March 2012

¡Hola from Arequipa, Peru!

It is a sunny 73 degrees out today-one of those rough things we must endure.

Just wanted to give you a quick update of our lives here.  We are including a few pictures of our daily life at the Extreme Office….not quite as exciting as our field pictures but necessary so that the field ministry can be accomplished!  My job has been evolving into personnel, which involves working with over 100 Extreme missionaries-I am enjoying it!....Robin

From Tom’s desk…

There will be a lot happening in Peru this year and next.  We will be building churches in at least 15 different communities where 40/40 have started church groups.  Our family will be headed to Puno, Peru on March 28^th to help with the next foam chapel build and Impact events.  There will be 38 short term volunteers joining us from several different churches in the states.  We are looking forward to seeing how God is going to work in yet another community in Peru.   

In the past three years, Extreme has been ministering to mostly rural impoverished communities.  This has been successful with many coming to the Lord, getting baptized, being discipled, becoming members, and then becoming church leaders.  We are going to now expand our ministry to urban areas.  We have one team in Paraguay and one in Arequipa, blazing the trail.   The Paraguay team started in January.  They already have 20 cell groups and over 120 people attending with many who have come to the Lord and are being discipled.   The Arequipa Cercado team are currently starting their first cell groups and will be graduating from the Extreme Nazarene missionary training school next month.   Each 40/40 pair, one North American teamed up with one South American, begins four cell groups right away which will feed into one larger city church.  The cell groups of five 40/40 pairs meet on Sunday for worship together as well as other activities throughout the week.  As soon as local leaders take over a cell group, the 40/40 start another cell group.   This is just another way that we are seeing God expand His Kingdom.  

Beth Beers doing her preaching thing!

Here is a recent blog post  from one of our 40/40 missionaries, Beth Beers, entitled Demons.  (click on the title)

We are looking forward to coming back to the states for a brief time in May.  We would love to share with you in more detail how God is working in Peru.   Please email us at rwatters@extremenazrarene.org if you have a Sunday School class, Home Group, or service that you would like us to visit.

Cusco Chapel Build...written by Kurt Watters

This last month, I was fortunate to go on a 2-week mobile foam chapel build in the city of Cusco, Peru with a group of guys from Oregon and my dad. This chapel can fully break down, and then is able to be moved to certain areas around Cusco that it is needed. Yes, it is actual Styrofoam, with a stucco covering, that we're building with, go to Sytrofoam chapels, to learn more.  Being construction guys, it took only 5 days to fully build a 16x16 room with a roof, windows, and a door. Because of how fast we worked, once we were done building, we helped fix up a handicap woman’s door (basically a sheet of metal) that was falling off it’s hinges and covered in rust. She was a part of the church and ended up giving her testimony at the inauguration service in the church we had built. During this service, my heart was flowing with pure joy watching all of these Peruvians pile into that chapel that I helped build. God is great, isn’t he?! It was amazing working with these guys and building relationships with them. So I give a huge THANK YOU to every single person that is helping give. We appreciate all of your support!

Walls

In Arequipa you find  iron bars on most every window and iron fences around many buildings. Sometimes in lieu of the iron fences you will see  walls like this around the homes.  I find this very ingenious and intriguing.  They take broken glass and place it in the wet cement at the top of the wall.

I immediately thought about the walls we build in our own lives. We take the shattered pieces of our dreams and place them at the top of our walls, to keep others out.  Each piece of glass represents something; anger, pain, jealousy, fear, rejection.

Do you have shattered glass that is keeping others away?

For He himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility...Ephesians 2:14