We’re fresh off a sabbatical month of August where our kids skipped school and we got to see a lot of incredible people in the US as well as spend special time with family. We arrived back to Arequipa refreshed and thankful for our home and work and are really excited about this season of ministry.
We believe that God is always up to more than we realize and pray that God would lead us to participate in life, new creation, kingdom, salvation—which is breaking in all around us. We pray Jesus’s prayer in our context:
Our Father in heaven, may your name be honored in all the earth. May your reign come, your will be done, as in heaven, so in Arequipa.
We long for more and more of God’s will to be carried out here, for God’s reign to be ever more evident. We long to see daily bread shared with those in need, especially communities on the margins. We long to see reciprocal cycles of forgiveness and reconciliation become normative as we pray “forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” And together we pray “deliver us from evil,” expecting salvation and healing for sin, injustice, suffering, and hurt in our city.
The house church continues to grow with more families being willing to host. For a house church family, that’s the biggest weekly ministry role. Our first Sunday back Paty was traveling and Norman and Vanessa’s family blessed us by being willing to host. Their oldest, Alejandro, as well as Alexy and Solangel’s oldest, Sofía, have now aged us into a small “youth group.” We pray for wisdom as we discern with them how best to minister to their spiritual development in the coming years.
This past Sunday we launched a new round of the Alpha couples course. There are five couples doing this with us, both from our church and outside of it. We ask that you pray for this process of repair and reconciliation, where needed, and Spirit-led practice of new tools that will bless these marriages and their families.
Kids Club meets again in Sachaca this coming Sunday. We are prayerful as we try to invite our church to bless kids and families around us and invite way more people into our Sunday space. Katie designs each Kids Club monthly session to be oriented toward inviting kids and their parents to learn about God and cultivate fruits of the Spirit in family life.
Our work in schools and with vulnerable communities through CUDA continues. In October, we have a special CUDA Vision and Strategic planning session lined up with incredible outside help from Chad Smith at CI Solutions, Clint Davis of Kibo Group, and board member Easton Proffitt-Davis. Please pray for the whole process, pre and post, and for wisdom and passion to mix with capacity so that we might see God doing way more than we ask or imagine in pursuit of justice, wellbeing, and joy in our city.
We believe the good news that God is rescuing, healing, and transforming the world. God acted through Jesus of Nazareth’s life, death, and resurrection and invites everyone to participate in new creation. This new reality looks like hope, joy, peace, grace, salvation, reconciliation, and justice. It’s what we believe Jesus meant when he talked about God's reign coming near.
We pray that more and more families and individuals will experience reconciliation through Jesus, one that impacts the entirety of who they are as whole beings: body, soul, spirit in familial and communal ways. Thanks for joining us in that prayer.