For those of you that do not receive our email updates, here is a portion of our recent report: Mother’s day is one of the most celebrated and important holidays in Peru. Families make special plans to travel home to see mother. Children spend hours in school practicing poems and songs for elaborate programs. Flowers, balloons, candies and special gifts for mom are on sale on nearly every corner. We decided to take advantage of the day and started planning several weeks in advance. The children prepared several special songs, poems and an acrostic message. Then three days this week we opened up the church for the children to come in and prepare a special card for their mother. Each day the kids were given an invitation to take home for their family. We prepared a special gift for each mother and prayed that at least a few would show up. When it was time for church to start not a single seat was available in our tiny building. We ended up with a total of 55 people. (That was made up of 20 mothers, 26 kids, and 9 men.) It was great to see the Lord’s house filled with people.
One highlight of the day came just after the service was complete. A mother came up and wanted to thank us all for working with her son. She told us that her son had been disobedient and unruly since he was a baby. She commented that he would never listen to anyone, especially his parents. “I don’t know what you did with all of these children, but I don’t want my son to miss out! He obeys at home and is a different child.” We thanked her for entrusting her son to us each Sunday afternoon. It is exciting that he is not the only child that has started behaving. Before, we could have never allowed the children to stay in the church for the preaching part of the service. Today they all sat up front and were completely silent. We were super proud of all of our kids today! In a few weeks we’ll start getting ready to do it all over again for Father’s Day!
