Short update and prayer requests

One particular prayer request would be for growth in our church in Arevalo in commitment from the members. We have one deacon that is carrying most of the load and we need more leaders. My biggest goal is to disciple and seek the leaders that God is preparing. I have been given responsibility for the young adult ministry and the adult sunday school class. Pray for the Lord's guidance and blessing on my efforts to do this well and also balance my time with the woodshop ministry. Things are very busy with the church and other ministries here. I had the privilege of preaching last Sunday and administering the sacraments for the first time. I also will be preaching this Sunday morning in a sister church plant in Parque Industrial, as well as preaching this Sunday evening in Arevalo. We also had a visiting pastor teaching a course on church history last week, Dr. Ian Wright from Chicago.  We had a great visit from Twin Lakes the first week in January that put on a camp ministry here in connection with our local churches. We also have a retreat planned February 7-9 with our youth to visit the youth of a sister church in Lima, Los Olivos. We are very thankful to finally be in a house and gradually getting settled and set up to be able to minister to the church in Peru.

Thank you for praying for us and supporting us!!!  We couldn't be here serving God's Kingdom in Peru without you.

Happy New Year!

I hope you all had a Merry Christmas and are having a happy New Year!
We have been extremely busy and also limited at access to internet. Our apologies for not posting any new updates recently.

We are actually still not settled yet. We finally found a house a couple of weeks ago but there were a few unforeseen repairs that surfaced before we moved in. So hopefully we will be moving in this weekend. This week we are very busy with a team from Twin Lakes in Jackson, MS and Point Pleasant from Savannah, GA here putting on a camp ministry. 

I have preached a couple of times so far. I will be preaching once a month and I have also been put in charge of the young adults (youth) ministry and the adult Sunday School class that we will be starting up later this month. We have been busy getting to know all the members of the church and getting involved with the young adult group. I have also been catching up with the carpenters and next month after we get settled into our new home and balance out a schedule with the church we plan to schedule out my time between the ministry in the church and the ministry with the carpenters. 

Meg is hanging on keeping up with the kids and anticipating moving into our home where she can get settled as well. Please pray for us for endurance and patience to wait on the Lord's timing for his providence. Please also pray for our ability to balance our time with all the demands of ministry in the church with the carpenters and maintaining a healthy family. It seems like there are always needs that come up every day that disrupt our planned out schedule. Pray for grace, flexibility and good boundaries. We pray that we will be able to work on developing leaders in the church for growth both numerically and spiritually instead of the pastors burning out on meeting everyone's needs. We pray that we can grow so that all the leaders in the church will be able to meet the needs of the members and reach out to visitors. 

I hope to have time to write more next week after the camp is over and we get moved into our house and unpacked.

Here are some good words to start off the new year:
“And when Moses had finished speaking all these words to all Israel, he said to them, “Take to heart all the words by which I am warning you today, that you may command them to your children, that they may be careful to do all the words of this law. For it is no empty word for you, but your very life, and by this word you shall live long in the land that you are going over the Jordan to possess.””
(Deuteronomy 32:45–47 ESV)