Short Term Projects

These 4 min. videos are of Short term projects that involved teams of 30+ people coming down from the United States to voluntarily work in Peru. Click on the "clover" (?) icon next to the word "vimeo" to watch the video fullscreen! This video is from our June project in Cusco, Peru-home of one of the seven wonders of the world-Machu Picchu. This team was very busy and built two chapels, showed the Jesus film several times and held three days of medical clinics. They also visited those in a nearby hospital and women's prison. The second video is from May, 2012. We were in Puno, Peru for this project. Puno is located on Lake Titicaca, which is known as the highest navigable lake in the world. (12,507 feet). We were so happy to have my parents here with their team from Kuna Nazarene Church. This team built a chapel and held several festivals for children. They also visited nearby schools and community centers sharing the gospel. Please continue to pray for those lives that were touched during these projects and are continuing to grow as they attend their new church buildings.

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

Still Alive

I know some of you think we have fallen off the face of the earth.  But we really haven't.  I wanted to share a blog post that my good friend Amanda wrote after we had a rare,  coveted phone conversation.  She wrote this post with our conversation in mind.  I think she has a great way with words and wanted to share them with you.  So enjoy a little trip over to her blog and let her know what you think: Just a Change of Scenery. 

And I promise to write soon...sooner than you think!  :)

Iquitos, the largest known city (pop. 400,000) with no roads connecting to the outside world

      On September 8^th,  the short term volunteers (STV) Ray and Judy Davis, John Garnica, Mary Heater, Marvin Kossman, Dirk Scott, and Amie Del Vecchio descended on Iquitos Peru ready to get started on whatever God would desire them to do to further His Kingdom for the next 13 days.   Cold showers in the hotel room did not seem to be such a negative thing because of the extreme heat and humidity that was quickly experienced.   Beginning with the challenge of building 28 church benches, which ended up being a daily activity most days, gave us immediate hands on construction activities.   In the next coming days we also fixed a roof of a woman who was recently robbed, fixed bridging plank walkways for a few homes, and built a set of new stairs for a home.  Medical screening and medicine distribution was accomplished by our STV nurse, Mary Heater.  John Garnica preached some great sermons several times in Spanish.  In addition to many other activities, Ray and Judy were our experts at making balloon animals.  That and Amie’s candy/gum distribution were big hits among the many children.   Food distribution, clean water distribution, many kids events, treating over 100 children for lice, helping with services and Sunday school, handing out bags full of hygiene items to 250 kids, participating in several activities at an orphanage, hosting a volleyball and soccer tournament, helping a flooded community by shoveling and transporting by hand dirt from one area to many homes to fill in their flooded areas around their home, and feeding a lot of kids breakfast, were among some of the other activities that we participated in.   

      For best viewing click on the small "youtube" icon at the bottom of the video (this will take you to the youtube website) - then click on the arrows at the far bottom left of the video to enlarge for better viewing.

Eating Grubs in Iquitos, Peru...we'll send you some for a small fee;)