The Sacred Valley: Two months/Two Mission Teams

We were blessed to have another mission team from Prince Ave visit Peru. For those of you considering going, please pray through the possibilities. I can't remember ever going on a bad mission trip. Our experiences have all been good.

Our English classes and friends we have built through those is going well. Please pray for these students and that they would come to know God. This post contains pictures from the Sacred Valley area near Cusco. This is the region of Machu Pichu. This is the first time that Jesus and Tim were both able to go with the mission team from Prince together. Recently a Retired Baptist Pastor has been attending our church. He preached in Lima the Sunday we were both gone. The team was divided into tow groups that were focused on lay leader and pastor training during the day and evangelism events in the evening. These events were either in the town square or in the churches or a soccer court. Many people rededicated there lives, came for prayers for medical issues, came for council or made decisions for Christ. It was a great week.

Joy will be returning to the states for about two - three weeks in March to have an outpatient skin cancer appointment. Please pray that this goes well and the Doctor is able to remove all of this cancer. This procedure is not available in Lima and it is recommended that it be done as soon as possible.

Please prayerfully consider being a member of an international mission trip. There are many children in the private schools and public schools that would welcome a mission team that came from the states. The mission trip could be focused on something as simple as a basic youth VBS week in English. Many of the same materials or stories,events, activities that you would plan to do for your summer VBS would work in Lima. Also, please remember,The Peruvian school year starts in March and ends in Dec. Therefore our summer is typically in the middle of the school year.

As always we thank you for your prayers. We saw God at work in many different ways a few weeks ago in the mountains of Peru. Many people had the opportunity to hear the Gospel. That is one of the keys to the Great Commandment: Go and Share...

As you pray for Joy and her surgery. Please pray that Tim, Jacob and Luke survive without her for a few weeks.

God's Blessings and Peace, The Mitchells

The Sacred Valley

We are in the middle of summer. The High is 82 and the Low is around 70. We have had only a few hours a day of warm weather. This year we have actually had mist many days of the summer. Thus it has not been very warm. Tommorrow we have a mission team coming in from Prince Ave Baptist Church. We will be spending a week in the Urabamba Area near Cusco. This is the center of the Inca civilazation. We will be at roughly 10,000 - 15,000 feet depending on the village. Please pray for the mission team next week as we will be doing pastor and layleader training during the day and evangelism events in the evening. The weather in Cusco is very different than Lima. It is winter there and this is the rainy season. Please pray for all of the people that we meet. For the pastors and the lay leaders pray that we are able to help them with a conference on Stewardship. And for all the lost people we encounter during the day and especially at the evangelism events pray that the Holy Spirit will work in their hearts and lives. Gray and Caleb are well into their school semesters and Jacob and Luke started Wednesday. Please pray for the follow up of the Baseball Clinic. We are trying to work with people via pictures and videos of the training. Jacob has been editing the film and putting together the training topics. We plan to post them on YouTube. We are able to include some of the Bible Stories and Testimonies. Thus using baseball as a bridge to share the Gospel. We have encountered people with various needs through the clinic. Please pray for all of these people.

If anyone feels called to come to Peru and work with us to engage the Nikkei you would be very welcome. Please call or email and we can discuss the possibilities.

Blessings and Peace,

Baseball Clinic Pitctures

Baseball Clinic 2011

The year ended with Joy and Tim attending the Nikkei Christmas Party. We had an interesting conversation about Budhism and Shinto worship. We have been meeting with individual members of SAN and doing Bible Storying and English Classes since we have been back. But we will probably start a new class in January. This is good becuase it will be additional students.

This week we habe four members of our church in Cusco along with two members from Prince Ave teaching a seminar on how to share the Gospel with Children. We were also suppose to have 5 members from the team come from Venezuela, but for various reasons they were not able to come. Please pray for this team this week.

Also,We want you to see some of the pictures from the baseball clinic. Please note the team from FBC Brandon and Bell Shoals were in Lima for the first week of January.

We did three clinics a day. Each clinic started with a testimony and a prayer. Then each clinic ended with a Bible Story and a Testimony. At the last clinic with each group the question was posed to each person, "Who do you think Jesus is?"

Many seeds were planted. The people not only heard scripture and testimonies. Many of the coaches and parents commented that they were so surprised that people with such a high level of baseball experience were so kind and so easy to talk to. The coaches were described all week as kind, friendly and gracious teachers. The baseball community saw a group of believers living out their faith.

For our family we have had showers of blessings the past few weeks: from being with our children, Christmas gifts from family and friends, the Baseball team and getting to know and interact with them, a visit from our nephew as he passed through Lima on a REAP trip, and now the Sunday School team in Cusco. Plus this past week another Chifa worker (Freddie) accepted Christ through the ministry of Gomez, Evert and Santos three of our original church members.

If you think God is speaking to you about a VBS activity in English or some type of Business presentation: Medical, General Business, Architecture or Engingeering. Please call or e-mail. These events help us all to have a bridge to enter a community and share our faith and testimony of Christ. Then we may have an opening to go further in these relationships to share more fully about who God is. He is the creator of the world and he loves us all.

To all of the people that are praying for us we would like to continue to say thank you.

B & P,

The Mitchells
Tim, Joy and the Boys

Regarding the Pictures: These are two different clinic groups and the coaches as well as some of the leaders of the baseball association. (We will put up some more pictures soon.)

Merry Christmas (Be Joyful in the Lord)

Merry Christmas from Lima, Peru

As we end the year we would just like to say thank you for your prayer support this past year. We are seeing more interaction with Nikkei people. Our existing relationships are becoming deeper. The church in Miraflores is growing. We have a core group at the church that is very faithful. We are looking forward to mission teams working with the church in the month of January and February. These are great opportunities to share the Gospel. Please be praying for these teams that will be traveling to Cusco and Trujillo. Pray for the Holy Spirit to be working in the lives of these people even now.

We recently held our first Nikkei Peruvian prayer meeting with Nikkei believers of different churches.

We would also ask you to pray for a mission team that is coming to Peru the first week of January. They are coming to give a Baseball Clinic. We will be able to meet roughly 200 plus young men from the ages of 11 to around 25. This is a tremendous opportunity to meet and get to know many Nikkei families. Already in the preparation process we have developed a relationship with the leaders of the Baseball Association. Please pray for the Nikkei people that they will understand that there is a creator God.

We are thankful to have Gray and Caleb with us in Peru this Christmas.

There are many problems and difficulties in the world at the moment, but God is in heaven and watching. One day He will return and until that day we have the great advantage of having a personal relationship with Him. This Sunday we will be studying the fourth chapter of Philippians. A great encouraging passage in chapter 4 is verses 4 - 9:
4Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice! Let your gentle spirit be known to all men. The Lord is near. Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. 7And the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
8Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things. 9The things you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you.

We pray for Blessings and Peace to All,
( Have a joyful and merry Christ centered day every day of the year.)
Tim and Joy Mitchell
PS We are always eager to hear news from family and friends in the states. If you have a Christmas letter or a note about how things are going in your life please share with us. This is a great way to stay connected. www.teachingothers.blogspot.com


Note: We are beginning ESL classes with more students. We are praying with more people. We are involved in discipleschip and Bible studies with more people. Pray that God's word will work in the hearts and lives of the people in the world and they will know and understand Jesus as their personal Lord and Saviour. Amen

Nov 2010 Baseball and Matsuri Events

Family and Friends,

This month we had several meetings with the Baseball Association of Peru. BellShoals church in Florida is coming in January 2010 to lead a baseball clinic. There should be between 150 - 175 young boys and teenagers attending this event. The President of the Baseball Association asked the team leaders of the clinic to include moral/values from the Bible at the clinic to help build the character of the young men.

The Prince Mission Church in Miraflores is continuing to grow. God is allowing this small church to be involved in a lot of various outreach activities.

The end of Oct and Nov are busy months in the Nikkei community in Lima. There are many Matsuri celebration events. Matsuri means festival or holiday in Japanese. Many of these events have their origin in a Shinto or Budhist reason. The November 15th event in Japan was began because of the belief that children of certain ages have bad luck and that they needed to go to the Shrines to pray for protection.

The Festivals today in Lima have a mixture of food, music, vendors, etc and I am sure for some there is a time to pray against bad health. There is also a lot of Saki. Different music groups perform anything from pop or rock to traditional Japanese music.

Please pray for the Nikkei that they would come to understand that there is a Creator God that loves them.

The Mitchell's

Japan Trip Oct 2010

Today, I would like to share a few observations about my trip to Japan. Plus I will include several pictures. We may add a few more pictures as time goes by. First, I am very thankful I went on this trip. It was a great learning opportunity. I saw first hand and experienced the Japanese culture for two weeks. I also met many Nikkei who went to Japan to work, but as they found themselves outside of their home environment they began to wonder more about the world and their purpose and the purpose of life. I visited two Nikkei congregations and had a chance to speak and share my testimony. Interestingly at the Spanish speaking congregation they translated my testimony into Japanese for their children. Many Nikkei I met had a similar testimony. A co worker on the factory line invited them to a bible study or a church service and after hearing and studying the Bible for 6 months to a year they made a decision to receive Christ. One lady shared with me that she never understood for many years that she was a sinner. And finally when she did she accepted Christ.

One problem many Japanese people have in understanding sin is that the word in the Japanese Bible for sin is a very strong word. It is basically the description of a mass murderer type person a very bad criminal. Japan has a very high code of morals built into the culture. Stealing among other things is not acceptable. Therefore many people struggle with the concept that they are a sinner because they think I am nothing like that type of bad person.

By the way, very very very few Japanese speak English. But I was able to find several the did and they were very helpful. On my journeys I seemed to always find someone that could help me with directions and we always seemed to be sitting together or very close by. Therefore, I was able to engage these people in a much longer conversation. These were for the most part people who spoke a very high level of English. At first when I would broach the subject of the possibility of a Creator God and ask their thoughts about that they were speechless and a little caught off guard. At first I thought they just did not know the words in English to describe what they thought or felt. But near the end of my trip I continued to have these same type of encounters. It finally hit me. They understand what I am saying and they understand the concept. The problem is that they have never had the thought or considered the idea that a Creator God exists. For the first time in their lives they are being asked to give an opinion about the idea of a Creator God and they have never ever even considered that there is such a God. (Thus they were all speechless at first)

Japan is a beautiful place. On one hand there is a great amount of punctuality. All the trains are always on time to the second. Unless one of the 40,000 people who commit suicide a year have jumped in front of a train as it is pulling into a station. (We especially need to pray for the hoplessness that many people have in this country.)

The attention to detail is phenomenal. It is truly a culture of form. What you do and how you do it is very important. People are courteous and nice and generally friendly and helpful. People are busy and occupied with their work day all day. In general people are very quiet. On the trains they are occupied with their cell phones, read books or sleep. They generally go out of their way to help each other get along. If people meet on the street both parties are considerate of the other and move in unison to create space for both to pass.

Some of the highlights to see in Japan. The scramble, the arts, the trains, God's beautiful nature (the mountains, the ocean, rivers, rice fields, etc). And especially the people. Please pray for these people. The gospel has been in Japan for well over a 120 years. Many mission organizations have pulled out or many missionaries have had to return homw because of the expensive cost to live there. Many people have given up because the culture is so closed to the Gospel.

One huge blessing and great potential we have in Lima is that we met some Nikkei Christians in Japan that have family in Lima. These family members are not believers. We are going today to take a small gift from a Nikkei lady who has lived in Japan for more than 20 years. S married a Nikkei in Japan and has 2 children. She is the only member of her family that is a believer. We are taking some small gifts and pictures to her mother who is not a believer. Please pray that God will use these connections from the Nikkei that have accepted Christ in Japan that their families that are back in South America will hear and receive the Gospel of Jesus Christ as well.

Thank God that there are many Nikkei Christians in Japan. (pray for them and their families, all of them have families back in South America that are not believers)

God's Blessings and Peace,, We truly appreciate your prayers!!!!

Tim and Joy Mitchell