Prayer Mail

Dear Partners in Prayer,

Peace be with you.

This is our weekly public prayer mail. I thought I sent it out Monday, but from the note I just found today, apparently it did not get sent. Sorry about that. We certainly need your prayers.

This week, some of this gets detailed, and if you prefer simply to pray for the topics than read the details, simply pray for the topic. But to help understand the particular prayer requests, they have been fleshed out a bit.

Thanksgivings:

1) We have some phenomenal prayer experiences lately.

2) We had two great services on Sunday, in the morning at the Mission of The Ascension (Surco District), and in the evening at the Mission of Jesus el Salvador (Villa el Salvador District). The Holy Spirit blessed both congregations. Someone noticed that the attendance at evening service at Jesus el Salvador seems to be growing.

3) I have been praying for specific ways that people could guide me to improve my Spanish. I have been blessed by specific comments that people have suggested to me over the last 2 weeks: for example, on Thursday, someone suggested that I make my distinction between "r" and "rr" sounds more clear (and this emphasis may be partly responsible for my improved my rate of speed when speaking, that someone noted on Sunday).

4) Praise God for the sermon Julie preached on Sunday at the Mission of La Ascencion. Julie and I are part of a team of preachers at La Ascencion, and she received several very good comments from folks for the reason that they like her preaching. They said that they preferred her style of preaching because she is clear, and she follows the scriptures, verse by verse. People like that.

5) Growing in understanding. Thanksgiving that we have been discovering a lot about people that helps us understand the country of Peru better, the missions that we serve better, people we meet day to day, and the people we are teaching better: for example, temperament types appear to be the same in North and South America, parish vestry/council dynamics appear to be the same, triangulation appears to be the same, prayer and healing ministry practices appear to be similarly effective - and the need for sensitivity and respect in these matters is similar, and learning styles appear to be the same (in fact, we have been adjusting our teaching techniques to allow for more movement in class/interaction to help the adult kinesthetic students learn better, and we affirm what someone told us this past week that Peru has a lot of visual learners, so we continue to include a high visual element for adults in our class teaching, and recognize that we need to visually walk people through each step of a process, and this walking through process may typically take three times).

Prayers:

1) For the people, relationships, ministries, finances, resources, and priorities associated with the Diocese of Peru, Saints Augustine seminary, and the Missionaries in Peru (including us). This is an on-going prayer, but it is a crucial one and is never out of style.

2) For the seminary courses and for the students. For the improved student access to the library.

3) For the Albany short term mission trip plans. The trip is in late July, and pray for the next planning meeting in the Diocese of Albany. Pray for the on-going preparations in the Diocese of Peru and the Diocese of Albany.

4) For our landlady, her husband, and the others in our apartment building. Pray for our lease negotiations. Our landlady and her husband would like to increase our rent payment amounts, but we do not know by how much, preferably by a reasonably smaller amount than a dramatically larger amount. We are waiting to hear further.

5) For Julie at the 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 this week. Three are to be elected. Pray for a good integration of this next step in Diocese of Peru. We have only had one bishop to date.

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 CEMO (ordination) process. Julie is working with a really good team. Pray for people (who are in the process) in their CEMO internship assignments in the different parishes.

9) Experiencing culture. For the opportunity to learn more about the variations and mile-stones/ceremonies/passages-of-life that people experience in Peru, so the we have a better grasp of the breadth and depth of the experiences of the people we serve (birth, marriage, major events, etc), to help us in our teaching and preaching, daily conversation, points of contact, and for deeper relationships with our colleagues, and to help us understand the communities of the parishes better. This is a very complex prayer request, for it includes variations/nuances depending on of the part of Peru/South America in a person's background, going back for perhaps 3 or 4 generations.

10) Gestures. That we would be able to use comprehendible gestures creatively in our teaching, preaching, daily conversation, and worship leadership styles. As mentioned above, this is a visual culture for the most part, and one of the things that helps people understand better is if they can see gestures in addition to hearing a person talk. This effectively involves communicating two "languages" simultaneously: one is the spoken word (audio), and the other is the language of gestures (visual). A lot of hand and eye coordination. Fortunately, just as sign language is the same in the US as in Peru, so the use of gestures has correlations, and I have had some experience from a time in Italy of "talking with my hands," that I can begin to build on, though the art of gesturing is a little different, here.

11) Language. That we continue to improve our Spanish in the most fruitful ways in the shortest period of time. We are where one would expect us to be at this time in our experience, but we can always improve. It is a lifetime of improving, but we do not want to succumb to the temptation of "plateauing" (thinking you can get by where you are and do not move forward), as our missionary training called it. Pray that we do not plateau.

This past week, one of our missionary friends here noted that speaking Spanish from a Spanish perspective is a different of speaking from speaking the Anglo-Saxon/German/Norman combination that we use daily in the US as English. It is very complex. Getting our minds into the Spanish mode of thinking is a major breakthrough to accomplish, and combining that with the nuanced melody of the actually pronouncing and speaking Peruvian Spanish is a major accomplishment. Pray that we would be able to do all this as soon as possible in the most fruitful way possible. Some people never make that the cultural leap because they plateau. Right now, as an example, one of my tasks is to continue to work on the hundreds of verbs that have prepositional variations. Pray that I would effectively master them all. It is only one task of many. I have been informed that takes about 1,000 exposures to a word to get it into mid-term memory. What we learn today, benefits us down the line.

And then, after Spanish, there is always the Quechua language and its variations (the official number 2 language in Peru)....and Amyra and its variations (the official number 3 language in Peru)....and the many languages of the Selva (Amazon jungle) and their variations..... Knowing about these other languages is part of what it means to live in Lima among the people whom we serve, but it is always just below the surface, not quite visible at first glance. Depends where you want to dive in. Pray that we would focus where the Holy Spirit would want us to be the fruitful for the Kingdom of God in language learning, and in all of life.

12) Lydia and driving. Lydia is on the cusp for learning to drive (getting a permit and beginning to learn when we visit the US for a month). Pray for her preparation for the written driver's test, for her permit process, and for her parents (that would be us) - especially her dad - and relatives, as we venture forth on this exciting new phase, together. For safety and good driving experience. There are new rules this year for the learning process.

13) Governmental forms. For paperwork and procedures for getting our first residential carnet stamp (periodically we need to check in with the government as part of the residential living requirements) - it is a two phase experience; and for the documentation needed for our visiting the United States (filing the appropriate form with the tax authorities, to be signed by the Bishop, as part of our residential living requirements).

14) For the continuation, development, and expansion of prayer and healing ministries throughout the diocesis.

15) Learning the bus transportation system more fully in Lima. All buses are privately owned. There are no route maps or timetables. We have been given what appears to be a good method for figuring them out.

Thank you for praying for us. It makes a difference. I pray for you every day.

God bless you.

In Christ,
Shaw, and on behalf of Julie and Lydia
Lima, Peru