Prayer for our March Peru Trip I

Psalm 67:1-3 “May God be gracious to us and bless us and make His face to shine upon us, that Your way may be known on earth, Your saving power among all nations. Let the peoples praise You, O God; let all the peoples praise You!”

Sorry, it has been so long since I have written a blog post. I have had several ideas of what to write about, but most of them seem to be unhelpful to the body of Christ, and would probably get me in a lot of trouble. And besides, I read a lot of blogs, and many that have lots of text but not lots of important or helpful info. In fact, if a blog is consistently fluff, I usually delete the feed...I digress.

As I was thinking about our March Peru trip the other morning my mind was racing about all the things that we are going to be doing in a week's time there, and I was feeling a little overwhelmed. And you may feel overwhelmed at all the prayer needs that I am about to give you. In fact, as I think about it, I may break this blog up in two parts.

I'll just put the prayer needs that came to my mind the other morning, if I can remember them. Then in a couple of days, I will post Geoff's compilation of prayer needs. But know this: I AM DESPERATE FOR THE HAND OF GOD TO BE UPON US, AND I FEEL THE WEIGHT OF THIS TRIP. AND WE MUST HAVE SOME PRAYER WARRIORS INTERCEDING FOR US!

1. This is a huge trip regarding the planting of the church there in Julcan and Molinos-two villages that have no existing churches. There will be a lot of evangelizing going on in these two villages with those whose hearts have been prepped on our last two trips. Secondly there will be a lot of discipleship with those believers that are be beginning of our core group there. Hopefully we will baptize these individuals who are ready to fully follow Christ before we leave (this is a huge step for them, because it symbolizes the official break between them and the Catholic Church). And thirdly, we will be training our two young pastors there, as they prepare to take the weekly reigns of these two churches. Neither of these young men have any "pastoral" experience, but have been involved in ministry in their home church in Jauja. This will be a big jump for them, but they have been making trips out to our villages regularly discipling the believers there.
2. In addition to this great task, we will also be doing a baseball camp for the children in these two villages in the mornings as a way of helping them. And we have never done a baseball camp before. We might be teaching some English classes for those that would like to learn. And with all this, it is going to be a very busy week. And we will need much stamina to weather a week like this at the altitude. And it seems like we always go a little two hard the first couple of days.
3. Logistically, this trip is going to be very difficult to say the least for a couple of reasons. First, this is the largest team (16) that we have ever taken by ourselves to Peru. We will be renting three mini-vans for travel and trying to keep up with all of them as we ascend the Andes (15,000 ft up over 8 hrs). And we will also have three van drivers, two translators, and a missionary with us. And secondly, we (I) have scheduled us a really difficult day of travel on Friday and Saturday. We are leaving Tifton on Friday night, driving to Orlando, and staying in a hotel near the airport. Our plane leaves at 6 am (so at the airport at 4 am), then we switch planes in Panama City, Panama (never been to Panama before), pray that our baggage makes the connection, and arrive in Lima at about 1:30 pm. Then we are gonna pick up our vans, translators, etc. and begin an 8 hour trek over to Jauja. So if we leave Lima by 3 pm, at best we arrive in Jauja at 11 pm. So we will be going hard from 3:30 am till about midnight. Then I have to get up and preach on Sunday morning. This might appear foolish to some (and maybe it is), but it is a risk that is necessary to take for this short time and the ministry that we must accomplish there. As some of you know, I have a seizure disorder (just another Satanic distraction) that can be triggered by lack of sleep and/or stress. So I need you to really pray for deliverance for me on the first to days. Our return travel is difficult, but not that difficult. So pray for me as I lead, administrate, and preach the gospel, but pray for my health to stand firm, as it is hard on team to have a leader down.

I am so grateful that many of you have supported our work there in the past few years, but this trip may be the most needful of prayer. Please recruit an army of prayer warriors and saints to intercede for us. Please don't allow this request to sit on a table or be forgotten as so many are.

Somebody please make sure and tell Bob and Pat English and Fred and Harriet Osgood! Thanks

Thanks for your faithfulness, may the Lord bless you accordingly!