Dear friends,
We want to take this opportunity to bring some exciting news before you. As many of you know, the WMF community in Lima has been praying through the location of the drop-in-center, named Casa Job by the very youth who visit us there, for almost a year-and-a-half. We closed the doors to the Casa Job in January 2006 as a step of faith in God's good provision for future of this community.
Starting in 2004, God began to place restlessness in our hearts about the center, not as much to do with the existence of the center but the deteriorating location and limited physical characteristics. At the same time, we watched mournfully as many of the youth with whom this community formed relationships starting in 1998 became young adults with children, criminal records, and severe drug and street addictions. Also, a new generation of young children, barely adolescents, some as young as eight years old, are showing up in the areas where we walk the streets in central Lima. They are telling the same stories that we have heard before. Stories of broken families, abuse, lack of food, desperation. We see the same street-aged friends among we have been ministering for eight years, in their young grins and tear-stained faces.
For the past six months, since closing the Casa Job, our commitment among the poor has continued on the streets, in our apartments, and in local churches but we have been a community without a physical home of our own. God has used this time to reconfirm our community call among the poor, to recognize as a community that the house that God is building, which is His Kingdom, cannot be contained in a physical location but grows in lives. God desires to build a house for the poor, for the broken. For the youth trapped in life on the street. He is calling us to be part of that in Lima. We are clinging to the Word, which says, “And we are his house, if we hold on to our courage and the hope of which we boast.”
Our vision is being refined, and our collective call to ministry among the poor is being both confirmed and challenged. How can we be a community who, together, exalt the person of Jesus Christ above all others through sacrificial relationships of love among street populations? As God is faithful to us to lay a solid foundation of desire for His Kingdom to be built in this community among street populations, we struggle with the limits of not having a physical space of our own within which to live out our obedience to this call.
We believe it is a timely step of obedient faith to share with you our hope of purchasing a property in Lima, which will serve as WMF Peru's ministry center. This building will include our office space, necessary for administrative and logistical needs, and will function as the base for all programming, including Infant Day Care, Work Among Minors living on the street, Work Among Young Adults living on the street, Celebrations for youth who are leaving the street and being reconciled to their families, Street Ministries, Volunteer coordination, Social Work offices, Group Bible Studies, Tutoring and Educational programming, Christmas and All-Occasion Card campaigns, as well as all community related meetings including staff meetings, Board of Director meetings, community celebrations like birthdays and baby showers, community worship and prayer meetings, and will enable us to expand into new areas of ministry including medical campaigns, evening activities with youth on the street, and vacation bible school programming for children living on the street.
We struggled a long time with pursuing such a large financial goal; recently we feel freedom in the Spirit, as a community, to do so. The property that we believe to be ideal for the future presence and needs of this community is a 20-year-old, brick, two-story house with a small, roofed warehouse on the back. Each the house and the warehouse have app. 3,500 sq. ft. The asking price is US $160,000. We have placed a six-month goal for this fund-raising effort, or the end of 2006. Would you help us reach this goal? Please prayerfully consider joining with our community as we together respond to God's desire that young people trapped on the streets of central Lima could be free to receive His Kingdom in their lives, and find their true home.
Please feel free, as God's leads, to inform yourself about this fund raising effort, by communicating with us at:
brian.langley@wordmadeflesh.com (WMF Peru Co-Director), and by referencing the summer issue of WMF's quarterly advocacy reader, The Cry.
With love,
The WMF community in Lima, Peru
Ps. Tax Deductible gifts for this property purchase can be given through (with a separate note reading, “Peru Ministry Fund: Ministry Center”):
Word Made Flesh
PO Box, 70
Omaha, NE 68101