Immersed In God and In Peru

Dear Prayer Team,

I always laugh when I start a letter like that because I remember talking with Asher Sargent about a catchy title for my letters. We were brain storming and one that came up was, The P. Team, that gave us a good laugh. And for my prayer team I want to thank you! I could not do this with out your constant prayers, they are so powerful. The Lord says to us, "Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulations, be constant in prayer." (Rom. 12:12)

Well, it has been almost two months since my last update and if you remember I had asked a few prayer requests.

The first was for my housing, I have now been living with a Peruvian family for almost a month now and it has been wonderful to wake up and go to bed speaking Spanish. I am also much closer to El Arca, the orphanage I am working at. My location is out in the suburbs where there is hardly any traffic, the polution is less and the nights are quiet. The only down fall is it takes me about fourty five minuets to get into town and I don't have any internet acess, but I don't have too many occations that have I make a trip in to town and I am figuring out how to communicate more with you.

I also asked that you pray for my schedule and I am slowly getting it solidified. Sundays I give the day to the Lord and I go to two Peruvian services in the morning and an english speaking on at night. Then I start my week off at El Arca and I am there three times a week. My Tuesdays are set aside for a personal day off and Thursdays I am working at a cafe, called The Meeting Place. Then I have time set aside for being involved in my churches, I have two prayer nights during the week and Saterdays I help out in Kids Club at one of the Peruvian churches I go to.

When I am at El Arca, I help out with what ever needs to be done but usually in the mornings I help bath children and braid hair for the girls. Then in the afternoons I have the responsibility of helping the kids, from the school Promesa, with their studies. There are about forty children who live in El Arca and they all need some love.

It was my pleasure to take the youth from my church back up to El Arca this past Saterday. I put together an activity with the kids and we took lots of beads and made braclets with flowers for the girls and braclets with lizards for the boys. It was a bit hecktic but in the end everyone got to make something and then I had the privledge to share a short message and my testamony with the kids. It was a crazy, great afternoon and my prayer is that some seeds were planted.

I am also working at a cafe, called The Meeting Place, where all of the workers are volunteers and a hundred percent of the profits go to orphanages that they support. It is such anengouraging atmosphere to work in! We are all believers and there is not a customer that comes in and does not feel the presence of Christ. Just the other day a man came in and I got the oppertunity to talk to him about why I am here, how I am being supported, and being guided by the Lord. Then at the end of the conversation he told me that he was a Mormon of sorts, but he did not really want to affiliate himself with a name because of some of his past exeriences. I can only hope God is working on his heart because he is searching.

If you could be praying for:
-Those that God puts in my path, that I would be bold in my faith.
-The last Saterday of every month, I am planning on taking the youth from my church and doing an activity with the kids in El Arca.
-This Saterday, I will be starting to help with a new ministry in the afternoons. After Kids Club at Rey de Reyes I will head over to another Kids Club, at The Meeting Place. They just started two weeks ago and there are already twenty five kids coming, so I am excited to lend a hand!
-This Sunday, the children of the Strongs, the field director and volunteer coordinator for WGM, will be coming and their son will be narrating some stories from the bible in a few different services. That God would give him the words.

Thank you again for your invaluable prayers and God bless!

In Christ,
Esther

Big Changes

There so many new things that I have had to adapt to, like a new family, a new church, new friends, new transportation, and at the core of all those changes I have had to accept that I am starting at ground zero. There is confidence and trust that must be built. Right now I am a stranger in a new culture and my prayer is that I can eventually feel at home.

With these changes comes adventure, I have been to the La Cancha twice since I have been here. It is a huge open air market that stretches for miles and there is everything you could ever want. The first time I went with my host sister Cecilia. Because she new her way around we covered a lot of ground, weaving in and out of booths. I started feeling dizzy because there were so many things to see, so many people to maneuver through, and so many new smells to place. Yet over all, I was fascinated by the community within the market. Those that have sold goods next to each other for years pass the day talking and vying for customers, because there are sections in the market that sell the same thing. What fun!

I had another interesting experience with the public transportation. It was my first time checking out a local swimming pool and I only had a vague idea of where it was so I decided to take taxi trufi #110 for 1.5 bolivianos. After fifteen minuets I knew I had missed my drop off because my host mom told me it would only take ten, so I decided to see if the taxi trufi went back around to my house. I thought maybe they went in a circle, but forty five minuets later I realized that I was on my way to no where. Up in the boon dog hills my driver pulled over and told me that it was the end of the line. I had to get out and take two more taxi trufis home. Three hours later I reached home emotionally drained and with a sore back side from sitting to long. This experience is what the locals call taxi surfing, were a person rides all the way to the taxi terminal. Even though it was a bit crazy, I can now say that I know everywhere taxi trufi #110 goes(:

I have so much to be thankful for! Even though I feel like a deer in the headlights at times I have an amazing host family. Anita and her two girls Daniela, 20 yrs, and Cecilia, 21yrs. They are so patient with my Spanish, I am well fed, I have hot showers, and their extended family is so welcoming. Along with that, I have found a church, called Cochabamba International Church, that reminds me of Grace(my home church)! How blessed I am by God's provisions.

In the coming month I will be finishing up my language course and starting my work at the orphanage Corazon Del Pastor and Pedecitos. Along with that, I will be taking a trip to either Peru or Argentina to change my visa from a tourist one to a residential one. These are some changes that I would really appreciate specific prayer for as the directors of the orphanage help me figure out my visa, where I am going to stay for the rest of the year (with my host family or somewhere else), where I will be working, and so forth. Decisions have to be made and they will shape this coming year for me. Thank you for your prayers and God bless!

Arrival

I think time goes a little faster here in Bolivia. It has already been a month! Yet I can vividly remember when I arrived...it was midafternoon and I was early. I happened to get onto the wrong flight so I was ahead of time and the Malos, directors of Ninos Con Valor, had not arrived yet. This was a bit unnerving for me. The whole trip to Cochabamba I was nervous about getting my visa and getting on to the correct flight in Santa Cruz. Now all I can do is laugh because I ended up getting a tourist visa not a residencial visa and I got on to the wrong flight. Yet God had it all orchistraited, on the flight I did end up taking there were three buisness people I met and they gave me buisness cards because one guy travels to Cochabamba every six months and he wants me to let him know if I ever need something from the states. The other card was from a couple in the group and they want to adopt, so when they heard I would be working in an orphanage they wanted to know more. How encourageing to know that complete strangers would care about me and the work that I would be doing. At the time I thought there was nothing more that could go wrong but now looking back I can see the the points where I was at my lowest God provided and made his presense known.