A Great Week

We are reaching the end of our time in Barrio, as well as our time in Paraguay.

Before we begin, Marc would like to share that yesterday he saw a monkey fight a kitten. It was pretty cute apparently.

There have been so many awesome experiences here in this neighborhood. I don't think any of us have seen as much incredible work through God as we have seen in this neighborhood. To give you an idea of of what is happening, here is the story of two different instances of how people's lives are changing.

From literally the first 10 minutes of us being here, we were circled around receiving invitations to hand out for the children's event on Saturday. Two girls immediately were in the middle of our circle asking in Spanish if they had an invitation for them. They were filthy dirty from head to toe and had mangled hair and clothes. Nothing they were fit right and they just looked like they were homeless. We gave them an invitation and they ran off.
We saw them the next day at the children's program and they were wearing the same clothes and we learned their names were Mila and Lucia. They are about 5 and 6 years old. Maybe 7 at the oldest. They had a great time. We started witnessing door to door on the following Monday and sure enough the girls were by us asking if we had anything they could have. We soon found out their living situation. The house is not a house a couple open walls with fabric helping to give shelter. There is garbage everywhere, dirty clothes just throw behind the house and re worn whenever, no running water, and no clear view of any kind of sanitation system anywhere.
We had/have shared the Gospel with the girls through tracks, bracelets, and "Carlito the worms" so many times, the Gospel has been made so clear in their lives. The only problem was the mother - she really wanted nothing to do with us. Marc and I tried to share the Gospel with us one day but she was very stand-offish. She would say 'si' after Marc would speak with no translation. She obviously wanted nothing to do with us.
However, after a ton of us have been showing love to her two girls, she finally decided to come to the main house base where we are, very close to her home. We fed her yesterday and her kids, and the girls were given a bath and shower and they got new dresses. After the theater we put on last night after being with them that day, the mother of the girls was crying and was talking to the Pastors there about the show.
Today she is back with her kids and they joined us for lunch - as Portia was just talking about in our prayer meeting, we are seeing God work in and form the lives of this family. We are praying that they would be transformed from a family of 'darkness to a family of light.' We see the work of the Holy Spirit right before our hours and it is truly amazing.

Pray for this family as we want to see them transformed and living for Christ!

Pastor Matt visited a family this morning who has kids who were at the children's program where they had heard the Gospel and received tracks. They had shared the tracks with their family, and when Pastor Matt got there today, the families hearts had been opened to the Gospel and they were ready to be talked to about the good news. They are interested in the Bible study that is starting in this neighborhood.

Speaking of which, there is OFFICIALLY a Bible study starting at the house we're at in Barrio. This is the first one, and its so exciting! People have been hungry for learning and discipleship. Pray that people come, and that a children's ministry can start on Saturday mornings. There are hundreds and hundreds of kids in this neighborhood, and I can't help but think it would flourish in this neighborhood.


The 'heart' play went very well yesterday. We were able to perform in the center square of San Lorenzo for the anniversary of the city yesterday, as well as do it again in Barrio. We were able to talk to so many people in the city yesterday morning, and about a hundred or more people showed up in Barrio again last night to see it as well, as well as hear a sermon.

On my facebook when we get back to the states, you will be able to see the video of the play and the message that it brought.

God is working TREMENDOUSLY here. Tremendously is almost an understatement.

Our God is beyond Good, and he is working in incredible ways.

I hope you found joy in these stories. I hope you are excited about Jesus and what He is doing here, what He has done for you, or what He could do for you. :)

- Victoria

Week 2

Tuesday brings us into the middle of our campaign work in the neighborhood of Barrio. We have had such an amazingly blessed time so far here and I can't wait to tell you about all that has happened.

Our work started on Saturday with the children's program that you can see in previous messages. All of us are just blown away as to how many kids are literally EVERYWHERE in this neighborhood. The streets are permeated with children. They are also so excited when we have any kind of event - any kind of attention we pay to them is so exciting to them.

Last night we showed the Magdalena film for the fourth time (from last year and this year) in this neighborhood. We put up posters and handed out invitations everywhere. I think the most people we have ever had at a movie was in between 50 and 60 people. The least we have ever had was maybe 15 show up. Last night in this neighborhood we had about 175 people show up, give or take a few. They just kept coming. The majority of who showed up was kids. Everyone watched the movie, and there was a short sermon afterwards as always. When the pastor at the end asked people to raise their hands after the prayer if they had received Christ and we saw so many hands go up and even more come forward. It was just such an awesome thing to be a part of. With translators, we had lots of opportunities afterwards to share with more people, and answer questions that people had about some parts of the Gospel. We had such a great time! This is the first Gospel movement in this neighborhood and the people are so receptive... God is doing - and will continue to do - so much here in Barrio!!

Please keep them in prayer as we want to see the people here keep growing in Christ.

Today, we are going out and doing discipleship with people as well as moving to new houses. Today I had the opportunity with my translator Rodrigo, as well as 2 national girls Camila (Pastor Maximo Toledo's daughter) and Laura to talk to a very large family. The man is 71 years old and has about 40 grandchildren and tons of kids and family himself. He is the 'leader' as he said and has much influence in his family. After talking to him for a few hours, I found out that he wants us to come and preach to him and his entire family later today or tomorrow. Keep them in prayer as well as a whole family could come to know Christ, especially if he himself gets to know Him.

There are many awesome stories like that that we can't wait to share with you. As you heard in the video we sent home, there have been many 'divine appointments' wherever we turn.

Here are some prayer reqeusts:
1. Pray for the Pereira Family
2. Pray that the families here would truly be impacted for Him
3. That we would continue to be effective in this community
4. continued health

Right now we are practicing for a play we will be doing in a downtown area tomorrow as well as in the neighborhood tomorrow. Pray that goes well... right now we're a bit confused haha.

Hopefully tomorrow we will be able to send out another update.

Adios!!

- Victoria y Camila (my little 5 year old friend. She says 'hola')

:)

A Beautiful Sunday Afternoon

Hola!

As the title says, it is a gorgeous day outside today. Its in the 80s or so and we are just waiting during some down time to play soccer in a neighborhood we worked in last year - Calle-i. I am not sure if it is an outreach opportunity or not, but whatever happens it will be fun.

Pastor Matt preached this morning with a translator on Luke 9. He talked about living completely for the Lord and not with one foot in the world and one living for Christ - and in light of what He has done for us why would we live any differently.

This is the passage we looked at this morning:
"And he said to all, ´if anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it. For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself: For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words, of him will the Son of Man be ashamed when he comes in his glory and the glory of the Father and of the holy angels." Luke 9:23-26

Last night at the youth group, Marc, Casey, and Sam shared their testimonies. Andrew preached on walking the talk and living for Christ now as a young person and why it is good as well as important. It was great to see how God used the 4 of them to bless the kids there.

We played a game last night too - there were 2 teams and the goal was for one team to beat the other in eating all the items in a bag. Luckily there was nothing repulsive in either. I´m pretty sure my team won because Andrew can eat so fast. :)

Anyway, today is not such a busy day so I´ll end this soon... tomorrow starts a new and very busy week so keep us in your prayers.

Thanks!

- Victoria

Sabado!!!

You may be wondering what on earth is going on in this picture. Today we had a children´s program that we did in a new neighborhood we will be working in this week. We had about 200 kids that showed up for the event. The neighborhood is a very poor one so they do not see many events like this show up in their area. There were clowns and many different events that were held for the kids. There were obstacle courses, and team games (team rojo and team amarillo).

Micah had the opportunity to be transformed into a clown for the event. He played the part very well. One big part of the day was getting the Americanos (us) to be the main event in some of the races and events. The picture shows some of the guys playing tug of war with a tube. Basically we embarassed ourselves for a good cause ;).

After all the events the Gospel was shared with all the kids and their parents. There were many children who heard the good news of Jesus, and we also had some who made a decision to follow Christ. Please keep this kids in prayer as they don´t have much teaching or discipleship in their lives at all. Hopefully this will change soon as we are starting a movement in this neighborhood next week in which houses everywhere will be flooded with the Gospel.

Last night, the college age students here went out to a concert that Pastor Alcidez´s son, Josue, and his band got to play and sing at the municipalidad in the city of San Lorenzo. It was a concert being put on by many evangelical churches in the area in honor of the anniversary of the city. It was a very fun experience.

At the concert there was also some breaks for entertainment. We saw a fire artist guy who was spinning a stick around with fire on 2 ends. It was really amusing until he kept dropping it and accidentally throwing it around... but it was still pretty interesting. There was also a tae kwon do group that was there (I think from Korea), and they were excellent. It was a good night that we got to spend with some of our family and translators in a non-work environment. :)

Today we get to take a couple hours of time off before we go and do our night activity. The college age group is going to work at a highschool event while Portia, Pastor Matt, and Daniel will go to an adult group to teach.

We are having a good time here and are so grateful for all your prayers!

-Victoria

Finishing in Reducto

Hello all!

Sorry I did not get to send out a blog yesterday, we had a jam packed day full of work.

Today ends our day working in the district of Reducto. We have seen many amazing things happen and God has worked in a wonderful and personal way.

Our devotional verse for today is 1 Corinthians 1:26-31 and was the perfect verse to end this week. Paul talks about how God uses the foolish to shame the wise and the weak to shame the strong. We have prayed and asked God to use us in any way He sees fit, and He has. He has done more than we could ever have imagined He could do through us over this past week and is still working in a mighty way that is beyond our comprehension.

God has brought many people to himself this week and we have seen even more understand the Gospel and make a decision to follow Him. The minds and hearts of the people here are open and receptive to the Gospel. God has truly gone ahead of us and opened up the hearts of numerous people here in Reducto. We have seen people young and old come to faith in Him.

In our time of sharing today, Pastor Matt told us a short story of an old squatter couple who he was able to talk to again today. They came to the Magdalena movie last night (which I will talk about later) and understood the Gospel immediately. They are excited for their new life in Christ together and are waiting for the new church to open soon. As he was walking back, he walked by a house where he had shared the Gospel with a man who was very excited about Jesus. Pastor Matt had given him one of our bridge tracks in spanish that we brought, and he saw the man explaining God's plan of salvation to his wife.

There are so many stories that are exciting and encouraging that just shows how God is moving in a mighty way here.

We are soon going to go back into the city for the last time in this neighborhood to finish up discipleship with some people.

Last night we had the opportunity to show the Magdalena film in a soccer field in Reducto. There were many people who showed up from the invitations. There were some kids there that were just playing soccer and decided to sit and watch as well. There were 2 men selling popcorn in the field and decided to move their popcorn stand over to the movie to sell there. They stayed for the whole movie and got to hear the Gospel! 3 people made a decision to accept Christ that night.

Although the the battery died half way through the movie, God provided a way to find electricity as well as open up a time for Pastor Maximo Toledo to preach while everyone was still there waiting for the movie to resume.

So far, we are picking up on Spanish pretty well, although we all had a rough start. Sophie said it was ok for me to share that she accidentally told her family (that doesn't speak english) that she likes to eat grass. She said that they had a nice long laugh about that incident. Pastor Matt's favorite phrase is still "Mucho Good-o".

We are having a wonderful time here with the people!

On a more serious note: Please please be in prayer for Doctor Miguel and his family. He hosted Janna and Tracy last year at their home as well as the large goodbye dinner. His cancer has taken a turn for the worse and he is not doing well at all. Pastor Matt, Portia, Andrew and I went to see him at his home yesterday to pray with him and the family and read scripture. He is very weak and doesn't have much longer to live, although if it is in God's will we know he can be healed. The greatest thing is that we know that most importantly his soul has been saved and his amazing testimony has reached an innumerable amount of people.
However, this is an unbelievably hard time for the family so please say a special prayer for all of them.

Other prayer requests:
1. We would all stay healthy and united as a team.
2. The people who have made decisions to follow Christ would keep growing in Him and would not be distracted by the world.
3. For the people who heard the Gospel but did not accept it - that God would grow that seed of the Gospel that has been given to them.
4. For the translators that we are working with that they would grow stronger in the Lord as well.

Our First Day!

Hello everyone,

Today was our first day in the neighborhoods. After getting settled into our host family homes last night, we got to catch up on some much needed rest and set out early in the morning to the neighborhood we were going to work in. We worked in a district just out of San Lorenzo called Reducto, a low income and poorer neighborhood than ones we have gone to in the past. In the morning, we were sent out in groups to first pray for the people on the streets and in the houses that we would be able to share the Gospel with later after lunch.

After breaking for an amazing lunch and a team meeting, we went out into the streets again to share the Gospel. As always, there were some who were receptive, some who didn't really understand what we were saying, and some who were not interested and just wanted to talk about other things.

One of the biggest challenges we come in contact with is the works-based salvation. A lot of people do believe that if they live a good life and don't commit any "big" sins, they will go to heaven for that reason alone. We have to focus a lot of time on our inherant sin we possess and the large seperation it creates between us and God. It is so exciting when people understand this and almost breath a sigh of relief when we tell them that there is a way, an amazing way, to have a proper relationship with God and that is through faith in Jesus Christ. A couple people in our team came across some people who we believe truly put their faith in Jesus for the first time tonight. It is just so exciting to see this!!

Today, Daniel was able to witness to a man named Diego who grew up with a father who was a Baptist Pastor. He said he grew up in a Christian home but never put anything into practice. They found out after talking for a while that they both have a son about the same age. Diego was saying that he never took Christianity to heart, but now that he has a son, he is more conscious of what to teach him which opened up a great door for Daniel to really share the Gospel on a personal level. They talked for a good hour and a half. He is interested in knowing who Jesus is.

HIs is not the only story like this, there were so many times we had with people that could only be from the Lord.

We are especially in every neighborhood looking for the man or woman of peace, as Jesus speaks of in Luke 10:6. These are people who are open and known in their neighborhood that may be open to having a Bible study in their house for their neighbors so as to have discipleship in every town.

Our Devotional verse for the day is John 3:30 if you want to look it up and meditate on it as we have today :)

Today was very productive and God is already doing so much. Hopefully I can send out more tomorrow with some pictures from today.

Lots of love to you all! More tomorrow hopefully.

- Victoria

Hello from Bolivia!

Its Tuesday morning and we're ALMOST done with all of our flights. Just one more out of Santa Cruz, Bolivia (where we are now) straight to Asuncion. The flight over Bolivia was beautiful - it is very mountainous. We saw everything from foothills to snowcaps to a the Bolivian tropical rainforest we flew over.

The trip so far has been slightly uneventful with only a couple minor set backs. On our way out of Miami, getting ready to fly to Bolivia, we had to get out of the plane AFTER everyone was already seated and move to another plane to do maintenance issues.
Just a little bit of motion and altitude sickness ensued, but generally everyone was fine.

A cool thing to note: we landed in La Pax before Santa Cruz and the airport elevation is at 12,000 feet - the highest airport in the world (apparently).

We have run into quite a few missionary groups on our way down as well, which has been encouraging. Pastor Matt was able to spend some time witnessing to a woman on the airplane on our way down... literally the whole flight they were able to talk about the Gospel and why we believe what we believe.

So, right now, we're just hanging out in the airport for a few hours until our final flight at 2ish. Although we are still in the very beginning of this trip, there are already some things we know we would love you to pray for!

Pray:
1. For continued health (we're all very tired and trying to stay healthy)

2. The language barrier - that we would be able to communicate effectively to the people we come in contact with (I am watching some of the guys try to order at a Subway right now - we need help)

3. That we would constantly be looking for opportunities to witness even if we're tired or if there is a language barrier.

4. A general prayer for the other missionaries that we have seen - that they would be able to effectively spread the Gospel to where they are going.

5. We have our luggage now - but just that none of our many bags would be lost during the final stretch.

We are so grateful for your time reading this and your prayers back home!

Love from Bolivia!



^Our Airport Entertainment for now ;)

-Victoria