This post is by Janie Davis:

It is so hard to put into words what Alex, me, and our team at Iglesia Shalom have experienced this week. So many blessings!!! Pastor Richard Vela came forward after the other churches for this campaign had been identified. He said he had never worked with Moth American missionaries at his church before. It was a very rewarding experience for our team that were so excited about evangelizing their community. Last night we participated in the town square. The Mayor welcomed us as well as a pastors from some other churches. We had a block party and Don Jones preached. Around 250 people of this town of about 510 showed up. What a blessing! I pray that this will encourage a spirit of cooperation and teamwork among the Christian churches in the town. Today my team did some prayer walking as we walked between houses to make some follow-up visits. I can sense God working in this community and encouraging the team and believers in the community so that more people will come to Christ. Also, that new believers will be encouraged to grow and be discipled. I am looking forward to hearing what God has done when we communicate with Pastor Richard and his flock at Iglesia Shalom. They have been such a blessing to me. To God be the glory. Gloria Dios!!!

Janie Davis

This is a post by Alex Ryals:

God is so good! This week he has revealed to me that my reasons for coming on this trip were not his reasons. I was coming to get that joyous feeling of winning souls to Christ, but I learned that God wanted me here to simply plant seeds. I have been working with Janie Davis in the remote village of Rumisapa all week and we have not been able to convey to these people how much God loves them. There is much spiritual warfare going on and I have been getting very discouraged. We had a rally last night in the town square and half of the town shoed up (250 of 500), but not one person prayed to receive Christ. I started to wonder why we were here. Last night as I lay in my bed, God gave me a peace that we were not here to win souls for Jesus, but to plant the seeds that would be harvested by someone else. I was finally content with that answer.

Today, we went back to Rumisapa for a short visit in the morning and we spent that time doing follow-up and discipleship visits. The pastor asked us to be back at his house at 12:30pm for lunch and good-byes before the car came at 2pm. My team finished our second visit at 12:25pm and I told them it was time to head back to the pastor’s house. One of my team members, Luis, said that we had to visit one more house. I told him that we didn’t have time and needed to head back. He insisted that we needed to walk across town and up a hill to visit an old man. I started to say no again, but God gave me a quiet whisper that said to go. When we walked into the house, there were pictures of Jesus all over the walls and I thought to my self that we were wasting our time because he already knew Jesus. As we talked, it turned out that this man knew a lot about the Bible. He answered almost every question we asked correctly. I was thinking that we needed to wrap it up, but God told me to keep going. Finally, I realized that I was assuming this man was a Christian, so I asked him. He responded that he had never asked Jesus into his heart because he had many illnesses and thought that Jesus gave him this pain as punishment for his sins. I was able to share some scripture with him and show him that God loves him and wants to take care of him and not harm him. In the end, he asked if he could pray with me to ask Jesus into his heart. After the prayer, he was very excited. I almost cried.

I am ashamed that I was discouraged earlier in the week because our trip didn’t seem to be going according to my plans. After I confessed that to God, he was gracious enough to allow me to see a small part of his plan for this village. It is definitely true when the Bible says that “His ways are higher than our ways”.

Finally!!!! Internet!!!!

Sorry about the lack of posts, but the internet here has been down since Tuesday morning...


This testimony is from my translator Jhon:

Hello everyone,

My name is Jhon and I’m from Tarapoto, Peru. This week I’ve spent a unforgettable experience. Many times I have worked as a translator here in Tarapoto in order to get some money to pay my studies at the university, I met a lot of different kinds of people. In my earlier life, I used to “enjoy” drinking beer, smoking a lot and doing a lot of things that were bad for me, but at the very moment my friend Joshua Slater came to my house and asked me to work as a translator with some Americans, my life changed. It didn’t change very fast, my friend Paul talked to me about the God’s word and I just listened to him, but I couldn’t understand at that moment what he tried to teach me. I remember that my friend Jacob, although at the beginning he wasn’t very talkative, started to have a good friendship with me and told me that God loves me too. I remember my friend Debbie. She talked to me about her past and showed me that if I accepted Jesus in my heart I would live life as funny and happy as she does. Pastor Edmundo, his wife, Hector, and my dear friend Karen were part of God’s work. So I don’t have any words to express this, but I want to share with you, I ACCEPTED GOD as my savior. I don’t know what I’ll do in the future, but I give my life to Him in order for Him to lead me.

That’s it.
Thank you Paul, Jacob, Debbie, Edmundo, Sofia, Karen and everyone!!!
Thank you God!!!

This is a post from Josephine Roberts:

Today was a great day. With the help of The Holy Spirit I led my first person to Christ. It was so awesome for someone to say “yes”, when asked the key question. Last May, Carrie Ruiz and my husband, Jack, reached out to a very special child with ‘downs syndrome’. Jack asked his mother if he could give Pablo a “Beanie Baby”. She said yes. Pastor Javier had seen Carmen and her son near the plaza several times this summer and told her the team from Alabama would be back in September. He asked if we could come visit her then. We went this morning and she welcomed us into her modest home. After Jack shared his testimony, I presented the most simple gospel using the Evangecube. I was so excited when she said yes to Jesus. God will use ordinary common people to do His work if we will just say “Yes Lord”! Doris, thanks for the Beanie Babies!

This is a post from Jackie Spann and Neal Blackwelder:

God is at work in Tarapoto, Peru!!! As we arrived in this beautiful city I knew something grand was going to happen. It’s just Monday night and I already have so many stories to share. Yesterday was a very long, hot day. Neal and I were on the mountain from 9:30 am until 9:30pm walking much of that time in the heat (I praise God that I had been conditioning at home.) We were in a home for a discipleship visit going over the first 3 lessons when a boy brought in a lady who we discovered had not received Chirst. Before the visit was over the young lady we were discipling had the opportunity to lead her own sister to Christ.

Last night, during our worship service, Neal was demonstrating how to use the evangecube. The Holy Spirit told him to ask if anyone would like to receive Christ and of the 35 present, 12 people came forward to receive Christ. What a blessing!

Please continue to pray for us that we will be used and that God will be glorified!

Some more videos...

Here is a video of the mountains that I saw while flying from Lima to Tarapoto, Peru...

God is Good!!!

When we got to the Tarapoto airport, we had the choice of riding in the cramped vans or the open air spaceous motocars. Me and Alex decided to ride the motocars...

It was crazy... People here don't understand the word "YEILD"... But we got to the hotel amazingly unharmed.

Here is a more detailed view of the hotel...

They actually close the gate at night time and the hotel tunrs into a sort of fortress...aka "one way in and one way out". In a weird way it makes you feel safe...

This is a video of the "congregational singing" that took place at my group's church...

Later they started to sing songs with a drum made of sheep skin (with the hair still on it) and a cow bell... It was very earthy sounding.

The kids at our church were having sunday school while we were having church... They wanted us to go meet them...


Paul was asked to say something to the church... What he said was supposed to be a testimony turned into a full out preachin'...

I would say he got a little worked up... Way to go Paul :-)

We have arrived at the Hotel Las Orquideas... It is very nice and the view is magnificent. It goes to show you how good our God really is!!!


(This is the view from my room)

Well we have made it to Lima, Peru... It seemed like everything was tring to go against us. First the flight from Atlanta was delayed. Then the flight from Miami was delayed. And when we finally got onto the runway in Miami it started to rain. So we sat there for a couple hours then we were off. When we got to Lima, Peru it seemed like all of the planes that were comming into Peru were delayed and they all decided to arrive at the airport at the same time, so the Immigration and Customs lines were packed. After about an 1 1/2 hours we finally got through the airport and started to the hotel. Now when we got to the hotel, after a ¨minor¨ detor, it was about 2:00AM on Saturday...


Here´s a video of the trip up here...



I´ll post more when we get to Tarapoto...