No more Buses

Olah! from Peru. What a place. I have been here a week now, and have seen half the country. We have squeezed enough activity in week that it seem s more like a month. I flew into Sanchez International thurs. night the 10th to be met by P. Stan and Stambo. There was a few hundred people waiting at the gate for arriving visitors, it took me a matter of a few seconds to recognize the two gringos. They were sticking out like a pair of sore thumbs. Two huge white guys in the midst of little South americans. I didn't realize how small the people are down here. I have been walking around with a new confidence towering over every one. If someone has a short man complex this is the place to come.
Friday morning John Stambo, leahky (peruvian member in the church, and interpreter) and myself took a walk around the neighborhood. Trying to get a feel for my new home. The team house is in the north section of the city, a nice middle class area. We have everything we need with in walking distance, and most importantly a B-ball court around the corner. P. Stan loves to lace up his sneaks and battle on the court, you cant ask for much more from the head Pastor.
That night i went with John Stambo and the youth to the south side of the city for soul winning. The youth down here are awesome, they are the soul winners in the church. The south side is the Gringo area so it was allot easier for me to speak to people. People are very open to what we are saying. It is not uncommon for you to tell a person the grace message and its there first time hearing it. The country of Peru has been greatly influenced by the catholic church for years, so the concept of a free gift is very strange, but they love it. It was allot of fun being on the streets speaking faith with the body in christ in peru.
We then that night hopped on a bus for a 8 hr bus trip to trijullo ( the spelling is probable botched, but it sounds alright) which is north of lima on the coast. When we got there we met the pastor, Pastor Julio. He has been doing the trip from his home town of trijullo to lima every weekend for Bible college. He loves the word. I told him when I heard that he does the 8 hr trip every weekend for class and he never missed, I could never think about missing a class myself. That when I am thinking about being lazy he will come to my mind, and be a motivator. We were in the trijullo for a couple days evangelizing, sketch boarding, knocking on doors, and fellowshipping in the word. The word gives us the focus of who we are and what we are doing on these missionary trips. We then took another 8 hour ride into the mountains to a city the church has never been. Cajamarca is a city that was so open to are message. We had nothing to do for 2 days then to preach non stop in the center square and do sketch board. It is so much fun because all you have to do is set up the sketch board, not even paint, and the next thing you know you have a hundred people waiting for you to speak, and we did just that. Preached the Finished work message, with people wanting what we were talking about. They kept asking us when the Greater Grace church was coming to there city? How could they keep in touch with us? What should they do to get closer to God? It was such a Joy. In the natural sense we had no idea what we were doing but we knew that God wanted us there for his purpose, and when the few days were over we could see Gods hand on us during are few days in the cities.
We arrived back Wednesday morning, happy to be off the bus that we were on for 14 hrs. We had service last night and now we are getting ready for Bible college to start up on Sat. and Sun. John Stambo and myself are teaching a new course P.Stan and Stambo came up with called Biblical Biographies. Then on Sunday Stambo and I will be teaching the book of Acts. Its going to be fun. Thanks for the prayers and hopefully I can keep up with this whole Blog thing

Justin Schaller