (There is a link to Greg’s blog to the right>>>>). Janelle got to talk and share a few stories on our hike up to a local waterfall. It was a 2 hour hike and I almost died. Janelle stayed there with me and we were able to talk the entire time. I know she will be a great encourager to other teams this summer.
The soccer team played on Saturday and we were hoping for a few more people to come. We had fun none-the-less with the 6 chicos who came to watch. They ended up being the opposing team. The soccer team had a great talk afterwards on how you can be like Christ on the soccer field and in your everyday life. They gave them the soccer ball after the game.
Both teams left on Monday morning and we look forward to seeing them during our mid-summer break.
That’s all I have for now (as if that wasn’t enough)!
Chao!
~Chelsea

this picture was taken last week while the Brown´s were here. just a sample of the average class size.