Light Will Push Back The Darkness

I love my job. It's not a high powered executive job with the benefits of a picture window overlooking miles and miles of skyscrapers nor will it make me a millionaire; it doesn't make me a person of influence whereby to know me is to have a ticket to move one step up in life; it's definitely not glamourous and it sure takes up a lot of time and tests your patience. Health benefits? Well, does feeling good watching God transform lives count as a health benefit? I honestly don't know that I can do anything else after having God as my boss. It's a job that is so worth it, so tiring on the body and mind at times but so absolutely amazingly worth it to see people's lives get transformed by the redeeming love of the Lord Jesus Christ. 


Before we went out last Monday night, God gave me Psalms 121. As soon as I read it, I knew something was going to happen but we would be covered. No worries. I was on my own with 2 other girls from the team, no guys out with us that night. And everything that could possibly happen, happened. Kinda funny actually. Everything was normal until we went up to where the women were. As soon as we got off the bus, it felt really oppressive and heavy. We greeted the women, and Carmen and Elizabeth stayed with the main group of women to talk to them while I went on further with some sandwiches to see if there were any women at the end of the block. When I got to the end of the block, there wasn't anyone there and I was about to walk back up to where everyone was when I decided to turn back to look again. As soon as I turned and walked back to look, I heard this really loud explosive noise of glass shattering behind me and saw this tall man running in my direction with all these glass shards flying in every direction just behind him. I thought some drunk had thrown a bottle down from one of the rooms above and was just glad that I had felt to turn around instead of walk back to where the women were as I had started to do, because had I done that, I would have been hit by shards of glass. When it was all clear, I walked back to where the women were and saw some of them running towards me with FY leading them looking really frazzled. I asked if she was ok and she said yeah and shrugged me off. They stopped a cop car that was patrolling the area and the tall man who had been running from the glass bottle shards was suddenly being questioned by the cops. 


It turned out that the tall man was a robber who had posed as a client to FY and had ended up robbing and beating her. She had chased after him and thrown the bottle at him and because the cops were there, the guy got caught and had to return the stuff he had stolen from her. However, since she was not of reputable character, he got off free. Carmen, Elizabeth and I stayed on to talk to FY and some other women after, and while Carmen and Elizabeth prayed for one of the women, I paced behind them interceding. The atmosphere was really heavy, heavier than it had ever been before. While I was interceding, two men came up to where the women were and started talking to them. One started flashing his gun at them and Carmen saw and motioned me aside to let me know. We motioned for Elizabeth to leave and left but not before warning FY to go home because we did not know if the guy with the gun was a friend of the thief who had attempted to rob her.  We  found out the next day that nothing happened, thank God. 


On the discipling front, we are going forward step by step with EM and LJP. The Holy Spirit has been touching and convicting EM more and more to completely leave the streets. She told me today that she is going to take the step no matter what hapens because she is going to trust God. God's lesson for her today was about restoration. That He will restore all and more that she had lost when she follows Him completely. She eagerly wrote down the verses and passages. LJP is fighting hard against the dirty ways of the enemy. The stuff the enemy has been throwing at him is ridiculous. But he keeps going and believing in God to have complete victory. God keeps telling me He has a hold of LJP and that LJP belongs to the Lord. I take heart in that as we keep counseling him and teaching Him about the Lord and the Word. 


We need your prayers. Your intercession. These two, EM and LJP, have a huge purpose in the Lord and they both know it so please intercede for them. Right now, EM needs to overcome fear to leave the only thing she knows how to do to earn money and LJP needs God's favour to move men as in the Judge and the police to extend pardon to him. He needs to go to the police station to sign in every month just to demonstrate that he is complying with the law and not in hiding but like most of the street guys, while he was on the streets, he didn't go and sign in for the last 3 months. If he gets questioned on the streets he can be taken directly to jail. He told us this today so we went to the police station but it's something his parents need to do for him, to explain his situation, tell them he is off the streets and ask for pardon for him not signing in for the last 3 months. So, please pray for God's favour to be extended to the cops and all involved in this scenario. Thank you.


My job is definitely not boring. It  has all the elements of  an epic movie. And just like in any epic movie, good triumphs over evil. So too, are we seeing and will see victory upon victory in the lives of those for whom God is battling. Light will push back the darkness.

Deeper Roots

I don't know how to begin. Where to begin. I guess I can start with tonight. There was a huge police presence in Ciudad tonight. Not just the regular police but what looked like SWAT teams as well. Running all over the place. I hope the President isn't putting into play what he had proposed to do before he became president and that is to round up all the street guys and enroll them forcibly into the military. It's not going to change their mindsets if they don't want to change and all you'll get when they get out are street guys who already know how to assault and rob people harbouring repressed resentment and rage and who will now also have the bonus knowledge of using weapons issued by the government. Thrilling. 


Aside from all that, we met some new girls, teenage girls; some prostitutes, some candy sellers, all really young. The one I talked to, AT, is 17 years old, 5 months pregnant and quit smoking pasta (cocaine sludge) 2 weeks ago. Her boyfriend is 23 and in one of the worst jails in Peru for robbery. AT lives alone with her mom and I believe she was on the streets prostituting herself. Her mom isn't happy about the baby (not because her daughter is so young, unmarried and the dad is in jail) but because of economic reasons. I hope AT calls so we can start talking to her and see how we can help her. 


There was another kid, about 12 years old, hanging out there in his school uniform. I asked him why he wasn't home, he gave me a whole bunch of lies. It really makes me mad to see how parents just allow their kids to be in the streets and then wonder later why they're drug addicts. So many people know how to get pregnant or get someone pregnant but they have no concept of how to raise children or be a family. Somehow they think that the kids will raise themselves like puppies on the streets and learn how to behave themselves without anyone teaching them. Education on parenting is definitely needed.


Luchin and I spend a couple of hours every other day at LJP's house. We go there to encourage him, to tell him we love him and are proud of him and to counsel him with the Word of God as well as to listen to him and have him just share his feelings and cravings and how he is dealing with them. Lately, I had the opportunity to talk to his mom and aunt and after listening to his mom complain about him and saying that he won't change his behaviour, I started counselling and teaching her basic parenting. Yes, from me. Funny, huh? First, I told her to stop saying in his hearing and to his face that he isn't going to change because he will believe that and he will doubt and get despondent and will not change. I told her she needs to encourage him by saying that she believes he is changing and will change and that she loves him and is proud of him putting in the effort to change. And most of all, to just thank him for the little things he does for her to help her out instead of looking for all the stuff he doesn't do and yell at him. Today, the mom and LJP both told us separately how they've both been putting in the effort to change their behaviour and I am so in awe of my God in how He is working in this family and so proud of the family for making the effort. LJP is learning to think not just of himself but others and his mom is learning to appreciate and encourage him and to stop saying negative things about him. God has such a huge purpose for this family. 


EM has been selling cakes to start earning money from a different source other than the streets. She still goes to the streets to pay off a debt that she will finish paying off at the end of the month and says that after that she won't be going anymore. She has been coming regularly to meet me for discipling lessons and knows that she needs to obey God to get off the streets completely. I have just been teaching her the bible and what it says without condemning her or judging and just letting the Holy Spirit work in her and she told me that she hasn't been able to make any money on the streets these last 2 weeks as there is no work. And her being there is a waste of time when she can be at home with her kids. She said that she knows that it's God's way of getting her off the streets completely by stopping the "work" flow there. Hallelujah God! Only He can do what no one else can do. 


God is really working underneath the surface and as we keep walking each step, He meets us and shows us what He wants us to do. I see the way He has us work with LJP and I can only fall on my knees in awe. Our human idea was to get him into a Christian drug rehab, isolated from the "world" where he is "safe". God's idea was to have him still be in the world and restored to his family, learning how to make tough decisions daily, falling and then getting up and learning how to go forward each day; and also to have his family learn how to be a family through him. Can we say God's ways are higher than ours???


Your prayers in these areas are truly appreciated: 

• a storefront so we can have them come to talk with us, for discipling sessions, etc.
• supernatural strength, wisdom, discernment and a strong sensitivity to hear the Holy Spirit for how God wants us to move next.
• LJP to be able to have Godly friends his age who will not judge him.
• LJP's family.
• EM and her family and for God's provision for them.
• AT and for us to be able to help her. 
• All the others whom you have read about here.

Thank you for your prayers, your financial support and your words of encouragement. Just knowing that you are walking with us in this helps encourage us a lot.

The Fight

EM has been regularly showing up for her discipling session and we talked about her leaving the streets and trusting God to provide for her as she takes this step of obedience. She told me that she has made nothing on the streets the last week and is thinking that perhaps God is making it so that she will leave and look for another job. I definitely agree there and told her so. She's scared, never having done any other work before and thoughts of inadequacy paralyze her. She also has a debt that I know God will pay when she takes a step of obedience to walk away from the streets. She wants to meet twice a week now so that she gets more Word in her as she still has a hard time battling the thoughts that come and tell her she is a fraud. 


LJP is fighting hard against addiction to drugs. He is the one who had left the centre but has been staying at his mom's house this whole time and he has called us or we have called him to maintain contact and accountability. His aunt is helping him as well by teaching him the Word and the alphabet and he started his first discipling session yesterday. He too wants to meet twice a week as he wants to be accountable and more in the Word. For him, the fight is also sentimental as he is in love with a girl who doesn't seem to be in love with him (I will meet with her tomorrow to talk with her) and he is calling on God for help him every time the anxiety to look for drugs come. The hard part for him is that he can't read (we are also helping him learn to read along with his aunt) and we have to really make the bible as simple as we can for him because he has a short attention span and also a brain that needs to be healed from years of abuse. He wants to and he fights to learn but we also need to learn to help him learn in a manner that is simple but impactful so that he can retain all in his memory. 


We really need your prayers for these two. They both have huge purposes and they know it and are fighting hard to walk on the narrow path. I have told them both that many people are praying for them so they are not alone in their fight. They need to know that, need to know they are not in this alone.


Thank you so much. 

Topsy Turvy

Ministry life has been trippy. Really trippy. And I'm realizing that I'm trying to do things in an orderly fashion (well, according to Peruvian society and the Christian community) but God keeps messing things up! Something really tells me that He has more grace and love than we give Him credit for. Seriously. 


The youth, LJP, whom we took to the church/rehab centre stayed for 5 days and made up his mind he was out of there. Luchin and I had gone there for a "pollada" which is a chicken BBQ fair that you sell tickets for to raise funds. And as soon as we got there, we saw the glum faces of the people in charge and you kinda know they were avoiding telling you something. So I asked how LJP was. And it all came out. They had counseled him, to no avail. We ate and counseled him. To no avail. He wanted out. Since it's not obligatory to stay, and rather than have him escape, we signed his release and took him to his mom's house. He called us last night to say that he had gone to church with her and we met with him today to set a time for teaching him how to read (he is illiterate) and to learn the bible later on this week. Eventually, we will need to meet with his parents to talk about him and also ways of preventing his younger brother from going the same way. So here we thought we could just get the guys off the streets into a Centre which deals with addiction and here he gets given back to us to be watched over. He needs a lot of prayer please. And we need lots of prayer too, please.


We saw the street women tonight. Had more headway with one of the transvestites, but I'm still learning how to share with them. EM was there and she was kinda happy to see us and embarassed at the same time. I asked why she was still on the streets. She's been regularly attending discipling lessons with me and she knows that what she does is wrong. She explained that she is deep in debt as she, along with most of the women on the streets are in a money pool and she has to keep paying into it for 3 more weeks and the only way she can pay it off weekly is to work where she does as any other type of job pays at the end of the month or bi-weekly.  I told her as did Carmen and Luchin, to not get into it again after the 3 weeks are up. She agreed with us but had said that the reason why she had joined it was to be able to pay for her daughter's school uniform and books. EM also told us that her daughter, who is 6, has been making sure her mom gets into the Word as she makes sure they pray together before bedtime and that her mom reads the bible to her (the big adult bible, not kid version) and explains what it means so that she can understand. Wow.


Another woman, P, told us the same thing about her daughter separately from EM. Her daughter is 10 and wants to be baptized in a Christian church as she has been going with the neighbours and she has been telling her mom to get closer to God and to heed our counsel. She doesn't know what her mom does but she knows that her mom has been talking to us and that we counsel her with the Word of God. So she has asked her mom to invite us to their home or to take us out for chicken so that she could get to know us. Wow.


God is using children to save. These children want to know Him and He will use them to bring their mothers to Him. Topsy turvy. EM wants to follow God but can't leave the streets yet because of her debt. The general thinking would be, "What? She has to get off the streets if she is truly following Jesus". I agree with that. I agree with Jesus saying, go and sin no more. Yet, in this case, I am confronted with so much love and grace on His part. I see Him working deeper than just  getting her off the streets. I see Him showing her His love and acceptance even though she is still on the streets. I see Him loving her and loving her and loving her as no one has ever done before. Because the truth is, no one has ever loved her before. I know her story, it is horribly ugly and no one should have to go through what she did. And I see my Jesus loving her so much, He keeps cleaning her and loving her so that she knows deep in her heart, that she is accepted and truly loved. I see the same with LJP. 


Through this all, God is teaching me and Luchin more about His love and grace than ever before. By having to constantly pick them up, clean them, love them, spend time and money on them over and over and over again, we are learning His love and His ways. This is what God has to keep doing with us. All of us. Over and over and over again. This is His Mercy, Grace and Love.


We also looked at a place to rent as a place where we can have discipling, prayer, coffee, counseling, eventual church and hang out sessions and it has a lot of potential and the price is right. We're now just waiting on the owners to agree or not as to what we want to do with the place. It's up to God now. If it's where He wants us to be, it will be ours. If not, he's got something better. Your prayers on what He wants for us and where He wants it to be will be appreciated muchly. 

More Seeds Grow Roots

Last night and today have been off the charts. God is taking Ciudad de Dios back. And that's all there is to it. 


Last night, we found  JP and he had been saying he wants out and needs help and we had told him how we can help him, by taking him to a place called Victory Centre that is a church and a rehab centre. For the last 2 weeks, he has been telling us to pick him up at a certain day and time and has never been there although when we see him every week, he said that he was there, just late. Last night he mentioned that he never had any affection and love from his mom and family. He has been on the streets for 7 years and he is only 19. We told him that we care for him and that's why we keep coming to look for him every week, only that he is looking for love in his druggie friends and girls and not recognizing that God loves him and that we love him and that is why we are constantly there even though some of us live really far away. A lightbulb turned on in his head. He said he would call us to let us know when we could pick him up. We said we would be waiting. He called us at 1pm today. 


We were in another part of town and we told him we would be there at 2:30pm. We got burgers to go and went to get him. We got there at 2:40pm and he wasn't there. Luchin was about to give up thinking it was another false alarm but I asked him to go look for Luis JP again. He went and then said he's not there. I said, no, he called us which means he wants to leave this place. We need to look for him. Luchin went again and came back saying he saw a guy sleeping on the pavement of the street divider but his face was covered. Could I come with him to see if it was  JP? One thing that needs to be told about  JP is that he hadn't been near water for months. He was filthy and only had the clothes he had on. Which were beyond filthy. The only way I recognized him was by his brown jeans. The guy sleeping on the ground had on brown jeans. I knew it was him. We called his name. No reaction, he was sound asleep. Luchin took off the cloth covering his face and it was  JP. Luchin shook his shoulders.  JP woke up, saw us, jumped to his feet and said, "I'm ready, I'm ready to go!!" So off we went. 






On the way there, I talked to him about what it means to give our lives to Jesus, what it meant when He died on the cross for us, that we are all sinners not just him and the guys on the streets, etc. We share the Gospel when we go out on the streets too but many times, they are in a drugged up state or drunk and don't understand what we share. But this time, JP listened. He kept saying over and over before I finished, "I want to change, I want to give my life to Jesus" and so he did, with his heart. We talked to him about his decision and who he is now in Christ. He listened. When we finally found the church/centre, he was so shocked to find out that the people there who were talking to him and looked so normal had been addicts and alcoholics themselves and who now are healed because of Jesus. It was hitting him that change is possible. The person in charge told him he was a druggie for 24 years before his Jesus encounter and decision to change and told him the house rules and then asked if  JP wanted to stay. He said yes and then hugged us before going with the guy who led him inside. I could see through the partition later that he was being hugged tightly by the same guy after a brief conversation. Luis JP needed that, he needed to be loved on and to know what love truly is. We then left to go buy toiletries for him and socks and underwear and also some stuff that we are required to buy for the centre to help them out as they only take donations and money that the rehabilitated guys receive when they go out and work to help the centre out. 


When we got back with the stuff for JP, Luchin brought it all inside and when he gave JP the stuff, it finally hit him that we truly love him, not just in words but in deeds and he put on the socks right aways as he never had socks before out on the streets even though he had been given  clothes by Jorge. Then he gave Luchin a great big bear hug while saying humbly, "Thank you brother".  He had showered, shaved and they had shaved his hair off, which is a rule for a newbie and now he is a new creature in Christ in all aspects. We left, assured with the  knowledge that he is cared for. This Saturday, there is a "pollada" at the centre where they will be selling fried chicken and fries to raise funds and we will be there to see him and to also help out the centre. He is our spiritual kid, we won't leave him. 




Last night with the women, we had victory as well. EM knows that God is calling her to share His Word and hope out on the streets with the other women and she is now fighting hard against the lies of the enemy to keep walking forward in victory and the knowledge of who she is in Jesus. Luchin told her that he senses that she is being called to do that and she said, "Yes, I know. I sense that too". I don't think she's gonna be struggling with an identity crisis for long. I love it!!!  The victory last night was P. P had been one who had treated us at arm's length, kinda like LG did when she was alive. She had been one who had mocked us and even treated us with contempt because she had believed that we would never be able to help her. But with EM's conversion and change, the women are seeing that change is possible for them too. 


P opened up and talked and talked about what she was going through all last night. She told a john (guys that solicit the girls) to go away while she was talking to me. When a new girl came by to ask her for help, P told her that she was conversing with me and could she wait and that if she wanted to talk, she could also talk to us cos we were, "cool". When we had to leave, she was making plans to meet up with me to continue talking later this week. Can we say our God is beyond awesome?


Breakthrough. We are seeing breakthrough and victory in both areas, the guys and the women. God is super amazing and I am so humbled by Him. We definitely need to rent a place out there so that they can come and find us during the week and possibly start up a church for them. We have a few possibilities of places to rent so please pray for us in that area as well.


Words can't express how we feel about last night and today. Just this immense gratitude that God wants to and is using us to bring hope and life into the ones He loves out there on the streets. 


We are so privileged and honored to see the miracles that He is doing.