There I stood in a park in the middle of Ica, Peru. My life flashed before my eyes; I turned and ran for my life. It wasn’t a man with a gun. It wasn’t a wild savage beast. No kidnapper, no murderer, not even a Peruvian. No, it was a monkey the size of my hand. It was on our first social excursion as a team, and we went to the Ica Zoo. I had the lowest of low expectations going in, which made for an awesome surprise when it was just slightly better than that. We saw a bunch of monkeys in a little wire cage, just what you’d expect at a dumpy zoo, right? Wrong. I turn back around from looking at the birds, and a monkey suddenly gets out of the cage and jumps in our direction. I immediately started booking it in the other direction. Of course, it made everyone else in the group laugh and we had a great time looking at the rest of the animals in the zoo. It was a lot of fun and brought us closer together as a team.
This week, we started a basketball ministry at the local sports park. Since we figured out that we are terrible at soccer, we decided to give basketball a shot. After all, we’re much taller than the Peruvians, we’ll totally beat them! Again, we were wrong. Turns out we lost to the Peruvians at that too! However, despite our athletic inadequacies, it has been a great ministry opportunity for us. Many of the groups we’ve played with have asked us to come back and play again at other times, allowing us to build relationships with them which is so difficult to do in such a large city like Ica. In Cordova, since only a few hundred people live there, you will see everyone in the town on a weekly, if not daily basis, so it is much easier to cultivate relationships with the locals. In a town like Ica with hundreds of thousands of people, someone you meet and share the Gospel with you may never see again. While we are here we desire to invest in some of these men’s lives. Please pray for Jose, Francisco, George, and everyone else we got to play with at the park, that they might come to know the Lord and that seeds would be planted. Also pray that they would come back at the time we agreed to meet so we can continue investing in them.
In addition to our basketball ministry, Matt, Nelson, and I have gotten to visit the local park near the seminary each weekday. While very small, it is the favorite park of the locals for its nice trees and the convenience of being close to home. We have gotten to have many good Gospel conversations with these folks, like Juan-Pierre, a local high school student; Felix, an 83-year-old Catholic retired worker from the fish market; Juan, a Buddhist who works for the government helping maintain all of its parks; Roy and Mueller, two local university students; and all the many other people we encountered. Pray that we would see some of the folks again as we go to the park each day; help us to reconnect and build relationships with them. Pray for their salvation, as none we met were saved by grace. Additionally, pray that our Spanish would continue to grow (and quickly!) so that we can be most effective in sharing the Gospel.
Yesterday, we had the privilege of celebrating the Santa Cena (the Lord’s Supper) with and leading worship for our brothers and sisters from Centro Biblico Familiar. This was a humbling experience, reminding me that Jesus came to die and gave his life for all sinners everywhere: “…by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation,” (Revelation 5:9, ESV). This includes our brothers and sisters that speak Spanish, Portuguese, Swahili, German, and any other language. We praise and worship that your Kingdom is global, from the Americas to Europe, to Asia, to Africa, to Australia and back home again; yes, Lord, to the ends of the Earth. We thank God for the opportunity we have here to serve alongside our Peruvian brothers and sisters in Ica. Please pray that we would continue to grow our relationships with the members here at Centro Biblico Familiar and that we would be a help and not a hindrance in worshiping our Risen Lord, even as we sing in a language unfamiliar to us.
The Lord again answered prayer this week, finally bringing my bag (containing my JIF peanut butter!) safely to Ica after a long wait and difficulty with our airline. Praise the Lord we no longer have to worry about that and can focus our full effort on ministry (and that the team doesn’t have to hear my groanings about the lack of peanut butter in this establishment)! We thank the Lord for the ways in which he blessed us this week and gave us many Gospel opportunities; pray for many more of these in the coming weeks! Pray that the Lord would keep us healthy and free of sickness so that we can most effectively use our time here to share the Gospel. Pray for strength and boldness for this team, and that the Lord would keep a fire kindling in our bones for his Gospel, despite the laid back culture and temptations to be lazy. Pray that the Lord would use this time to bring us missionaries closer to himself, even as we strive to teach others about him. Pray that each one of us would continue to improve in our Spanish and that lives would be radically changed. Please be in prayer with us as we pray for the salvation of those we meet and that His name would be lifted up in Peru, in the United States, and to the ends of the Earth.
– Luke Prince
