Lima, August 12, 2006
The following letter is written by a Peruvian staff member Anna Monteviller, Programs Director for the WMF community in Lima, Peru. As the majority of the Peruvian staff receive their salaries through support given to WMF Peru, they desire to express their gratitude through these regular communications. We hope that this can become a way in which God can bring more intimacy and fellowship between us. If you wish to stop receiving these communications, please let us know.
Sincerely,
Brian and Rachel Langley
WMF Peru Field Directors
the following translated by Brian Langley
Beloved friends and brothers and sisters in Christ,
First of all I want to thank all of you for your support, both in prayer and with your gifts to the WMF Peru community. It's for that reason that I want to share with you a little about the work that we are doing in Lima, and more specifically that I am involved with. My goal is that you would have an even greater opportunity to pray for and support the work that God is doing in Lima according to how God puts in your heart to respond.
The work in Lima began with two main activities: street ministry and the day center named “Job House.” Now, as the youth with whom we began work are growing, the ministry is also growing; we are developing 10 distinct and interrelated ministries, each of which has a focus population. These ministries are focused around looking for and responding to a demonstrated desire for change in any and every part of someone's life: personal, familial, social, spiritual.
I am working in the community as Programs Director; this job challenges me a lot and fills my heart to see God work in the lives of the youth living on the street and in the staff community who are coordinating areas of programmed ministry. Friends, I want to ask that you would pray that God would give me wisdom and provide me with the tools so that I could complete the tasks that God is calling me to-that this community could grow in the knowledge of God's call and purposes for each one of us.
Right now there are many youth who, with God's help, are seeing real change in their lives. Many are attending the church where I am a member; they also play soccer with the men from the church, as well as assisting in the Sunday morning service. When we make home visits, I see how they are finding hope, and are making plans to better their life, and in a real way their trust in God and fellowship with his children is like a motor that propels them forward. In a recent meeting to celebrate those youth who have been able to leave life on the street, one of my friends who was present shared this,
“Before I lived as if God wasn't important to me; drugs and the street were my home and my escape. Even my own life wasn't important to me. Now, if someone asks me, Does God exist? I would tell them Yes! I am certain that He exists because he has changed my life completely; this change has not just been something that someone has told me, but a real change, and I know Him, and He is in my life.”
Testimonies like this inspire me, and I ask that you would keep laboring together with us in this beautiful work, which is not so much a program or an activity but changed lives that God allows us to know.
May God richly bless you,
Your sister and friend in Christ,
Anna Monteviller Pino