Dancing for the Lord!

I wanted to share with you about a new and fun outreach at our Larco Church. Chris and Marti Bolton, along with their three children, joined us in Trujillo about 5 months ago. Chris is one of the missionaries sphere-heading the Parish Woodshop project. His wife Marti was a modern dance teacher in TN before moving to Peru. Her passion for dance along with her desire to share the love of Christ inspired her to offer a free dance class in our Larco Church.
So, every Saturday she clears the pews back, puts up her mirrors and welcomes 20 excited girls (including Abigail and 7 other missionary chics). Most of these girls would never be able to afford to take dance class, nor would their parents consider entering the church doors.Marti prays with them and invites them to church each week and some of the girls show up to Sunday School without their parents.
Please pray with us that this would be a way of connecting some of the neighborhood families to the church.
So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.
1 Corinthians 10:31

Smith Funnies

Our girls are just getting to the age where they say many funny things. Everyday we catch ourselves saying, "I need to write that down." So we have written some of the most recent funnies at the Smith family household:

• The other night I was putting Adeline to bed. Sometimes I give her an Eskimo kiss (nuzzling noses) and then a butterfly kiss (fluttering your eye lashes against another cheek). As I was leaving her room, she said, "And the tongue too, daddy!"

• Sometimes we sing the Gloria Patri at the breakfast table as a family. One morning as we reached the climax of the song, we discovered that Abbie had been singing "world without men! Amen, Amen!" instead of "world without end". We're wondering if our daughter is a proto-feminist. Nah, she likes boys too much.

• During family worship, Allen was explaining the seriousness of sin; how just one sin condemns to hell. We were so proud of our four year old, who was listening and looking so intently at her daddy, until she said, "Booger, daddy. You've got a booger in your nose."

We'll try to keep writing things down.

Our Short-Term Team Ministry

One of Allen's many ministries here in Peru is his role as short-term team administrator. We are thankful to have so many partnering churches that desire to come down and serve our churches and mission. Our friend Ronald Rojas (pictued left, his wife Alicia holding baby daughter named Sandi Allen) is a great example of a relationship started through a visiting group.

When Craig Morgan came to Trujillo in 2006 he struck up a friendship with Ronald, a very personable taxi driver. Ronald took Craig and the team to their job site each day and even though their time together was short, Craig was able to encourage him to start attending church. The Lord used the church and other short term teams to begin to change Ronald’s life. In the past 2 years we have seen Ronald become a husband, a faithful church attender, and an advocate for his church-led Bible study. We are so thankful for the work and the long lasting impact that short term teams have here in Peru.

The effect of short term teams almost always goes well beyond the specific project that they are working on, as is evidenced in the life of Ronald. Consider these examples of the various blessings that come to each party involved when a team or individual takes a short term trip to work with Peru Mission:

For the visiting churches:
-A vision for world Christianity is broadened and deepened.
-God uses trips to call the brethren to deeper commitments to their local church ministry.
-Worshiping in a cross cultural context is edifying to God’s elect from every nation and is a foretaste of the age to come.

For the receiving Peruvian churches:
-Construction projects greatly enhance the infrastructure.
-VBS and lectures at universities open new doors for evangelism and discipleship.
-A connection between two churches is created with our hope being that each Peruvian church would have a sister church in the United States where both can receive mutual blessing.

For Peru Mission:
-More people pray for our work and our families.
-We get to know our supporting churches much better and increase the feeling that we are an extension of their ministry.
-Potential missionaries and interns are recruited.

Thank you to our visiting teams from this past summer:

Redeemer Presbyterian (Austin, Texas)
All Saints Presbyterian (Austin, Texas)
First Presbyterian (Jackson, Mississippi)
Trinity Presbyterian (Statesboro, Georgia)
Plains Presbyterian (Zachary, Louisiana)
Second Presbyterian (Greenville, South Carolina)
Redeemer Presbyterian (Newport Beach, California)
Colleyville Presbyterian (Colleyville, Texas)

Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.
1 Corinthians 15:58

Please Pray for our Parish Furniture project!

Several years of planning and several months of on the ground implementation have led the Parish woodshop project to a critical point. When Chris Bolton and Brad Ball began raising funds for this project, they followed the advice of several experienced Christian businessmen and decided to raise only enough to get the project going and test its validity. Once the facility was up and running, and it became clear that the project was viable, Chris and Brad would raise the additional funds needed to reach self-sustainability. They are now to that point and need your prayers. This video put together by David Johnson, gives a great overview of the project:

From September 3rd through September 14th, Chris, Brad, and furniture designer/builder Don Charlet will be meeting with potential donors in the cities of Charlotte, Knoxville, Nashville, Chattanooga, Jackson, Dallas, and the Austin area. They will have several beautiful samples of the work currently being produced in the facility and will give updates on their progress to date.

Please pray that they will raise the needed funds to continue this project.

Happy 6th Birthday Abigail

To celebrate Abigail's 6th birthday, we held a Kid Talent Show at our house inviting 24 missionary kids and a Peruvian friend or two. It was a blast and the kids came well prepared and ready to show their stuff. We had about 15 different and impressive talents and a very gracious audience. We also had a very lively M.C. (Daddy) direct the show. Take a look at the slide show below to get a glimse of the fun evening. You can slide your curser over the bottom of each picture to pause the slide show and view details of the photo.

A special thanks to Jamey Elkin and Eric & Lora Karraker for being our celebrity judges! And our backstage/curtain crew, Jonathan and Jacob Eby - we couldn't have done it without you all!