Servolution

In the past week or so I have been very busy. In addition to my work with Scripture Union in the schools my new church joined with a bunch of other churches all over the world for a week of "Servolution." The motivation behind the entire week was to intentionally do acts of kindness and to be able to show Christ's love to the people in Lima without looking for anything in return. I participated in two of the service projects that the church helped to organize last week. Saturday of last week was the kickoff, and nearly everyone in the church showed up to get involved. We spent about a half an hour in prayer and worship, and then it was out into the city...everyone wearing the same red shirts the read "It is a pleasure to serve you." Some groups walked around the streets and passed out bottles of water. Other people went into local hospitals dressed as clowns to visit the children. One group jumped on a local bus, paid every passengers fare and handed out newspapers to anyone who wanted one to read. We were all over the city!

The Congregation Before Leaving to Serve

On Saturday about 50 of us from the young adults group squeezed onto a minibus and left to paint a community center/public cafeteria in a more needy area of town. While one group of us painted, another group of girls offered manicures to the ladies in the community. We sanded and then painted the entire outside of the building in addition to many of the wooden tables and chairs on the inside of the building. Naturally, a group of 50 people all wearing the same bright red shirt attract a little bit of attention from passersby. The community mayor even came by and gave us all bright green visors to wear when he noticed that we were wearing homemade newspaper hats on our heads to keep the sun away. When people asked why we were there it was really neat to respond that we are doing all of this because we love Jesus and because we know that he loves you!

Painting in Our Newspaper Hats!

Then last Thursday a smaller group of about 20 of us got together to give food out to some of the children and the beggars living on the streets in the center of Lima. We spent the better part of the afternoon preparing sandwiches, buying bottles of juice, and assembling all of the meal packs. We then all headed over into the main square of Lima--again with our bright red shirts--and walked the streets handing out the food in Christ's name!

Handing Out Dinner

We closed the week on Good Friday with a big praise and worship concert to celebrate what God had done through the congregation over the past week. On a side note, though, I do have to say that Easter here is very different than it is in the states. Yes, it is a holiday. Many people did not have to work on Thursday or Friday of the week, but most of the protestant churches do very little to celebrate Christ's resurrection on Easter. The local catholic churches do make a huge deal about Holy Week, but their focus is almost exclusively on Christ's death. For instance, many of the country's stores and restaurants are closed on Good Friday but open on Easter Sunday. I was glad to call my family on Sunday to be able to say "CHRIST IS RISEN. HE IS RISEN INDEED!"

Apart from the church activities, I was invited to a friends 18th birthday party this past Saturday. It was a great time, but there was one noticeable difference between Peruvian culture and the USA. The party was supposed to start at 8pm. I happened to spend the entire day with my friend and his family, so I was ready to leave with them before 8:00 so that the guest of honor would be there in time to greet everyone. Well 8:30 rolled around, and we had still not left their house. We finally walked over to the church where the party was at around 9:00, and of course, no one was there yet. People started to arrive around 9:30, and we actually started the party at 10:00pm or so. This is common practice in Peru for any type of party or social event--even weddings usually get started 2 or more hours after the time on the invitation! We had a great time at the party...I even won in a game of reverse charades (the whole team acted while I had to guess).

Winning in Charades!

To leave you with a few points of prayer...

--First, praise God for the week of Servolution and for literally the thousands of lives that were touched by my church and many other churches.

--Pray for the work teams that will begin coming down in May. Pray that God would use each team as his hands and feet in Peru and that the ministry that they come to do would bring people closer to the kingdom of God

--Pray for our work in the schools--specifically that God would raise up volunteers to continue to grow the ministry. This Friday afternoon we are holding a training for all of the volunteers to help them understand how to manage a classroom of students and how to effectively reach the children.

Thanks so much for all of your prayers. As usual, please let me know if there is any way that I can pray for you.