ONE Year Report
Celebrating our Visas!
Greetings from Lima! Thank you for your continued prayer and support of our ministry here in Peru. We are deeply grateful and humbled to be here, serving as an extension of you and your desire to see Jesus lifted high in your home country as well as around the world. We just celebrated 1 year in Lima. So far, we have survived!
Only took a year to get this piece of very important plastic!
This last month has been quite the whirlwind of things happening. The first thing we want to share is a huge answer to prayer. In case you did not see our last Facebook post, we celebrated the approval of our Visas! It took an entire year and appeared to be a situation headed towards being denied and forced to leave and reenter. Thankfully God answered and we were able to pick up our foreign residence visa. I am so grateful that we were able to avoid the process of leaving the country and re-entry and that we now are able to better function here, as many things such as driver’s licenses, delivery services, and bank accounts all depend on this document.
Home alone: We said goodbye to our dear friends and missionary teammates as they headed back to the USA for furlough. For the time being, we will be serving in our church without them, and assisting a national pastor in shepherding our growing church. There is much work to do in the area of shepherding, teaching, and organization (as with most churches) so pray that the Lord bless with unity and growth in Steve and Kelley’s absence… and that we don’t accidentally light the house on fire!
Boardwalk in front of old Camp Property. This used to be in the middle of NOWHERE!
The Land Project: In January I started working on a long-standing thorn in ABWE’s side. ABWE owns a property/ former camp, that has a lot of value and needs to be sold. Other camps have been established which replaced this one. Approximately 15 years ago, the mission voted to sell the land in order to reallocate the funds into other ministries with needs. They have been unsuccessful in getting it complete. The property has been plagued by corrupt officials, title issues, and squatters. Since January, we have been able to clear many title issues, address the municipality, clear the land, properly survey the boundaries, remove the squatter, build a barrier wall and begin negotiations on a major encumbrance on the city boardwalk directly in front of the property. We are likely another 3-6 months on completion of this. Once complete, the land has a value of between 2.5M-3M USD. Upon sale, the field team is in favor of our proposal to place the funds into a few investment portfolios with monthly, quarterly and annual dividends. If the Lord continues to bless this effort, we will be able to see the Peru field team have an ongoing and growing source of project funds, to the tune of 150-200,000 annually for the benefit of the mission as a whole. It will impact 3 prenatal counseling centers, the Lima and Iquitos based seminaries, and a variety of church plants that will launch including helping bolster the current church works that are without a home. It will additionally be a way to support new Peruvian church planters that will be able to have a 3-5 year window of time to establish and build church health. That is HUGE as it will alleviate the need to do special stateside campaigns on a regular basis. So pray with us that God allow us to see this process through as He seems to have brought us here at the right time for this purpose. God can see this through, and we are seeking to leverage the skills and abilities He has given us for His glory as well as the long-term benefit of the work of church planting in the region.
Engage Network: As many of you know, our sending Church is the second of seven churches that have been planted in the Central Iowa Area in 18 years. As a result of many years of work and many laborers, God has done a great work there and has produced a special bond between the churches as each of the 8 total churches has a vision of Gospel-Centered churches planting Gospel-Centered churches. This DNA is something that our family has carried with us to Lima, as we were core group members and served in one of these church plants for 14 years. As our church here in Peru is desiring to launch another church in Lima within the next few years, I was able to get in touch with Jason Jackson from Saylorville Church who graciously provided me the documents that have been developed over the years and talked me through them. After taking time to translate the documents into Spanish, we were able to roll these out to our local Peruvian leadership as a play book for how to multiply locally here in Lima. God is moving here in the leadership and we are now vetting the documents as a group in order to make any culturally necessary adjustments so we can roll out our own training and launching program for local church planters in the coming months. Special thanks to Jason and Engage for your help as this has fast tracked our thinking and organization for what we believe will be local multiplication here in Lima. God is already moving in our people as they have committed to the vision of raising 100 thousand dollars in one year for the purpose of a future land purchase. We are praying God do this as only He does, by maturing His people as they walk by faith and trust God to do it in and through our church and other servants He has called.
Potential Build site for a future church. As you can see it is a block from the big, yellow, Catholic Church.
Transparency time: It is no secret for anyone who has asked us if this year has been a challenge. It HAS! In so many ways. God has revealed so many flaws and sin in me personally that even as I write this, I cringe. God has been gracious to our family, despite ourselves. To admit that I have never felt less qualified and less adequate to do what we are doing is an understatement. We have been stretched as a family, and seen God’s graciousness to us through the different struggles. The cumulative result of many, many circumstances has resulted in a question, “ Is the place God would have us serve long term, or did He bring us here for this season only?”.
I was hesitant to share this as I know many might council us to buck up and rub some dirt on it while others may council us to pull out to serve elsewhere. The reality that some who read this might even cease financial support of our ministry just for sharing this is not lost on me. But we desire to be transparent and humble in our service to the Lord. We do not fear the criticism of men but seek the blessing of God. And we desire to do whatever God leads us to do and be faithful to Him through the whole process.
For now, we are here. And we will serve faithfully right here and right now. Pray with us, for wisdom. We have one more year before our first furlough and have much that we desire to accomplish as the Lord leads. We do not question God’s call in our life to faithfully serve Him, but we ask you pray with us this year. Pray that God would either confirm us here or that He would make clear His next step for us. Either way,”… as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” (Joshua 24:15)
Celebrating the 4th of July as a family!
Final Note: As some of you read this, you may think, “wow, they sound really down”. I assure you we are not! We are joyful in the circumstance, love what God is doing, and are fervently praying that God do amazing things both here and around the world! We recognize that we are but a speck, and not even a fraction of what God is doing globally. As some of you have prayed, God has opened doors for the Gospel here even this week! God opened the door for a Bible study with a neighbor named Juan Carlos as well as another with my barber Eric. Both grew up Catholic. Both are expats here. Juan Carlos is from Columbia and Eric from Venezuela. Both need to be saved and God is working in them. Pray for their salvation!
Blessings!
Cole
PRAY WITH US:
Salvation of the men we are sharing with.
Great impact and unity as a church in growth and planting work.
Long term confirmation as a family.
Language studies… Still on it!
Property Clearing and Sale.
Support shortage. Made some headway but still short by about $300 monthly.