Dear friends and family,

It is hard to believe that we are already this far into the year of 2005. I realized today that we have now been here for 8 months. It sounds like a long time, but the time has flown. I praise the Lord for this time that I am here in Perú, He is teaching me and changing me so much! There are so many things that I would like to share with you about this past month, but I have to settle for summing things up.
We had a good Christmas and New Year’s, spending the evenings in the church with special services. That was a lot of fun, and the view of Christmas among the believers of Buenas Nuevas was so refreshing! No matter how many times I have heard that the real meaning of Christmas is about Christ’s birth and life and not presents and candy and such, I think this year was the best teacher that I have had of what Christmas really is. The people here have next to nothing compared to us, and yet they are so happy and they celebrate Christ more than they celebrate presents and Christmas trees. I didn’t hear people complaining about the gifts they got or didn’t get. The members of my church here are wonderful examples to me. I praise the Lord for them!
These last few weeks have been very busy preparing for the trip to Bagua in the jungle and also the three weeks after Bagua that we will be working at a camp a couple of hours north of where we live in Lima. In Bagua the ARRIBA! group will be holding a Vacation Bible School for all of the children at a conference of churches. Pastor Evelio will be speaking for the evening services. For the VBS, we are in charge of the crafts, games, lessons, and everything else. Please pray that we would be able to communicate well with the children, capture their attention, and that those who are not yet saved would accept Christ as their Savior. We will be teaching the lessons in a style like the “Wordless Book.” We will be leaving tonight on about a 20 hour bus ride to get to Bagua. We will be on this Bagua trip for a week, and then we will be home for less than two full days before we head out again to do the camps. I am really excited for these following weeks!
The four of us of the ARRIBA! group that live in Musa are now each in charge of one kid’s club. I am in charge of one in Manchay. It has been a good learning experience. I have had the opportunity of working with a lot of the planning and scheduling and deciding how the club should be run. I work with two 18 year old boys from the church, Henry and Román, and they are a great help to me. They have a passion for serving, and they are willing to help in any way that they can. Within the last two weeks, 7 people (5 adults and 2 young boys) have accepted Christ as their personal Savior! Praise the Lord! It is so encouraging to see how God is working!
Also, we are now in charge of the Jóvenes meetings, Caleb and Annette with the younger group and Seth and I with the older group. During the lesson time Seth teaches the guys and I teach the ladies. We are teaching through the book of James, which is tremendous! I am God is teaching me so much through my studying for the lessons, and there are so many things to learn, there is no possible way that I can possible teach everything that I would like to in the length of time that we have to teach. Pray that the Lord would continue to conform my life to be more like Him, and that He would also speak through me to help the girls grow also.
I also have had the opportunity to teach at the ladies meeting at church twice. I really enjoy speaking to them, I just pray that even though at times I lack the right words or grammar they would still learn and be encouraged. I am so thankful that God uses us in spite of our weaknesses!
My Peruvian family has gone to the jungle to visit the family of Nordid, my house mom. They will be gone for about a month. Nordid went up there with the hope and prayer of witnessing to her siblings, aunts, uncles and all the members of her family that are unsaved. Pray that she would be bold while doing this and that the Lord would give her opportunities to share the Gospel and that the Holy Spirit would work so they would have open hearts to accept Christ.
Thank you so much for all of your prayers and support! I appreciate it so much, I can never say thank you enough. I know that words cannot accurately describe everything God is doing down here in our hearts and lives and through us, but I hope that this gives you a little bit of an idea!
Prayer Requests:
-Trip to Bagua
-The camps in which we will be working
-Nordid and family in the jungle, salvation of the rest of her family
-New believers in the church and kid’s clubs
-Kid’s clubs
-Jóvenes Mayores-that the Jóvenes would come and would grow in their walks with Christ
-The financial situation of Buenas Nuevas- they are in debt some right now, pray that the Lord would provide the money to pay it off completely, and that they would have the money that they need to pay Pastor Evelio

We helped out several churches, working with the youth groups and Sunday School. We went up to the very top of Wayna Picchu and were able to see some of the beautiful sights.

Dear friends and family,
Hello!! Merry Christmas to you all!! Most of you probably have snow by this time, at least all of you that are in the Mid-West, but it is just getting hot down here. We are just now entering our summer. So when you drink your hot chocolate and scrape your car windows, think of me. =) Really, thinking of the real meaning of Christmas is something challenging to me. God is teaching me a lot lately about servant hood, and Christ coming to this earth is the perfect example of a true act of servitude. God is teaching me that I need to serve Him before I serve man and others. My actions need to be out of my love for Him primarily. Also, I am learning a lot about serving with my whole heart and not just my lips or my hands.
I saw an excellent example of this in the jungle. Right after I wrote last, we had our jungle trip. Ten or so of us from Buenas Nuevas took a bus for 24 hours to get to Moyobamba, a place in the northern part of Peru. We also visited Nueva Cajamarca (Ucrania), and Bagua Grande. We held the services and did kid’s clubs in the streets. Our trip was made complete on the ride in the combi (a van which should have held fifteen people) with 21 people and two chickens for 5 to 6 hours. God provided for us on this trip and we were able to see over ten people accept Christ as their personal Savior. What a blessing for the Lord to allow us to take part in His work here! One thing that really encouraged me on this trip was the people of Ucrania. They were so friendly and they served so willingly. We went there with the mindset to serve them, and yet they served us. They served with their whole hearts. Another encouragement to me was how they sang. They sang the songs differently than we are used to, but we could tell that they were singing with their whole heart, not just to sing it. I was reminded about how important it is to do things from the heart as it says in Ephesians 6:6-7. “Not with eyeservice, as menpleasers; but as the servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart; With good will doing service, as to the Lord, and not to men:” They were a great encouragement, and I believe that our trip to the jungle changed each of us that went in some way or another. We left with a burden in our hearts for this area. There are only ten or so Baptist churches in a very large area, and Pastor Evelio is working on a program to help train Pastors and leaders in this area so that new churches may be planted and the work can grow. As Pastor kept saying, “The fields are white for harvest.”
After we had our jungle trip we were back in Lima for several days and then took off again, this time headed south to Cusco. We helped the Whatleys in Cusco. Before leaving, Mr. Carlton (our head missionary down here from Baptist Mid-Missions) told us that we would basically be tourists and just observing the churches. Well, I am thankful that it wasn’t that way. We ended up working most of the time that we were down there, and we were very happy to help out. We attended a funeral on Saturday afternoon after we arrived in the Cusco area. It was interesting to see the way they do things down here, and also the difference between funerals for believers and non-believers. We ran Jóvenes (the youth group) in Urubamba (which means “land of spiders” in Quechua, not very encouraging) on Saturday night. On Sunday morning, we led the first part of the service for the church that Tom and Barb Whatley have in their house in Harín. Annette and I were able to talk with the girl Sunday School class for the Sunday School hour. On Sunday night we ministered in the church of national pastor, Pastor Rubén, in Calca. We also did the chapel service for the seminary in Urubamba and were able to help out with some little things like painting and helping out the Whatleys with things around the house.
On Thursday and Friday we did some sight-seeing. We went to Machu Picchu, the ancient Incan ruin, and we took a tour of the city and outskirts of Cusco. It was a good trip and I was very thankful to be able to see the difference once again between the different regions of Peru. Cusco is in the mountain region. There is a big difference in the way people think and act and their lifestyles in all of the different regions, and therefore it is necessary to have different methods of ministry to reach them.
As we are getting deeper into our months of ministry and language learning, we are gaining more responsibilities. I am now in charge of the kid’s club in Portada 1 in Manchay, the one that we started a few months back. I also have the opportunity to give the lesson every Saturday night for the ladies in Jóvenes Mayores (ages 18 and up). I am excited to get started with these ministries.
We recently had two young men get baptized, Henry and Johan. It is exciting to see people growing in their walks with Christ. Henry is a young man who is very excited to do things for Christ, and he keeps growing despite the fact that his parents pressure him against it.
Thank you all so much for all of your prayers and support! It is wonderful and encouraging to know that there are a lot of people back in the States praying for us down here. Thanks! Also, I am still short some of my funding for this year, so please pray and consider supporting me financially if you are able to.

Prayer Requests:
-The churches in the jungle and selva that we have visited
-The kid’s clubs (that the kids would come faithfully and hear the Gospel and accept Christ)
-The church in Manchay that is branching off to hold services on its own at the end of this month with the missionary Mr. Carlton as its pastor
– The group ARRIBA! and our preparations as we are going to be working at camps and going on two more trips to the jungle this summer
-There is some division between some of the believers in the Manchay church
-Financial support for all the members of ARRIBA!

Dear Friends and Family,
Hello!! It is hard for me to believe, but yesterday marked our sixth month of being down here in Lima!! I am amazed at how fast the time has gone by, and yet it seems like I have been here forever. More and more, the people here are wrapping themselves around my heart, and I find myself loving them more and more all of the time.
The language is coming along. I still struggle with things, but God has really helped me learn a lot. Since finishing classes, things have really picked up and I think that my language learning is improving a lot because I am in Spanish a lot more than before. I also had a lot of opportunities to work on my Spanish this last week, as my mom and Pastor Grotzke (the pastor of my home church in Baxter, MN) and his wife were down here. Seth and I were able to do a lot of translating for them. I had the opportunity to translate a testimony my mom gave in church. I also translated for Mrs. Grotzke as she gave a challenge at the ladies meeting at my church here in Lima, Buenas Nuevas. I enjoyed the time that they were here a lot, and I learned a lot during the week they were here. It was a great answer to prayer that my mom was able to come, and I thank God so much that she could!
My mom really encouraged me while she was down here. As ARRIBA members, we have to fill out paperwork and things about our internship and the things that we are doing for the church. I was filling out one of the papers and there is one part that I am supposed to write challenges from the week or observations that I made and things. I started writing that since my mom was here I wasn’t able to do a lot so I didn’t have much to say. (Which was fine.) But then I started realizing that I did have a lot to say. I realized that I had actually learned a lot during the week that my mom was here even though I didn’t have a lot of time to study and prepare and I didn’t log a lot of internship hours. It suddenly dawned on me how much I had observed in watching my mom while she was down here. I saw her serve the people in the best way that she could. Although she doesn’t speak Spanish, she spent hours with my family here playing games and things, and spending time with them. She helped out with dishes, working in the nursery for the ladies meeting, and whatever else she could do. She wanted to learn the language so she could speak to the people down here and encourage them. I realized by observing her, ministry is also the little simple things in life, maybe the things that many people don’t want to do. She did these things out of the love in her heart, and that was a wonderful example to me. I saw how she wanted to say things to the people here and she couldn’t because of the language barrier, and it made me ashamed knowing that I know that words that could be used to encourage people, and yet at times I fall short and fail to say them. So, it was a tremendous blessing that my mom could come and I could spend time with her and also learn from her example. It was also a blessing to have the Grotzkes down here and spend time with them.
We are into our internship months of our time down here, and it has been really nice. I love being able to focus on ministering to the people. I am still working in the new kid’s club in Manchay. Pastor Evelio would like to start a church in this area, and we go up there on Thursday nights to have a Bible study in a house. Several people have been coming. There are so many problems and hardships in these people’s lives. Yet they are faithful to the Lord through the good and the bad. One lady works for hours almost every day at a school watching little children, and her monthly pay is one sol, which is about equal to 33 cents in American dollars. Learning about the people and getting into their lives and getting to know them has really been opening my eyes. There are so many stories of people with money problems or health problems or broken homes. There is so much need here, and yet we must realize that the biggest need is salvation through the one and only Savior, Jesus Christ.
A few people from church are also starting up a new kid’s club in a different area (Los Parques) just a short ways away from our church. Pray for both of the new kid’s clubs. Pray that children (and perhaps even parents) would come and that they would accept Christ as their personal Savior. The ARRIBA! Group had the opportunity to present the program that we did in the schools in Trujillo to a group of kids in Musa on Saturday. It went well and well over a hundred kids showed up.
There is a family that lives a couple of houses down from me, and the parents are not saved. They have two sons, Henry (18) and Hubert (12). Henry has been saved for a while, but his parents are not very supportive of him doing very much with the church as they are not believers. Within the last couple of weeks, Hubert (the younger son) accepted Christ as his personal Savior! Pray for the parents in this family, as they need to be saved. Also pray for Henry and Hubert as they feel a lot of pressure from their unsaved parents.
Tomorrow, a group of ten of us from the church will be leaving on an eight days mission trip. We will be traveling for 24 hours in a bus, and we will be ministering in different churches in the jungle. Pray for safety for our bus rides and things. Pray that the people’s hearts would be open to the Gospel of Christ, and that we would be able to encourage the believers in these places.
After our jungle trip, we will be back in Lima for a week. After our week in Lima, we will then take off again, this time down south to Cusco.
Please cointinue to be in prayer about the pastoral house. The owners don’t really want to sell it now, and if they do it will cost a lot of money for lawyers and paperwork. Pastor Evelio would like to knock down the house and church and start over, as the foundation is not very firm and it isn’t sturdy enough for us to use the third floor for very much. Pray for wisdom as to what should be done with the church, whether to rebuild or whether to look for other houses to buy.
Thank you all so much for your prayers and support! It is such an encouragement to know that you are all praying for us down here. I was speaking with a man named José from the church in Manchay tonight, and he said that those that are staying home and praying for those of us who are going on the mission trip this next week have just as big in this trip as the ones that are actually going. That is very true. Your part in my time here and the work that is happening down here is tremendous! Thank you for everything you do! Please continue to pray for us as we work here down in Peru!

In Christ,- Mark 10:45

Hello!! This past month has been a very busy month!! Just after I wrote my last letter, the ARRIBA group went up to Trujillo to present our program in the different schools for the children. We presented the program 22 different times in 12 different schools. We handed out near to 3,000 tracts and cassettes (containing Bible stories) to the children and teachers. It was great to see hundreds and hundreds of children with tracts and excited about listening to the Bible stories. Pray that the children and families that received the tracts and tapes would be open and that they would accept Christ as their Savior!! We stayed at the Seminario Bautista del Perú (Baptist Seminary of Peru) throughout the week, and it was a tremendous blessing to meet the students and see their excitement for the Lord while preparing for ministry. Annette and I were able to sit in on a few of the classes on the Friday that we were there, and the teaching is excellent there. Pray that the Lord would continue to give the students a desire to learn more and minister. Many of them struggle to make the payments for the year. The tuition for the classes is $75 a semester. Pray that the Lord would continue to provide for them. Over all, it was an exciting week. We were also able to minister in a couple of different churches and spend time with the missionaries in Trujillo.
When we arrived back in Lima, we started our next (and last) class, Personal Evangelism in the Hispanic Culture. This was an excellent class, taught by missionary Gary Whipple. We had several hours of lecture in the mornings and early afternoons, all in Spanish. Amazingly, it was pretty easy to understand. Then in the afternoons we would go out for a couple of hours to witness to the people in the parks and on the streets. We used the verses and the plans of salvation that we had to memorize for the class to witness to the people. Many people were saved and I was able to lead a girl named Susana to Christ. It was amazing, because I knew that God had definitely done all the work. In the beginning of our conversation she said several times that she didn’t understand what I was saying, and I believe that it was the language barrier. But the Holy Spirit worked in her and gave me the words to say, and she accepted Christ as her Savior! What a blessing to be so weak and yet be used by God in this way! Please pray that she will attend the church in Ate (the district in which we were witnessing) and that she would start to grow in her walk with Christ. We finished the class, and this past week we also had our last day of Spanish tutoring class. We will take our final exam Tuesday and Wednesday next week. I am excited to see these come to a close (although I will not have much of a chance to see the language helpers much after this and I will miss them), so that we can start really focusing on the ministry part of our time down here.
Last week, on the Friday the 8th, our church in Musa started a new Kid’s Club up in a different sector in Manchay (a city up in the mountains from Musa). I would guess that a couple of hundred kids were there, and five adults came and were saved. Pastor Evelio would like to start a church up there, and this is how they are planning to start reaching the people. Annette, Caleb, Seth, and I will be working up at the new Kid’s Club for a little while to get things started. Pray that a lot of kids would come! Some people from Buenas Nuevas are also going visiting on Thursday evening to visit the new saved believers and to work on spreading the Gospel of Christ with the people in that area.
We are going to be able to focus more on our ministries now that classes are over, and we are going to be several different things. We will continue working in the kid’s clubs and with Jovenes Menores and Jovenes Mayores. We will continue to be in choir, and we will be taking turns typing out the hymns to sing for the services. The church does not have enough money for hymnals, so we just use sheets of paper with hymns typed out on them. We will be starting our discipleship ministry. I will be starting out discipling Solange, Pastor Evelio’s daughter, and I will probably have another girl that I will be working with also. I am excited to start working on that. We also need to start working on putting the Vacation Bible School programs together, because through the months of January, February, and March we will be doing a lot of things like this.
Buenas Nuevas is in the process of buying the house that Pastor Evelio lives in. The owners are asking for $30,000 within the next couple of months. The Peru Lima Musa Parsonage Project fund has a little more than half of the money needed, which is a great blessing! We need just around $15,000 more to buy the house. The house is used to house Pastor Evelio and his family, and it is also used for Sunday School classes on Sunday mornings. We are praying that the Lord would provide the rest of the money for the Pastoral house. Please pray with us about this need!
Thank you so much for your prayers and financial support for us and the work down here! Thank you for your part in our ministry!
Prayer Requests:
*The children and families that received the tracts and cassettes in Trujillo
*The students in Trujillo for the money to stay at the seminary and their desire to prepare for the ministry that God would have them do
* Susana and the other new believers that were saved during the two weeks of our class
*The new kid’s club in Manchay and the church that Pastor Evelio would like to plant
*The ARRIBA group and our ministries that we will be working in
*For me personally, that I would be a willing vessel and that God would work through me to reach the people here in Peru
*The money for the pastoral house
*The health of Pastor Evelio’s wife, Gloria
*The health of Tito, my little brother down here in Peru, he has been having stomach problems for a while and the doctors do not know why

Hello again! I hope all of you are doing well!
Lately, time has been flying by (as usual). I recently finished my History of Latin America class. It was really interesting learning about some of the history of the people here in Peru. I hope that I will be able to understand them and their culture better. We have one class left, and that is Personal Evangelism in a Hispanic Culture. This class is all in Spanish, including the lectures, so pray that we will be able to understand well. Pray that this class would help us prepare to share the Gospel effectively.
This next week, the ARRIBA! Group will be traveling eight hours up north to spend a week in Trujillo. We will be presenting a program in schools for the children. This program consists of a couple of songs, a couple of skits, an object lesson, and a personal testimony. Our main focus is that salvation is not by works, because most of the people we are speaking to are Catholics. I am giving a short personal testimony in the program, so please pray that I won’t forget the words when I get in front of everyone! Also, please pray that God would soften the kids and teachers towards the message of the Gospel, and that He would speak through us. Also, you can pray for our safety as we make the trip up there and back. We will be traveling all night on Saturday night to get there. This is a wonderful opportunity to reach a lot of people, so please remember to keep us in your prayers all week long.
I am still working with the kids in the Chispitas Sunday School class. I find myself loving them more every Sunday that I am with them. I might be able to teach a lesson in a couple of Sundays, so I am excited about that.
I have had the chance to share the Gospel with Noemi. She is a very strong Catholic and she is getting ready for her first communion and things so she is studying a lot. She is a very firm believer in the Catholic beliefs and she knows a lot. Pray that I will have more opportunities to talk to her about Christ and salvation. We are becoming better friends, so this may open up more opportunities for me to share with her. She has come to the church youth group several times and she is very interested in learning English.
The church choir had the chance to travel several hours up to Chancay a couple of weeks ago. We sang for the 14th anniversary of a Baptist church up there. It was great to see another church excited about God. Pastor Manolo, the pastor of the church in Chancay, and his wife were very generous and they were a blessing to me.
This past Saturday we had a special event for the kids of Musa. We had songs and a lesson and refreshments. We were hoping for fifty kids to come, but over eighty showed up. Praise the Lord! We were able to share the Gospel with the kids from around town that we had invited. The event went well and we were able to make connections with more people in Musa and the surrounding areas.
There is a family that lives in Manchay, the town up the mountain from Musa, and they are having some problems with their son. Please pray for them. This past Saturday Seth and I went up to visit him and his cousin, and his mom told us that he had left the night before and hadn’t returned home. To spare some of the details, he showed up the next day. They have had problems with him when he was younger, but things got better after he accepted Christ as his Savior. Pray that he would want to follow God and that he would realize that a godly life is better than the other alternative he has. Pray that the parents would have the wisdom and the love for him that they need.
Just a few days ago, the ARRIBA! Group was shopping for several things for our trip to Trujillo and Annette and I stayed after for a little while. To make a long story short, while riding the bus we ended up about forty minutes past the place where we were supposed to get off. When we found this out we weren’t really sure what to do, but the cobrador, the man who works on the bus, helped us out. While we were waiting to get off in a safe part of the district we were in, we decided to make good use of our time. We got up and gave every person on the bus a tract. We were able to hand out many tracts in many different places on our little adventure. This was a nice reminder to me that serving God is fun, and that He used our mistake to give us a great opportunity to spread His Gospel!
I am becoming better friends with the people in my church here in Musa, and slowly but surely my Spanish is coming. Please continue to pray for my learning in that area, because I would like to be able to share the Gospel clearly and be an encouragement (not only by my actions but also by my words) to the believers and missionaries here.
I am learning more and more that God is my stronghold, and the One that I can count on fully! Many times I am just plain worn out, mentally, physically, and emotionally. It is such an encouragement to remember that God is my strength. He is also teaching me that He is my strength and my joy during the good times in life, not just the hard! The other day I was feeling overwhelmed by many things, and I read Psalm 34. What a wonderful chapter! I love verse 8. “Taste and see that the Lord is good.” God is good, all the time. I need Him just as much when the times are good as when things are hard or frustrating!
Thank you for all your prayers and support. All of your prayers make such a difference, and you all are taking part in the ministry down here! Thank you!
Prayer Requests:
*Programs next week in Trujillo
*Sunday School and Kid’s clubs
*Pastor Evelio’s wife- she has been having health problems
*A house for Pastor Evelio and his family
*The rest of my financial support to come in, I am still short several thousand
*Opportunities to witness to Noemi
*Language learning

In Christ’s Love,
Crystal Barringer
Psalm 34

Dear praying family and friends,
So many things are happening and the time is going by so quickly! We just finished our Media Class and I learned about making videos and powerpoint presentations. We did a lot of hands-on work with these two things and we also learned some about taking good pictures and things. We made a video for the ARRIBA! Program, and Lord willing you will be able to see it sometime. I only have two more classes left, Latin American History and Personal Evangelism in a Hispanic culture.
Kid’s clubs are going well. Seth and I are in Paraiso again this month. We now have a little building in which to have the club. We met outside before, but now we have four walls around us. I really enjoy working the kids a lot, and I am able to help in the club by leading the songs and helping with the other things like games or the lessons that the kids do. Many of the kids come from broken homes. Many of the parents are not believers, and we are the only ones to show them a good example. Pray that we can show them Christ’s love that they need so badly and pray that we can help them grow spiritually.
I am still trying to learn Spanish. Sometimes it goes pretty well, and other days it seems as if I don’t know anything! Thanks to God, He has been helping me learn and He has given me the understanding that I have so far.
I am still trying to keep in contact with the girls that I mentioned earlier: Anabel (age 13), Auntonela (age 12), and Noemi (age 17). They have all attended Jovenes (our church’s youth group). Pray that I would have opportunities with all three of them to share the Gospel clearly. Pray that their hearts would be softened toward the message of Christ.
The Arriba group is starting to prepare for a trip that we will be taking in a little over a month up north to Trujillo. We will be visiting a whole bunch of schools and presenting a short twenty minute program before a Pastor gives a message to the kids. We need to come up with a program to present. This will include a couple of dramas, some songs, and perhaps an object lesson or a testimony. After the program, we will be handing out Christian cassettes and things to the kids.
I am still working in the Chispitas class for Sunday School. There are around 10 kids, all under the age of 5. It seems as if every Sunday with them brings a different struggle and joy. It is amazing to me that I can be so frustrated with them sometimes and yet love them so much! I am very thankful for them. Pray for them to continue to come to church and make the decision to accept Christ’s gift of salvation.
There are many things that I could share with you all that God is working on in my life, but I think that this letter would be quite lengthy! I do want to share one specific thing, though. I am learning what true ministry is, and the reasons for ministering. I have been thinking about this a lot, and I have had several good talks with some people down here about it, including Pastor Evelio, the pastor of my church Buenas Nuevas here in Musa. God is working in my life and challenging me to think about my motives for ministering. Am I doing it for myself, for others, or out of my love for Christ. Pastor Evelio preached on this subject one day using 2 Corinthians 5:11-21. He said that we should serve out of the fear of the Lord, the love of Christ, and because Christ has told us to. I was also reading in Galatians 1 for Jovenes, and Galatians 1:10 talks about doing things for the praise of me or doing things for the praise of God. Just today I was talking with a friend who helped me see ministry a little better for what it really is. Ministry is not made ministry because it is done in front of people. I was feeling a bit like I wasn’t doing much because the only thing I do for some Sunday School times is hold a baby. This friend said something that made me realize that it is probably more effective for me at this point to hold the baby rather than try to stumble through teaching a Sunday School lesson. It is better for me to let the others teach for now and hold the baby so that the baby’s mom can learn and grow and in turn teach others. I am learning that ministry is not something huge and glamorous, but down to earth every day life, serving Christ in the way He wants me to serve Him and with the opportunities that He gives me.
Thank you for your support in prayer and in money. I appreciate it so much!! You are a very important part in the ministry down here. Please continue to pray for me and the people down here. Thank you!!

Things to pray for:
*Faithful attendance of the kids to kid’s clubs
*Language learning
*Anabel, Auntonela, and Noemi
*Wisdom in planning for Trujillo
*The kids in the Chispita Sunday school class
* A house for the Pastor and his family
* The rest of the money needed for my time here in Peru

Time is flying by here in Peru!! So much has been going on, and I would like to update all of you on some things happening here in Peru.
My Spanish is improving some, and I am able to communicate much better than before, but I still have a long way to go. There are times that I can understand and speak like I would like to, and there are tough days that I feel like I can’t say much of anything. Please continue to pray for language learning.
For a while I was sort of disappointed or discouraged with the lack of contacts I had been able to make that could lead to sharing the Gospel with people. I have been able to pass out many tracts, but I wanted to be able to do something more. The Lord knew what I was feeling and His timing is perfect. He has blessed me with three girls with whom I can become friends. Through this I pray I will be able to share the Gospel with them.
I am beginning to help a girl named Noemi learn English. Lord-willing this will be a good witnessing opportunity. I have invited her to come to Jovenes, the youth group at church. Please pray for Noemi and please pray that God will give me the words to say and that He would work in her heart also.
I am also building relationships with a couple of girls named Anabel and Auntonela. I met them when they asked me to play volleyball. We have doing some things together since then, and I have been able to give them each a tract. They came to Jovenes on Saturday and they enjoyed it. Pray that they would continue to attend youth group and that they would be able to come to church or Sunday School. Pray that they would accept Christ as their personal Savior.
I work at a kid’s club every Saturday, and for the month of July I am working at a place called Upis. There are probably around twenty kids that attend this kid’s club. The kids have easily made their way into my heart, and I love working with them. I am able to help with things like games and songs and taking attendance. When I am able to speak more Spanish, it is possible that I will have the chance to teach the lessons.
I work in the nursery on Sundays for Sunday school or with the Chispitas. The Chispitas are the youngest Sunday school class. I am able to be part of the church choir also. We sing on Sunday mornings.
Classes are going well. We have already completed three block courses. Please pray that the Lord will give me the desire to continue studying when there are so many other people to talk to here and things to do! It is hard at times, because I would rather be building relationships with people down here than doing homework! The classes have been very good, though, and I am very thankful for them. I am learning a lot.
Please continue to pray for me about all of these things I mentioned, and for the funds that I need to come in. Thanks you so much for your support!

Hello! It is hard to believe that I have been in Peru for a whole month now! Thank you so much for all of your prayers and support. Prayer makes such a difference!
Much of this first month was spent getting used to being down here, taking classes, and trying to learn the language. I am getting to know the family that I live with better, although the language is a barrier at times. Pray that I will learn Spanish quickly so that I can communicate with others and especially communicate the Gospel!
God is using this time in my life to grow and mature me. He is showing me many different things in my life that I can let Him conform to His image. At times I am bothered because I can’t successfully say everything that I want to say because of the language barrier, but I believe that His timing is perfect and He has reasons that things are the way they are.
One positive thing about being a “gringa” as they call us, is that it opens a lot of doors to talk to people. People want to know why we are here and why we are trying to learn their language. A lot of kids here are learning a few English words in school, so they are interested in talking with the people who can speak English. Pray that God would use this avenue to reach people.
Despite the fact that I can’t communicate fully, God is using me anyway. Through the Spanish I know, I am able to hand out tracts and invite people to church. I can befriend them so that they might possibly attend church and later get saved! Pray that some of those contacts that we have made will be lasting. Pray that people would come to church and that people would be saved after reading the tracts.
I can see God working, the other day my roommate and I were out walking and we met some kids. We invited them to the kid’s club on Saturday and five or six of them came. Pray that they would continue to come and that we would be able to reach them for Christ.
God is showing me right now that it is His strength that is perfect, not my own. I must be a vessel in His hands and let Him do what He wants to with me. Please pray that I would always be willing to do what He wants me to do and to do it with the heart of a servant.
God is so amazing and I am so grateful for His strength and love! Also, I am thankful for the knowledge and comfort of knowing that His way is perfect and He knows what is best. Some of you may know, but my Grandma has cancer and the doctors are giving her a very short amount of time to live. Only God knows what will happen, but I do ask that you would pray for my family through this time.
Thank you again for all of your prayers and support! Please continue to pray for me, the ministry down here, and for the rest of my financial support to come in! Praise God every day for His strength and His perfect plan!

Crystal