Waiting IS traveling

Lunch in the Charlotte airport is first class prices for vending machine items. $37.00 for 2 sandwiches, 1 wrap, 2 bags of chips and 2 bottles of water. They captured our hunger pangs and used them against us.

They also ensured that we would buy this overpriced food by requiring us to arrive 2 hours before our flight. Despite all of they issues involved in checking in 13 people we got right through and now we are waiting to board our flight.

It seems waiting is part of traveling. When we hear the word 'travel' we usually imagine terrain going by, wind in our hair, the roar of powerful engines. But here we are traveling sitting in the airport; every second brings us closer to our destination even as we still.

We have a plane. Motion will begin soon.

This Feels Real Now

"This feels real now!" was Cynthia Conner's comment at the end of our last regular Monday Peru Mission Team meeting last evening. Tomorrow is personal packing day; we leave on Wednesday.

Trudy Millsaps and her daughters Kylie Millsaps, and Ashley McDermitt prepared a delicious meal of lasagna and all that goes with it for the team. (Word is that David and Walker helped, but the high quality of the food and the coordination of the decor bring doubt on their claims to any significant contribution.) This might be the last American (well, Italian) meal as a team before we become immersed in Peruvian fare, and it was a wonderful treat; but I say, bring on the Peruvian food! Perhaps I just love to eat or my palate is broad, but on the last trip I refused nothing that was offered, and I look forward to it all again. Still, a big word of thanks goes to these ladies who set the atmosphere for our meeting and contributed to our excitement over the prospects of our adventure in the Lord.

After fellowship around the meal, we gathered in the Millsaps living room, finding places to stand among empty suitcases and boxes and bags full of items needed for the ministry. We started with prayer. Lindsay prayed for the ministry to the young people and for her mom's health during the trip. Judy prayed for the medical aspects; I prayed for administrative issues; and David Millsaps prayed for our team. Nothing of eternal consequence can be accomplished without the Lord, but we all needed to acknowledge that on the eve of the eve of our departure.

Next, we each grabbed his or her suitcase and began packing those items: vitamins, children's Advil, witnessing dolls, wordless flying disks, quilts, balloons for making animals, reading glasses, sunglasses, puppets. The idea is to distribute these items through the luggage so that if one or two suitcases or duffle bags is lost or delayed the ministry can go on.

At the beginning it seemed that the items were far too many for the space, but in short order we each had a partly filled suitcase or duffle bag, and the boxes and bags were empty. It was like the Lord's loaves and fishes miracle happened with suitcase space. Each time we put and item in our suitcases the space seemed to just get bigger. As we were taking our suitcases to our cars, Cynthia said, "This feels real now!" and it does.

Pre-trip Blog Post

We have held several meetings to build our team into a unit. There have been updates regarding our itinerary, but it seems to have settled on spending our first weekend in Pedregal doing medical and dental work with people who are taking the time off work. On Monday we'll head to Chevay to visit a home for senior citizens and visit a high altitude location to see some sights. I understand there is a chance we will see Condors (enormous flying birds; so cool). Near the end of our time we will travel to Arequipa to concentrate on evangelism. 

Some of our meetings have been fundraisers at restaurants. We had two at Chick-fil-a, one at a steak house and one was at Fuddruckers. They brought in a little money, but they were great fellowship.

At other meetings we spent time practicing skits, getting familiar with witnessing tools, and singing songs in Spanish. At almost every meeting we hear a testimony from a team member or two. These really help us get to know the people we are working with. We spend time in prayer for each other, the team in Peru, and those we will reach. What ever preparations we make the most important thing is to be ready to be used by the Lord no matter what comes up. 

We are again taking witnessing dolls. Hickory Grove Baptist Church has a ministry in which participants make dolls to distribute to little girls while witnessing to them. The dolls have a sad face on one side and a happy face on the other. As the doll is given to the child we can explain that real joy is found in Jesus when we accept His offer of forgiveness for our sins and eternal life. 

Last year we took the dolls as well, but were concerned that there wasn't a similar gift for the boys. On a visit to Party City, I found some flying rings and designed a card stock insert with the five colors of the wordless book and verses to explain the gospel. David Millsaps translated it, and Steve Adams (one of our ministers) had the Hickory Grove Baptist Church print these and laminate them. We glued them together and took them along. Catherine (one of the Peruvian team members) did a great job of presenting these as we gave them out to the boys. 

As we planned for this year, Rob Isenhour said he knew a printer who might make these for us. The printer ordered flying discs and printed them for us. The result is stunning. We're excited to present boys with the new version of the wordless flying disk. 

The gospel will be flying around Peru with the Wordless Disk 2.0

For our trip to the senior citizens home HGBC Quilt Ministry has provided hand made quilts. Each of us is carrying one or two of these in a suitcase, just to make sure we have enough if any luggage gets lost. It gets cold in Southern Peru during the winter, and these people live at a rather high elevation, so the quilts will be a practical way to share the love of Jesus.

It is so wonderful that we have ministries in our church and Christians in our communities who, although they are not able to go with us, can support us, not only with financial donations, but also with the work of their hands. Dolls, wordless disks, and quilts are vital parts of our taking the gospel to Peru. Those who crafted them are equal members of our team. 

At our meeting last Monday we were able to Scype with Pastor Pablo (our Peruvian team leader) and his family. New team members got to see some of the team we will work with, and other of us got reacquainted with them. What a blessing electronic media is when used for the Lord's work. 

Our final team meeting will be this coming Monday. We will bring suitcases so that we can distribute quilts, dolls, disks, reading glasses, medicines and other items donated for use in evangelism. We will spend some time in prayer. On Wednesday we meet at the church at 11:00 am to head to the airport and the overnight flight to Peru. We will fly Charlotte to Miami to Lima to Arequipa. 

I've been asked, "Are you ready?" The human answer is, "Ready as I'll ever be." The spiritual answer is, "We're surrendered to the Lord." The Lord's answer is, "Yes." He knows who we are and what we'll face, He is not surprised by any of it, He has us ready.

Pray for us as we go.