Prayer Mail

Dear Partners in Prayer,

Peace be with you.

This is our weekly public prayer mail.

Thanksgivings:


1) We did not experience anything harmful from the earthquake in Chile, nor did Lima experience any effects from the tsunami.

2) Julie has had her first meeting of the Commission on Ministry (CEMO), and it went very well. Everything up to this point, including committee member selection, has been preparation for the current phase.

3) We had a great healing service at the Mission of The Ascension on Sunday evening. The service lasted for over two and a quarter hours. It was amazing to see the Holy Spirit in action. After it was all over, everybody stayed for about a half hour, just sitting in place and chatting. I do not think anyone really wanted to go home. Several people were there at our invitation, and we prayed for them, and that was special for us.

4) Praise God that I had one of the best prayer partners ever at the healing service.... "mi esposa bonita" (Julie, my pretty wife). I refer to Julie a lot by the title "mi esposa bonita", and for me, it is a referral to her radiant beauty with the Holy Spirit that is so much of who she is. Students and people in the congregations like it when I refer to Julie that way. It says to them that she matters to me, and they like that, and I like that. She is my best friend.

5) I praise God that where Julie and I spent our honeymoon is just over the horizon from Lima.... in Tahiti (well, actually, it is quite a distance away). But it really means a lot to me to look out over the horizon, and to think that "just over the horizon" we had our honeymoon, and it brings back fond memories of starting out married life with my beloved. The fact that Julie is here, and Lima being in the South Pacific where we shared our honeymoon, are but two of the joys of living in Peru.

6) Praise God that our sudden ant problem has been manageable. It is the time of year for ants, but Julie came into the kitchen one morning a few days ago, and saw one wall covered with literally thousands of very small ants in at least two giant columns, several inches wide and another smaller column of about three quarters of an inch wide, and they were heading into all kinds of cabinets, perhaps looking for a new home because of the construction of an apartment building next door, which has begun this week with the tearing down of an old building. They came into the kitchen through a gap along the edge of a faceplate for an electrical outlet. After recovering from the discovery, Julie dispatched them quickly.

I witnessed another burst of ant activity Sunday morning, and keeping in mind Genesis 1:28, I dispatched probably a hundred or two hundred ants trying to make their way into our garbage bag, under the sink. We generally do not have serious ant problems, in part because we are on the 9th floor of an apartment building. It is a reminder that we share this planet with others of God´s creatures, and many of smaller kinds outnumber us.

7) Praise God that we have solved a communication mystery that some of our students were having this past week. This was our first week in this cycle, and a few students mentioned that I was not communicating well enough, which was a puzzle for Julie and myself. So, we looked into what they could have meant by that. Well, it was not because of my prepared remarks, because Julie uses the same language advisor as I do, and the students do not have a problem with Julie´s remarks. And it was not my Spanish pronunciation, according to the students. Ok....

It turned out that I was not using gestures enough or not writing enough on the white board compared to what I did last semester. In the end, the central point was the white board issue, and that in turn, was the result of our surprise discovery at the beginning of the class that the seminary´s white board markers in the classroom were just about all dried up, so we did not use them (or rather, we tried, but no one could see what we wrote. It was too faint.). As a remedy, I have bought my own set of markers to use.

8) Lydia has registered for SATs. She would be taking them, here in Lima. And in our minds with this registration, she has moved into the category of college student. Whoa. I am thankful that she is such a very fine young lady.

9) Praise God that we amiably resolved a false complaint by a neighbor in New York State this week. The false complaint that we received was about two friends of ours who are staying in our home at the moment, claiming that they were passing out literature pertaining to Jehovah´s witnesses, which would have been in violation of the rules where we live. They weren´t. The complaint had not been researched very carefully. And when I looked into the matter, I discovered that it was simply an error of judgement on behalf of the person filing the complaint, and all records pertaining to the complaint will be destroyed. Hallelujah. And I did all this from Peru, which was rather amazing in and of itself. My hope that this incident will become an opportunity for at least one of us to pray with our neighbor.

Prayers:

1) For the people, relationships, ministries, finances, planning, and priorities associated with the Diocese of Peru, Saints Augustine seminary, and the Missionaries in Peru (including us).

2) For the seminary courses, for the students, and for all that the Holy Spirit wants us to accomplish together. For the improved access to the library. We are trying to work though some internet access issues for student homework assignments associated with our preaching class. We may have solved some of them.

3) For the Albany short term mission trip plans in late July, and the mission trip preparation discussions that continue to take place. The preparations appear to be in really good shape, with more things to come.

4) For our landlady, her husband, and the others in our apartment building. We have begun negotiations to renew our lease for another year (one year at a time), and we hope that the renewal goes smoothly. The landlady and her husband would like to increase the rent, and we do not know by how much. If the rent goes up too much, we may decide to move, yet with the exception of a few irritants, we like the location.

5) For Julie at New Wineskins and the SAMS worldwide conference in April in North Carolina, and for Julie, Lydia, and I in Pennsylvania and New York State/Connecticut in May/June, including our Diocesan Convention.

6) For the people in and involved with the Bishop Suffragan election process in Peru. We hope to be hearing the list of candidates about the end of next week.

7) That the Holy Spirit would raise up the next clerical leadership for Jesus el Salvador, soon. We are helping out, there, in the interim.

8) For the lady who comes to help Julie with housework and to keep the dust in check, a few times a week. The lady´s father-in-law died over the weekend.

9) There is a lot of dust, every day. Think: "Sinai Peninsula," and you get the idea. This desert has its winds and dust clouds, even in the city, and in addition, construction next door is churning dust all the time, which sometimes rises to levels that are higher than our apartment building. Taking care of the dust and dealing with the continuing sounds from the Hari Krishna restaurant next door (which has become less melodious and more like a war dance or something from a college fraternity movie), is a prayer request in and of itself, especially when the weather is hot (as it is now) and opening the windows more often would be nice, to let the breeze through. But the amazing thing is that my allergies to dust do not seem aggravated by all this construction, so praise God for that.

Thank you for praying for us. It makes a difference. I pray for you every day, snow or no snow.

God bless you.
In Christ,
Shaw, and on behalf of Julie and Lydia
Lima, Peru