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The church where we are working—with all the chairs piled outside for cleaning
There is a church in Callao (neighboring city to Lima—pronounced like kye-YOW) that needed some help with painting, cleaning, and planting a garden. We arrived to find a very dusty church building and an even dustier plot of rocky ground that was supposed to be turned into something resembling a garden. One group attacked the building with water, rags, brooms, and mops, while the other half of the team attacked the rocks outside. The team worked so hard! They are really great about jumping into any project with their whole heart. We made great progress and by evening the bottom two floors of the church were cleaned, with floors waxed and polished. Outside, the dusty patch of rocks had actually turned into a patch of dirt, neatly surrounded by rocks, with all weeds pulled. During the day we discovered why everything is so dusty. The road isn’t paved and it’s a main bus thoroughfare. The dust swirls all day long—hence the dust masks you see on many of the team members.
Aaron tackling the ground with a pickaxe
In the evening Pastor Rojas, who started the church Callao shared with us his vision for reaching his city with the Gospel. He works in an district where about two hundred sixty thousand people are crammed together in some of the poorest housing you can imagine. He really has a solid vision for building up the families of Callao and shared testimonies of the men who have been saved and changed through the ministry of the church. These men have now led their families to Christ and have are active in the leading ministries within the churches of Callao.
Pastor Rojas is also very excited about seeing the principles of the Basic Seminar impact the people of his church. His own son attended the Children’s Institute last week. This little boy has not stopped talking about the team and especially about Señor Jacob. He so admires Jacob that he asked his dad to teach him what the adults learned in the Basic Seminar so he could grow up to be like Jacob. Pastor Rojas is planning to use his notes from the seminar to teach his family during their family devotions.
Mop and broom crew—Tiffany, Sarah, Elizabeth, and Darlene
This is the patch of ground in front of the church that we are attempting to transform from a combination dust bowl-rock farm into a garden
Yep—we got dirty!
Every chair in the building had to be scrubbed
Look! A good use for rocks! We can line the wells we are digging around the trees
Some of the friends the guys have made while working
(Pictures courtesy of Dena Conzatti and Elizabeth Fox.)
