This past Holy week or Semana Santa is widely celebrated in Latin America, 2nd to Christmas.  Its historical roots began as a Catholic tradition brought to Latin America in the 16th century.  Peru gives the students the entire week off from school and many business and government agencies take the Thursday and Friday off in honor of the resurrection of our King.  The reason familia Martinez commemorates this week, leading up to Easter, is our entire reason for being.  This week is a prime opportunity to engage others with the Good News!

The production in the picture above is put on by a local church in Lima, Alliance Church of Los Olivos, and draws over 10,000 spectators over the Easter weekend.  The message of Christ life, death and resurrection for our salvation is alive and strong in Lima!  Let’s get MOBILIZED!!

Mobilization efforts

CIMA 2019 – Chiclayo, Perú

Go Mobilize!  In our previous newsletter we mentioned that our team got the privilege to participate and serve a partner ministry, MOVIDA, at their annual conference, CIMA, in Peru.  This conference is all about mobilization.  The target audience is young adults between the ages of 15 and 30, next generation mobilizers.  We did everything from moving furniture, instructor care, leading small groups and led training workshops. Our CMM resource, Go Mobilize, was used as the daily resource that was exposed to the hundreds of attendees.  The photos above are a brief glimpse at our time in Chiclayo.

Your faithfulness and commitment to our ministry, by way of financial support, enabled us to sponsor two attendees, Alison and Midori, to participate in the week long experience part of the conference.  This part of the conference presented an opportunity for them to put into practice what they had learned the previous week by serving and sharing the Gospel with children in villages throughout Peru.  It has been a joy and blessing to see and hear how the Lord continues to use Alison and Midori for His Kingdom purposes.

Xplore study group

Over the past couple of months we have been discovering Gods Word, Gods World and Gods Work with our local church, Centro de Fuego.  Jen and I have been blessed with tremendous favor to lead and facilitate the Xplore study with over 20 of our brothers and sisters, including Pastor Dennis and his wife Charmian.  As we unpack each lesson, new insights are gained by all.

God’s word brought clarity to Judith’s questions, regarding her call to serve.  She understood that she no longer needed to be told by someone how or where to serve. God’s personal call for her was made clear in His word.  She has been using this study to help her son, Diego understand what God’s call is for us as followers and also what the need is globally.  I peeked over her shoulder and saw this illustration she had made for Diego.  It was a Post It with hundreds of little blue dots that represented unreached people with a couple red dots that represented the believers amongst that group.  Like us, she and Diego were astonished that there was such a shortage of people who are available to these groups to share the saving message of Christ.

The awareness this study is brining to our community in Lima is astounding and all the more affirmation for our call to Latin America.

Perspectivas Perú

Our CMM team in Lima has been praying for a group of Peruvian Nationals to be risen up to begin and lead a National Perspectives program in Peru.  The team the Lord assembled for this current training is comprised with about a dozen folks representing 7 different churches and various denominations, including ourselves.  This is victory considering all the barriers and challenges to strong denominationalism amongst the church in Latin America.  It brings us joy to see our brothers and sisters from various denominations working together towards one single global purpose of bringing glory to Jesus Christ amongst the nations!

The Lord brought us 79 students from 32 different churches! We are hosting this class in 5 different denominational churches in the city over 5 months.  To learn more about the class (in Spanish), just  visit  www.perspectivasperu.org.

Family update

The past few months have been an encouragement to us from our sending church in Austin, Texas, with visits from our Missions Pastor, Don Ellsworth and our Pastor of Latino Ministries, Uriel Novelo.  It’s a blessing to share our lives successes and challenges with our ministry supporters in person.

Alyssa is coming back to Lima!  She enjoyed her time away in Austin and getting some clarity on her next season of life.  She has decided to come back to Lima and immerse in the culture and language and take online college courses.  Now that she knows what to expect, this should make for a much better experience.

Elijah continues to grow in his relationships at his international school and church with a diverse group of students. He recently starred as the King in the high school musical “Once Upon a Mattress”, which is something he surprisingly enjoyed.

Jen and I are beyond humbled to have celebrated our 20 years of marriage this month.  Nobody knows Jen and I better than ourselves and can sincerely give all the glory to God for supernaturally allowing us to celebrate this anniversary. Every day, through prayer, we seek to love each other better out of the overflow from our love of the Lord.  The first picture is our recent trip to Belize to celebrate our 20 years and work towards greater connection.  The second picture is of Jen modeling our new home work center. Up until the past few months we pretty much worked wherever we could find a place to sit.  This area will help us to be much more organized and productive.

We are blessed to have found a loving church community in Centro de Fuego.  This past Christmas we were blessed to be a blessing to the 50 or so Venezuelan refugees who have started attending our church.  There were lots of tears and hugs as we gifted food baskets to our Venezuelan brothers and sisters.  We continue to host many events at our home.  Above  are pictures of the monthly youth gatherings at our home and the recently kicked off monthly mens gathering.

Praise!

We are grateful for Jesus and his gift of eternal life through his life, death, burial and resurrection for our salvation over the certain death we deserve.

We praise the Lord for 18 months of life in Lima.

We praise God for taking us through the many trials we have undergone over the previous 18 months in order that we may experience growth in Him.

We are worshiping the Lord for providing us the opportunities to serve Him within the Peruvian church.

We praise God for you; our financial ministry partners and prayer warriors who have enabled us to be here and continue the work he began in us so that we can bless those around us.

We praise God for the Peruvian Church and the rising up of faithful leaders to proclaim the truth of the Word and advance the Gospel message amongst the nations.

Prayer request

Please pray with us for Alison and Midori, as we continue to dialogue with them with the hopes of seeing two future Peruvian disciple making mobilizers.

Pray that we finish our Xplore study strong and can continue walking alongside those who desire to take the next practical steps in mobilizing the Peruvian Church and in the Lord’s Great Commission call to make disciples of all nations.

Pray for leaders to be risen up from CIMA, Xplore and Perspectivas to lead the next generation Latin American Church mobilizers and missionaries.

Prayers requested for the leaders and the teachings and the body at Centro de Fuego and other churches in Peru and Latin America to proclaim the truth of the Gospel and for that truth to penetrate our hearts towards action.

Pray for Jen and I to continue to have minds and hearts that are open to continue learning our new language and to be able to communicate at a much deeper level to our brother and sisters in Latin America.  (Missionary friends of ours in Uruguay shared this quote from Nelson Mandela)

“IF YOU TALK TO A MAN IN A LANGUAGE HE UNDERSTANDS, THAT GOES TO HIS HEAD. IF YOU TALK TO HIM IN HIS LANGUAGE, THAT GOES TO HIS HEART.”

Pray for a new season of adjustment for familia Martinez with Alyssa’s return to Lima.