I’ve been busy dealing with ants…
At least a 2m2 area of a wall was covered in ants carrying their eggs. I couldn’t get the camera to focus on the whole wall, so these are small portions of it. When I say there was an invasion of ants, I’m not exaggerating!
But I’ve been busy with other activities as well. Thanks for praying for Fortaleciendo Relaciones, the evangelistic event. There were three new people (all three started coming to church), five repeats from other FR events, twenty-two people from Piura Norte (PN) who participated, and Barry Wallace, who gave an excellent presentation. Unfortunately the PN leadership has decided to cancel this event. Please pray that they will be motivated to pursue other ways to reach the lost.
I’ve been teaching the Wordless Book (plan of salvation) in the Children’s Class. If any of the class hasn’t received Christ as Lord and Saviour, please pray that they will. The majority have indicated that they are believers, so please pray for their growth and for boldness to share the Gospel with family and friends.
Last Sunday my class prepared a puppet drama and presented it to the younger children.
For several months, I’ve been encouraging the PN people to prepare their salvation testimonies and to share them with unsaved friends. That has been slow, but a few people have started working with me to prepare them. Karina is the first to write her testimony and the first to organize a meeting to share her testimony. We purposefully planned her birthday celebration to share about her spiritual birthday with her friends. Please pray for more of the PN people to catch the vision, to prepare and to look for ways to share their faith.
October 23 was the first meeting of the PN Ladies’ Bible Study! I think the ladies of the group are as excited as I am about this time to study God’s Word together. Karina, Ana Rosa and Olimpia are working with me in the organization of it and I’m teaching Romans. We were off to a good start with seven ladies from the church and two unsaved friends.
The next week we had eight PN ladies and this week we had ten PN ladies. Karina leads the ladies in a prayer time for their children as they arrive. I have an individual study first thing, so I arrive at the end of the prayer time. We then have a short ice-breaker activity followed by an hour of teaching and then we share as we enjoy a fruit salad. It encourages me to see all the ladies taking copious notes and to have them actively participating with their questions and observations. After class this week I also saw several ladies exchanging phone numbers and heard others making plans to get together, so the goal of the ladies of PN getting to know each other is being met. Please pray for continued unity in the group and for spiritual growth to be taking place.
You can see what the new locale is like in the photos. The first two weeks we met downstairs, but due to several interruptions, we moved up to the room of the children’s class. If the group continues to grow, we’ll soon outgrow that room!
I forgot to tell you that I was the Global Woman Highlight in September in Connection, the on-line magazine of a ministry to missionary women called Thrive. You can check it out at http://thriveconnection.com/2013/09/12/global-woman-highlight-brenda-matthews/
Another new activity for me is that I’ve started preparing the videos we use in the worship time. It’s time consuming, but I enjoy it. I’ve been combining those new skills with my photos to prepare interesting announcements for Sunday mornings about the ladies’ Bible study Wednesday mornings. That’s been fun.
A final prayer request: November 12th I’ll meet my local and international area directors in Lima and we’ll travel together to Chile. Please pray for the Lord to make His will clear on the trip. Hopefully I’ll have more to write about that next month.
Depending on the Lord together with you,
Brenda
