The following is a request for prayer from one of HeartCry’s missionaries serving in the mountains of Peru. The Lord has opened up a number of doors for this brother to come alongside struggling churches with biblical counsel and guidance. Pray for this missionary’s efforts and for the building up of the church in Peru’s mountains:
I write you to ask you to join in praying for the few, small churches that are in the mountains surrounding our city, most of them about two hours away. Some are without leadership and biblically disoriented. Lovelessness is prevalent in some of them. In others, there is tolerance for sin among the members. The lack of forgiveness is also characteristic of many of these churches. Add to all of this the limited biblical knowledge that they have.
Nonetheless, there are others, though still small and isolated, that despite the scarcity of available resources and ministry training, are churches that model the fruit of the Spirit. They love one another and persevere in the things that they know about the Bible. They don’t have great understanding, but in what they do know they are faithful, zealous, and firm. Above all, they love God with much fear and trembling.
One of these churches asked me to come and encourage them with the word. I traveled nearly two hours up the mountain, on a path that seemed more like a motocross course than a road! In this church I found a pastor that is very simple and humble. This man doesn’t know what a Bible commentary is, but he teaches the Scriptures verse by verse faithfully. I have found him to be very teachable and I ask you to pray for him.
This pastor awakened in me the idea of coming alongside and helping other men in the congregation that are actively teaching in the church (though they are very few). I plan to help them learn to use biblical resources like a basic Bible dictionary, a commentary, and some concordance—resources that really are indispensable for the ministry. With this basic bundle of resources, as I find men that are actively engaged in teaching ministries in the mountains, I can donate these books and teach them how to use them. This is really necessary. Rather than just donating books to any pastor that will take them, I prefer to give them only on an individual basis to those that I know will use them, after I have seen his commitment to seriously study and prepare to teach God’s word to the church. That way, I know that any donated book will be put to use in the edification of the church.
