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Several weeks ago, I had the pleasure of traveling to Peru. The purpose of my trip was to minister to and provide training for the Book of Hope leadership team from that country. The training I provided was related to how to use The GodMan most effectively to reach the children and youth of this country.
In Peru, the responsibilities for executing the ministry objectives of the national Book of Hope program are divided among 18 coordinators. Each of these coordinators is responsible for a region of the country. They live in that region and preach at a church in that region. Many of them have broader responsibilities for groups of pastors and churches in their region of the country. These men are leaders within their region and within their church denomination.
While my purpose in Peru was to provide ministry and training to these pastors, the reality of this trip was that they ministered to me and taught me far more than I ever could have provided to them. First, although I am an outsider who can speak the language very weakly, these men accepted me into their fellowship without restriction. They welcomed me warmly and made me to feel as if I were one with them. For four days, we worked side by side learning from and teaching each other about new ministry tools and the reality of ministry in Peru.
One of my favorite experiences was being able to bring the Word of God to these men and the support team from the Book of Hope Peru office. For three mornings, I was permitted to share a message from God's word. My focus on the three day series was acknowledging that our call to ministry required work, work that was hard, work that required courage, but work that would reap a great harvest. The first day's message - Your Faith Will Be Shown - taught me that verbal images that may work well in the USA, do not always transfer well to other countries and languages. Nevertheless, in spite of my missteps and errors on that first day, the series went very well. The series was very well received; with the focus of the second day's message relating to the courage required to do what God has called us to do, and the third day's message focusing on defeating the attacks of Satin as we pursue God's call to ministry.
My Spanish language skills are good enough that I could set down at the dinner table with these pastors and spend about 80% of our conversation time without the assistance of a translator. However, when preaching the Word and teaching, my skills are not nearly strong enough. I was blessed to have the aid of two translators in Peru, Daniel and Debra. The picture here is of Debra helping me to share the testimonies from The GodMan as we tested it around the world in 2005. One of those testimonies was from Buenos Aires.
Buenos Aires was the location of our premier of the Spanish dub of The GodMan. Tens of thousands of copies of The Book of Hope were distributed throughout the city during the week preceding the premier. Thousands of those books included an invitation to the movie premier. On the night of this first showing, our ministry team in Buenos Aires was unsure how many would actually show up. They church they were using could hold 3,000, but they truly had no clue about the number of children and families who would attend. You see, Buenos Aires is spiritually a very cold city. While many people claim to be Christians, very few of them have any kind of personal relationship with Jesus Christ. If you ask them why they are a Christian, they will answer that they are one because their mom was one or their grandmother was a Christian. However, they most likely have never taken a step toward accepting Christ as their Lord.
I shared this with the pastor's from Peru. I shared that over 600 children and parents had given their hearts to the Lord that evening. I shared how thousands in the Philippines had accepted Christ in schools and on playgrounds. I shared how tens of thousands had accepted Christ during evangelistic outreaches centered on The GodMan in Africa. Then I showed them this picture. I pointed out eight-year-old Anael Carryzo. Anael is the girl in the red jacket with her hands cupped over her mouth. I shared with the Pastors how Anael had never been in a church in her life and that this was a fact for her mother as well. I shared that Anael watched the entire movie intently, expressing shock when Jesus was being punished for our sins; shock to the point of tears just after this picture was taken. Then I shared how she was one of the 600 who gave her heart to the Lord at the close of the service.
This story of Anael became the focus of my closing message on Friday morning. I had not planned to deliver the closing message. This was something that Sylvia Walker, our regional coordinator for all of Latin America, was planning to deliver. However, Sylvia had become very ill the day before, so the closing became my responsibility.
At the closing message, I challenged the pastors not to be complacent about reaching the children in their region of Peru. I challenged them to be aggressive and creative in their work. I then challenged them not to think of this as a task to will 10.5 million children for Jesus. Although that is how many children and youth this team will attempt to reach over the next few years. My challenge for them was simpler. I challenged them to win one more for Jesus. I challenged them to find an Anael in their community and win her for Christ. I challenged them to wake up each day and say, "Today, I will win one more Anael for Jesus.” I challenged them to recommit to this each hour, to pour themselves into winning just one more every minute, to contemplate how they might be a part of winning one more Anael for Jesus each and every second of every day until all 10.5 million children in Peru have been reached. And I challenged them never to forget that no matter how hard the work may become, no matter how successful they may become at doing that work, their task is a simple one...to take the love of Jesus to one more child…to win one more Anael for Jesus. And if we all do this together, we will be successful at winning the country of Peru for Jesus, and not just this one country, but the entire world.
I want to challenge you in this same way. Will you join with us to win one more Anael for Jesus? Will you accept the challenge to commit a day, an hour, a minute, or even a second to bringing in the harvest one Anael at a time? Will you commit your time? Will you commit your money? Will you, like these pastors in Peru, commit your life to this work?
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