Through the eyes of a child.....

So today Carmen made this awesome video. It is her outlook of what the last year in our family has been like. What an amazing gift to see our journey through her eyes. To see what matters most to her. I see family, friends, animals, and lots and lots of joy, laughter, and smiles. Through all our worries and struggles of the past year...this is what stands out. I love this amazing girl and am humbled by her  daily. I also love the song she chose to explain this video...Appreciated! Please watch this video and enjoy our journey through her eyes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGtOHbOJ1Rk

Jungle update

It’s been quite a while since we have made any updates here, so here goes to fixing that problem. At the end of last week Amy and I (Joel) came down with some sort of stomach flu type thing that had us both captive to either the bed or the bathroom. I am feeling much better now and Amy seemed to be on the mend also until BAM! Yesterday she seemed to have been struck again. We’re hoping this time its only for the day. Carmen took it all in stride and continued to do her schoolwork, and help take care of her sick parents. We love that girl’s independence.

There is a vocational institute here in Nauta that teaches different classes such as tourism, secretarial, and agricultural, as well as other trades. Part of the tourism class is that they teach the students English. We were invited by the teacher and have begun to help teach the English part of this class. Along with us helping teach English the teacher has agreed to work with us on our Spanish.

Our prayer for the youth center has been that other people would catch our vision for reaching the youth here in Nauta and if this were going to happen it would need to be done through local people. In other words we have a building you can use, we can help with the program, but culturally we need help to come up with a program that will work for them. Well, This Saturday there is a team of 20 youth coming out from a church in Iquitos to put on an event for the youth here in Nauta. They plan on showing up here around 2pm and will head out into the town to round up and invite the youth to come. The program will begin at 5 and run for approximately 1 ½ hrs. This is a huge blessing and a direct answer to prayer. They’re bringing the program, we’re providing the building.

October Newsletter

So we finally got our newsletter completed! Click on the link below to read how God is using Junglemaster here in Peru.

McGee October Newsletter

Oasis Youth Center

It was a few days before the lease agreement was to be signed. We were praying that God would continue to open doors and that his will be done. Our good friend Keny randomly showed up for a visit and I started telling Keny about the possibility of renting the building and our ideas of a youth center there.  I told him we weren’t quite sure where God was leading with the use of the building but we were positive God wanted us to pursue renting it. Keny then proceeded to tell me about two churches that he works with in Iquitos; he knew they would be excited about partnering with us in this. His idea was that they could send youth from their churches for overnight “short term missions” to put on events and help get the youth of Nauta excited about this. I told him I thought this was a great idea but lets not say anything to anybody until I have the lease agreement signed and in my hands. Well Keny got a little excited about all this and went back to Iquitos and started talking to the pastors. The next day I received this message from him “I Just talked with Pastor Alcides my friend from Manantial de Bendiciones, a church in front of The University UCP next to San Juan Municipality, he likes the idea to go with his youth ministry and do programs in your place. He would like to go every week ... Si, I will try to connect another 3 churches,  we will have many teams to Help you!”

This morning I was drinking my morning coffee and just spending some quiet time with God, when I heard his quiet voice. This fits perfectly with the vision of Junglemaster (to train up leaders and pastors so that they can take the Word deep into the jungle to reach the lost). I had missed this part when I was envisioning a youth center. Let’s stop and think about this for a minute; the church of Iquitos sending young missionaries to Nauta to reach the lost youth of Nauta. The youth of Nauta getting trained to be leaders and missionaries and sending mission teams to the villages on the river to reach the kids there. Then those youth taking what they have learned even deeper in the jungle.

We feel that training current leaders and pastors is extremely important so that correct doctrine can be taught. We are also starting to see that if we want the cultural cycles to stop we need to be focused on empowering and training the youth. Teaching them the Bible and why it’s not ok to continue the cycle of sex, drugs and violence. Teach them that through Christ there are ways to be released of this bondage that a lot of them are trapped in. Show them the peace that they can have through the love and grace only Christ can give us.

Do you want to partner with us too? We are excited and ready to get things moving! You can be a part of this also in so many ways. Have you ever wanted to come to the jungle, are you one that has felt the calling to go on a mission trip and just haven’t been sure where to go? I ask you to seriously pray and ask God if this is where he may want you to go to get involved and see the hand of God at work. We also believe that this area needs to be in constant prayer, we believe we are starting to see huge changes because we know this area is being washed in prayer but we believe with more prayer poured over this area we will see even more changes, so please partner with us in daily prayers that the enemies strong hold on this area will be lifted.  Maybe Gods prompting you to partner financially, if you feel God prompting you to partner financially you can go to our Junglemaster blog page http://www.junglemaster.blogspot.com where there is a paypal link, or you can also find the Junglemaster address at the blog and mail a check. Most importantly though we ask you to pray and really ask God where God wants you to partner with us in doing his work. I also might suggest you ask God for courage to partner with us, God asks us to step out in faith and that takes courage, and the only place to get this courage is through him, by asking him for it.

God Bless you, your missionaries in the jungles of Peru.

Carmen's room

So as you can imagine; we were a tad bit happy that Carmen has her own room now.  After six months of sharing a room; it was time. But, we didn't realize just how happy Carmen was until we found this little video on Joel's phone. Thought I would share....