New RUF Semester in Full Swing

We've had four meetings of the new semester in RUF, and things are off to a good start. We are having around 30+ students attending, Geraldo has taught on the New Year and New Mission that Jesus came to launch in fulfilling the old promise of God (Luke 4:18-21). Last week I had the privilege of teaching our RUF group on the call of Abraham and the old promise that God set in motion to bless this world through Abraham and his descendents (Genesis 12). [Here's a few pics my wife took of the evening....]

Having taught in our seminary in Spanish (or more accurately, Spanglish!), this was my first opportunity to teach RUF in Spanish, that is, my first time to teach without a translator. I think I had everyone's attention, but I'm not convinced that they weren't straining trying to figure out what this gringo was trying to say. After, several folks said that they could understand about 90%, so I guess that's not a bad start. I still have far to go, but we're making progress!

Please be in prayer for our group. We are having around 30 students attending, and this year is in many ways a transition year with some of our previous leaders no longer in the university.

Tuesday, I'm launching a small group on sexual purity--a much needed study here as in the States. Wednesday evening, we're launching a new discipleship group that will ground folks in the basics of Christianity. This study is broken into 3 stages and students can progress through it and complete it in about 8 months. And of course, please continue to pray for our Spanglish!

A Simple Prayer of Trust in the Darkness

My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going.
I do not see the road ahead of me.
I cannot know for certain where it will end.
Nor do I really know myself,
and the fact that I think I am following your will
does not mean that I am actually doing so.

But I believe that the desire to please you
does in fact please you.
And I hope I have the desire in all I am doing.
I hope from that desire,
and I know that if I do this
you will lead me by the right road
though I may know nothing about it.

Therefore I will trust you always,
though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death.
I will not fear for you are ever with me,
and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.

- Thomas Merton

[HT: Kingdom People]

RUF Starts Back Up

Friday night we started back up with RUF on our regular Friday Night meetings. We had around 35 students out plus a handful of our SALI staff. Please pray for us as we launch small group studies in the weeks to come. Here are some photos of the first night. Enjoy!

How Well Are You Counseling You?

Paul Tripp has been very infuential in my life and ministry over the years. He has written a book called "Instruments in the Redeemer's Hands" that I think everyone should read and digest.

He also has a blog which you ought to subscribe to with your Google Reader.

He drops nuggets of wisdom like this one all the time....

No one is more influential in your life than you are because no one talks to you more than you do. You're in an unending conversation with yourself. You're talking to yourself all the time, interpreting, organizing, and analyzing what's going on inside you and around you....

What do you regularly tell yourself about yourself, God, and your circumstances? Do your words to you encourage faith, hope, and courage? Or do they stimulate doubt, discouragement, and fear? Do you remind yourself that God is near, or do you reason within yourself, given your circumstances, that he must be distant? Do you encourage yourself to run to God even when you don't understand what he's doing? Or do you give yourself permission to back away from him when you are confused by the seeming distance between what he's promised and what you're experiencing? Are you your own best defense lawyer, laying out arguments for your innocence in places where you're actually guilty? When others talk to you, is your internal conversation so loud that it's hard to concentrate on what they're saying?

Here's the question. How wholesome, faith-driven, and Christ-centered is the conversation that you have with you every day? Do you remind yourself of your need? Do you point you, once again, to the beauty and practicality of his grace? Do you tell yourself to run toward God in those moments when you feel like running from him?
Would you be comfortable with someone playing a public recording of the private conversation you have with you every day?

Read the entire post here.

Assimilating Scripture

Eugene Peterson has a very helpful book, seductively entitled, "Eat This Book: A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading. You can check it out on Google Books & Amazon. Vintage Peterson, it is chock full of great quotes, like this...

Christians feed on Scripture. Holy Scripture nurtures the holy community as food nurtures the human body. Christians don't simply learn or study or use Scripture; we assimilate it, take it into our lives in such a way that it gets metabolized into acts of love, cups of cold water, missions into all the world, healing and evangelism and justice in Jesus' name, hands raised in adoration of the Father, feet washed in company with the Son [p. 18]

Do you have a plan to read and assimilate Scripture for the coming year? Whatever plan you have, whether focusing in on a few books and seeking to master them, or reading through the whole, commit yourself to seeking to know the glory of God in the face of Christ and assimilating this book. Check out these plans here and here and here.

Need some extra motivation? My son, Jason (8 years old), read through the NT in 2007 using the 5x5x5 reading plan. This is his advice:

"Make sure that you keep on schedule, and if they are any verses you like you should memorize them."

Last Meeting of 2007

RUF/ SSA finished off the year by celebrating a Christmas dinner together. We ate chicken & rice & panatones, and we capped off the evening with a fun game nominating students for noticeable virtues. A fun time was had by all, and it was a great way to end the year. We took over 170 pics, but here is a little slide show of about 50 of them.



Special thanks to Gerardo & his wife, Isabel, and the leadership team of RUF for making this an enjoyable year.

SALI Graduates

Our San Agustin Language Institute just graduated its first class of five students. These folks have been studying for years to get to this point, and we are very proud of them.

Ana Haro Chalón
Carol Ponte Roncal
Cory Luz Marina Vásquez Valles
Juan Eduardo Quiroz Aldave
Miguel Placencia Velarde

Thanks to all the staff who have poured into this branch of our mission over the years.

This Can't Be What It's All Cracked Up To Be

From the Founder's Ministry Blog:

"Tom Brady, the 3-time Super Bowl champion quarterback of the New England Patriots was featured the week in a 60 Minutes interview with Steve Kroft on CBS. Brady is already a sports legend in one of the citadels of professional sports in America, Boston. His current team is 15-0 and is poised to finish the season undefeated, something that hasn't been done in the NFL in 35 years. He has won the Super Bowl MVP twice and been named to the Pro Bowl 4 times. He also was recently named the Associated Press' "Male Athlete of the Year."

"He has dated actresses and supermodels and makes millions of dollars a year. He has been called America's most eligible bachelor. By most popular standards, he has it all. That is why I was struck by hearing him make the following statement during the interview:

"Why do I have three Super Bowl rings and still think there's something greater out there for me? I mean, maybe a lot of people would say, 'Hey man, this is what is.' I reached my goal, my dream, my life. Me, I think, 'God, it's got to be more than this.' I mean this isn't, this can't be what it's all cracked up to be."

"When Kroft asked him, "What's the answer?" Brady responded, "I wish I knew. I wish I knew. I love playing football and I love being quarterback for this team. But at the same time, I think there are a lot of other parts about me that I'm trying to find."

Read the article.

Peru Mission Christmas Newsletter

Here is our Peru Mission Christmas Newsletter in jpg.

To click on the links, check out the newsletter here.

December 2007 Newsletter

Prayer Requests

* Praise for the apologetics class I have been teaching in Spanish which will conclude this week (which also explains the scarcity of posts on this blog). It was a good exercise for me, and I trust, very useful for our students. Pray that these students will be effective witnesses and defenders of the faith in Peru.

* Pray for continual acquisition of the language. We are conversant, but not fluent, and I think it is pretty ugly if not torturous! Since language is our primary tool, mine definitely needs sharpening and I need much more skill.

* Pray for personal holiness. This whole journey has been what my wife calls 'fast-track sanctification.' God is growing us in many ways, but we still need to grow in love, patience, trust & joy (and probably a lot of other areas that we don't know about!)

* Finally, pray for our university ministry here. Geraldo (the main campus minister) and I will be working over the Christmas break on our plan of action for the upcoming year. We will be trying to gather students into small groups, develop our philosophy of ministry, and become more effective in outreach. Pray that God would go before us, give us wisdom, and enable us to speak the Gospel in meaningful ways to the students here.

Free Audio Book: Jonathan Edwards

Not a few of you will be interested in this. In addition to having an All Saints weekend sale (which expires tonight, lo siento), the good folks over at Christian Audio.com you can download the audio book of Jonathan Edwards' Religious Affections (unabridged). Fortunately, as Edwards might say(!), this offer doesn't expire tonight. During the month of November, you can download this classic work of New England spiritual theology for free. You'll need this code: NOV2007.

"God is glorified not only by His glory's being seen, but by its being rejoiced in...."

Anonymous The Coward

I hate even saying anything about this, but since "Anonymous" left the comment on my wife's blog, I feel compelled to answer. I normally don't respond to folks who leave comments but don't have the dignity or valor to back up their comments by affixing their names, but I'll make an exception here.

Here is the comment made about the Christian missionaries that was left on my wife's blog [without editing]...

protestant men dressing up as Catholic priests in a culturally Catholic country. Liars all of them. Such dishonesty should not be tolerated by those claiming to be men preachng Chirst. Deceit such as this can only be the work of the Prince of this World.

Think twice before taking on a collar! There is no need to hide you are or even by sight try to decieve the locals.

A couple observations...
1. We know that "anonymous" is a hypocrite because he said, "There is no need to hide [who] you are...." Thanks for your immaculate example.

2. Who is hiding? We are as open as we can be about who we are. Check out the websites. Read our Confession of Faith. Visit our churches. Attend our seminary classes. No one is trying to be Roman priests. Nothing is hidden.

3. Since when, "Anonymous," have you been given insight into our hearts? You charge us with deceit & dishonesty, and call us liars. Wow. Now this, to use your words, "is the work of the Prince of this world." I'm assuming that you call yourself a Christian (unless you've jettisoned that as well). So much for assuming the best about fellow believers! Have you taken the time to ask us why we do this? You may not like it, but don't attribute motives and slander us. THAT is shameful, demonic behavior.

4. Until recently, Christian ministers have always been identified by ministerial clothing, Romanists, Orthodox, & Protestant. Many Protestant ministers outside of Baptist and Pentecostal circles still "take on the collar." And there is good reason to continue this practice. For those who might care to be informed on this, the Rev. Jeff Meyers (presbyterian minister) has two excellent posts of this here and here. Again, "Anonymous," you are spouting your ignorance.

5. If you have bones to pick, leave the comments on my blog and leave my wife alone, especially if you don't have the guts to leave your name.

6. And finally, "Anonymous", you simply need to repent. And I'll be glad to post your apology along with your name and extend grace and forgiveness.

For my other readers, I'm sorry about doing this here. I have mixed feelings about doing so. I hope you understand.

Prayer Requests

* As some of you know, my father is in the middle of a battle with cancer. He is about 20 days into his first round of 26 treatments with radiation and chemotherapy, and he is fairly weakened from it. Please pray for strength, endurance, faith, & healing. It is frustrating for us to be so far away, though I may be able to travel to the US in December when he is supposed to have surgery to remove a tumor.

* While not nearly as serious (and I feel a little silly requesting this in light of what my dad is going through), I have had an upper respiratory infection since the middle of September. It bothers me mostly in the morning and at night, though I have coughing fits during the day too. Our friend from Illinois, Dr. Doolittle, examined me about two weeks ago when he was here and said that there is no evidence of pneumonia. At any rate, I have need for strength, endurance, faith, & healing as well.

* In the previous post, I mentioned my seminary in Apologetics that I'm teaching. A lot if not most of the concepts would be challenging to communicate in English, let alone Spanish. Pray for my language acquisition and continued development, and pray for my students as well that God would grant them insight, a love for the Gospel, and greater abilities to engage our culture as they participate in proclaiming the Gospel of the Kingdom of Christ.

Reformed Biblical Seminary

I want to take just a moment to get you all up to speed about our Fall semester with Reformed Biblical Seminary (or, Seminario Biblico Reformado). The semester kicked off on Sept. 30th with a convocation service at our church in Larco. My ol' friend and classmate from Texas A&M, Wes Baker (pictured to the right), preached on Jesus as our model Shepherd.

Right now we have a handful of classes. Wes is teaching Liturgics (Worship), Allen Smith is teaching Hebrew 1, Bill Bradford is teaching Greek & Reformation History, and I am teaching apologetics.

Apologetics is a course on defending the faith against objections. I am enjoying it, though it is eating my lunch! Most of my time every week is spent studying, writing out my notes, translating my notes, reviewing my translation with my conversation partner, and teaching. My Spanish is very ugly, I know, so I've told my students that part of the design of the course is to increase their sanctification, especially in the area of patience.

Speaking of our students, I have anywhere from 5-10 students, depending on the day, week, holidays, etc. Several university students sit in on the class as time permits, including one non-Christian. One of our desires is to see God raise up future ministers and campus ministers, especially from our campus ministry, so please pray accordingly.

Here is a photo from the commencement service....

From left to right: Allen Smith, Bill Bradford, Yours Truly, & Wes Baker.

Heather's post is here.