Pics

I promise to write more later but I did add a link to facebook pics to the right-- weeks 2 & 3. I will post more soon. Sorry it has been so long. Know that God is good, faithful, and working mightily here.

Trusting HIM,

Celeste

Praise the Lord

Praise the LORD.

Praise God in his sanctuary; praise him in his mighty heavens.

Praise him for his acts of power; praise him for his surpassing greatness.

Praise him with the sounding of the trumpet, praise him with the harp and lyre,

Praise him with tambourine and dancing, 

Praise him with the strings and flute,

Praise him with the clash of cymbals, 

Praise him with resounding cymbals.

Let everything that has breath praise the LORD. 

Praise the LORD.  Psalm 150

Praise God that he is Sovereign and Reigns over every detail of our lives. Despite the fact that I have been really ill this past week I have had great peace in knowing that not one detail of the sickness or my time here is out of His control.  I am so grateful for all of your prayers- countless of you have prayed for healing that I my fever would lower, my stomach would settle, and I would regain strength... all of your prayers are being answered by the Mighty One.  What started May 28th as cold like symptoms escalated over the next few days to full blown flu symptoms and I had to be confined to the bed with a fever hovering around 103. This past Thursday was the hardest day and that night was the low point but even when I felt so dehydrated and couldn't even keep water down I was comforted and strengthened by a Savior and God who promises to never leave us or abandon us and is even concerned with the small details of our lives. 

Friday morning we finally made the call to head to the doctor.  After about 4 hours in the emergency room (it was different that an American ER-- it was actually more comfortable) and blood work and the work up of a stool sample (sorry, probably too much information) I was cleared from typhoid and malaria and a parasite and was told that I have a bacterial infection. I am taking Cipro (antibiotic) and that has really made me feel a lot better. I have continued to feel weak over the last few days and haven't really progressed past chicken broth and rice, bread, and mashed potatoes. We are still waiting on the culture results to know which type of bacteria it is that has invaded my body.  I praise God though that I am feeling better and continuing to regain strength. 

Of course getting sick was not part of my plan, but I know and trust that not one moment has surprised God. While I know and trust God in all of this I have hated the fact that I have kept my team behind and from traveling for the last 5 days as I have recovered. They have both been gracious and both have said they trust that God knows what he is doing and we are in Lima for a reason. I couldn't ask for a better team.  I really owe a whole blog post to Kristen and how amazing she has been while I have been sick but let's see if I can at least give you a glimpse of how she has taken care of me. For the multiple days that I wasn't able to get out of bed she brought me water, gatorade, and tea to my bedside as well as my tylenol when it was time for me to take it again. She has sat with me, prayed for me, and stayed at the ER with me for the 4 hours while we waited. She has made countless trips out for me to pick up gatorade and juice, my prescription, and gone back twice to the Dr's office to see if the test results were in. I have told her she is getting great practice at being a mom and I believe she will make an amazingly kind and tender mother!  

I got my test results from the laboratory this afternoon. E. Coli is the official diagnosis. There honestly is no telling how I got it-- bad water, not properly cleaned vegetables, bad meat, or my personal favorite fecal-oral transmission. I will continue my antibiotics for the next 3 days.

Matucana.  We left Lima on the June 1st for Matucana. We spent that first day getting to know some of the believers in the village and talking with the Summer Team that is there. On Tuesday we spent the morning praying, talking, and studying to get ready for the training we would do that afternoon and evening. Over the next two days we did 5 training sessions. I was only physically present for 3.5 of them because I got really sick halfway through session 4 and did not leave the bed again until we left Matucana. Despite being sick it was amazing and humbling to see the work of the Holy Spirit in that village. God had radically and genuinely saved several believers over this last semester and it was so cool to get to see the work of sanctification in their lives. Kristen taught a session on obedience based discipleship and focusing on how we are to respond to the word with our lives. We seek to know and understand scripture with the prayer and intention that our lives and hearts will be changed in the process and molded to look more like Christ. When we come to the word we come ready and eager to learn the truths about God's character/attributes and to learn how it is that our lives should be lived out and then to humbly and obediently submit all that we are to align ourselves with the Word of God. One couple came back the night after this teaching and said that realized that they needed to be married. They have lived together for many many years--- they have a 16 year old son and two younger kids, but they have never been married.  They were both saved this May while an enhancement team from REAPsouth was there. Based on the word and the work of the Holy Spirit they realized they were living in sin and wanted their lives to be changed in order to be obedient to God's word. It was really cool to see them hear the Holy Spirit and then respond. God is faithful to show us our sin and faithful to give us the strength to find our way out. 

We are leaving at 7 am tomorrow the 10th of June for Vilcas Huaman. It will be a 14 hour bus ride-- well, a 10 hour bus ride and a 4 hour bus ride to get us there. Please be praying for safe travels and healthy bodies.

I would also ask you to pray for our team as we go into this village and prayerfully make an assessment of what the believers and leaders of the house churches need teaching on. Pray that the hearts of the believers would be ready and eager to learn from God's word. I am even asking that you would pray big things like that a house church planting movement would stir up from among the believers of Vilcas Huaman that they would have an unquenchable desire for the people of their village and surrounding annex to know the truth of the gospel that they would not rest in seeking God until He answers their prayer. Also, prayer for the Summer Mission Team that is there-- pray that we would be an encouragement to them in their walk with Christ. 

As of the last count I heard-- I think there were about 40 some odd people of the 120 summer missionaries who have been pretty seriously sick. Please pray for health and strength and for the knowledge and wisdom to know when to go to the doctor and such. 

I am incredible grateful for the prayer and support I have received while I was sick. I couldn't do this without each of you and your countless prayers. 

I anticipate being back and being able to update you on our time in Vilcas Huaman.

Trusting Him-- Celeste

A flash back from the states...

Very soon-- and even today-- I am actually going to write some about this past week, but I received an email from the states containing some amazing pictures that I just thought I needed to share. The pictures and the memories they contain sure make me smile. Royce and Sandra took Mandi and I over to the lake house to let us fish and then Royce took us the following morning turkey hunting. It was an adventure as I am sure you can imagine. We were successful at catching fish but no turkey was shot, but it was worth getting up at 3:30 am just for the experience. Royce- thanks again for taking us and teaching us how to shoot all those guns. We sure had fun.

This one is my favorite! Miss you Mandi!!

Gangsters? Doubtful.

Sweet and innocent... except for that gun.

We were pretty excited to get our hunting gear on!

The one and only bass I caught.

Facebook Pictures

For those of you that don't have Facebook I will link the photo albums I post there to the blog. They are located on the right hand column of the blog at the top .... enjoy =)

Samford Grads

I already posted the pic of the Samford students together at La Finca, but today I got word that the Samford Belltower wrote a short article about us in their weekly only newspaper. I thought I would share the link in case you were interested.

http://www.samford.edu/belltower/060309/snapshot_summermission.php

(I can't seem to figure out how to make it a hyperlink-- I guess the ol' copy and paste method will have to do)

I will write more tomorrow. I have continued to be sick. I think it is just the flu but I have a lingering fever that has kept me in bed for days now. 

Please pray that God would heal me so that we can head back out to the next village to teach, share the gospel, and spur on the other teams to love and good deeds. 

I am so grateful for the HUGE army of prayer warriors I have. God is so good to give me so many people who love and encourage me.

Off to bed. Praying the fever is gone in the AM.

Quick trip through photos... more to come

We are about to head to Matucana to do training and teaching. Thought I would give a quick glimpse of life here through a few photos.

Ellen (Journeygirl) and I before a soccer volleyball match

Family Group #9-- So soccer volleyball wasn't exactly our thing but we still had fun.

Me, Brit and Ryan (both Journeyman) at the camp

Our room. Kristen taking a nap.

Samford students. The guys are on an ESL team in Cusco.

A view of La Fina

Our team. Me, Martin, and Kristen.

2 Corinthians 12:9-10

“But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness”.  Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weakness, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.  That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong”  2 Corinthians 12:9-10

A continued glimpse of our week at La Finca...

Teaching-- Dr. Sills continued to teach about the missionary call-- mostly demystifying what it looks like when God calls his people to the mission field. Obviously, as believers we are all commanded to make disciples of all nations but how do you know if you should sell your home (or not buy one), pack up your life, and move yourself or a family to a another part of the world where you probably don't know the language, don't recognize the food, and come from a different world view? Basically, it comes down to Psalm 37:4 "Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart." When we take our greatest delight in our relationship with Christ and our humble and passionate pursuit of Him-- He (the great giver of all things) places desires in your heart and then when you pursue them you get great joy and He gets great glory as He accomplishes His great plan. It's amazing and freeing to recognize that as I abide in Christ (John 15) I am freed up to pursue what I desire and in this, the God of the Universe is Glorified. So if you have a passion for culture, people, a desire to learn languages, love for travel and being over sees, passion for sharing the gospel-- then you are likely called to missions. 

I am praying this summer that God would draw the 130 of us here to greater and deeper intimacy with Him. That He will grant us great joy to keep us moving and enough trouble and hardship to keep us humble before Him. I pray that as we grow in intimacy with Him that He would grant and give us great desires and that as we part ways at the end of the summer we would pursue those God given desires with all our might and joy.

Family Groups-- to make 130 people seem a little smaller for training and relational purposes we were divided into 10 teams of about 10 people a group. Family Group 9 (my group) is pretty much amazing and a huge blessing to me already. We spent time in our teams practicing storying (reviewing over and over the stories we learned that day), asking questions that we didn't feel comfortable asking in front of 130 people, sharing what we need each other to pray for, laughing, having praise and worship (Hayes Parnell is in my family group and he is an amazingly gifted worship leader), and spent time on our faces for our own souls, the state of our hearts, and the souls of those we will come in contact with over the next 2 months.  Kristen Seay (my volunteer missionary friend) and Jess Sorrell (a journeyman who has been here since January) were our Family Group leaders, both are extremely knowledgeable but more than that they have a passion for seeing the glory of God seen in Peru and are living that out in front of us. 

One part of our Family Groups was to compete against the other teams in earning points through various activities such as soccer volleyball, question time after each teaching session, and then finally through team challenges. I was part of leading the game time with Ryan Northup (Journeyman). We tried to come up with funny, challenging, and at time disgusting team challenges. It's hard to know which was my favorite seeing 10 people eat a banana off a chair with no hands and yes, that does mean peeling it with just your teeth, cramming crackers in your mouth and then trying to whistle, or maybe just maybe the best and worst was seeing them each HUGE and I mean HUGE crickets we collected. It was totally insane to me that not one of them hesitated who volunteered for their team to complete the challenge. They popped that cricket in their mouth and chomped away. I had thought only Lydia, who grew up in the Philippines, would be up for this challenge but they were all willing and bothersomely eager to eat the cricket. It was such a close call on who consumed the cricket the fastest that we had round two... run outside, find your own cricket, run back and onto the stage, and bite the head of the cricket, eat it, and then eat the body.  Why someone would even consider this is beyond me but they were off at go and Andrew Crosson was back and onstage eating the head first and then the body (after it jumped out of him mouth) before you really knew what happened. Like I said it was disturbing. But maybe just maybe this eagerness to try the weird and desire to get the job done will be what will help them as they move out into villages of the highlands of Peru.  

Prayer-- our need and dependance on prayer can never be over emphasized. 

Here are a few quotes from men who sought God in prayer...

Martin Luther (a pretty busy dude) declared he had so much to do, he could not possibly accomplish all of it unless he spent THREE OR FOUR HOURS ON HIS KNEES before God each morning.

"Talking to men for God is a great thing, but talking to God for men is greater still." 
E.M. Bounds

Our Family Group got the chance to spend a fair amount of time for each other, our needs, and struggles, and for the Peruvians we will minister to.

Please be in prayer with me for my heart and the hearts of those in my group to be united, not divided, for God.

O Lord, I will walk in Your truth; unite my heart to fear Your name. (Psalm 86:11)

I am oh so grateful for each of you and for the power of prayer. I thank my God for each of you as I remember you in prayer.

Lima

We got back to Lima yesterday and got the chance to go the mall. It is called Jockey Plaza. Honestly, it was slightly overwhelming but good to see a Starbucks since I had been without coffee for most of the week. I spent the rest of the day at the apartment after getting home from the mall because I have come down with what is probably just a cold. We have kidded about passing around swine flu, mostly because it is more fun to say. I think my weeks of little sleep and busy schedule finally got the best of me. I am trying my best to rest and recover but we are still planning to head out tomorrow to start traveling. So, I would ask for your prayers for health and strength. At this very moment, my fever is down and the chills are gone so we may be moving toward getting better. 

We are going to have those who are still in town over in just a few minutes for some worship and prayer time.  

We are going to end our evening with dinner and a trip to the fountains. Honestly, I don't much about them but will post soon.  I do love water and anything that involves water so I am sure I will be fascinated.

Again, I am grateful for each of you-- for your prayers, emails, comments, and words of encouragement.  

With lots of love-- Celeste