Shawi Discipleship Center

We have now been in Peru three years. In some ways it seems like it was just yesterday that we arrived yet we have seen and learned so much.   Over the past few years, we have traveled to many villages in order to encourage believers.  We have done children’s programming, medical clinics, and visited on many front porches over a bowl of chicha.  This past year, we spent 4 months living in a Shawi village to learn more about their language and culture. 

It’s been a blessing to witness the work God is doing in the Shawi church over the past few years.  One of the pastor’s we work with is realizing his call to evangelize his own people. He often travels by river and walks many hours to visit remote villages with the gospel.  Through your support, we are able to help provide fuel for him to travel.  In the last few years, he planted 7 new churches.  And there are other pastors with the same passion who are evangelizing on other river systems.

We’re so excited to see God moving and hear testimonies of lives being changed.  Throughout our travels, talking with Shawi church leadership, and spending time in the village this past year, God has laid on our hearts a need for basic level discipleship and training for new believers.  Susan, the missionary we work alongside, hosts a Bible Institute in Spanish for Shawi pastors in Yurimaguas.  However, many of the new believers are from more remote villages, only have a conversational level of Spanish, and lack basic Bible knowledge.  Some of the Shawi pastors have asked us for help in discipling these new believers. Therefore, we’re seeking to add to the training offered by introducing a basic discipleship training course, offered in Shawi, so that new believers can hear and understand the truth of God’s word in their heart language.

Since many of these communities are remote, a day by boat and then a 3-9 hour walk, bringing the pastors in to a central location will be more effective for reaching and raising up new leadership in each of these remote locations.  Missionary Ventures owns an existing property outside of Yurimaguas, that was once used for discipleship and agricultural development.  The property has been let go over the last number of years but we’re planning to rehab the facility and begin to use it to make disciples.

We hope to offer several trainings yet this year using an orality based discipleship model.  We will let the power of the Holy Spirit work as believers hear Bible stories for the first time and discover the beauty within scripture.  Our first series will go from Creation to Jesus followed by stories of Jesus himself.  We look forward to using this model and facility to offer trainings in leadership, worship, and children’s ministry as well in the future.  We will continue to travel, taking our disciples along, teaching them and watching them practice new skills.  This will provide experience to them and help encourage the local Shawi church.

First though, there is much work to be done in rehabilitating the facility.  Our first 3 obstacles to begin hosting training are lodging, water, and power.  There is a wooden house with thatch roof that can be salvaged but will need a new roof and floor boards replaced.  We hope to put in a well but will also rehab old water tanks and guttering for collecting rain water.  We will either need to put in a generator and repair wiring or purchase and install solar panels to provide power so that we can hold church service after dark.  And that is just the beginning.  Screens need repaired, roofs need replaced, and additional housing needs built.

Over time we’ll work to beautify the property, but we’d also like to begin some subsistence farming to provide both income to offset the cost of our national staff and to provide food during training cycles and for the children’s home in Yurimaguas.

We have been so blessed these past 3 years by the prayer and financial support we’ve received as well as visits of encouragement we’ve had from family, friends, and the body of Christ.  We are so excited about this direction the Lord has given us and the opportunity to go and make disciples but we cannot do it alone.  We ask you to prayerfully consider how God might be calling you to be a part of making disciples among the Shawi as well. 

Perhaps he’s calling you to pray for strength for our new believers.  This past week we learned that a leader of one of the new church plants lost his wife minutes after she gave birth to twins.  He is now a single father of 10 children.  Please pray for strength for Jaime and that he may know peace that passes all understanding. 

Perhaps God’s laid it on your heart to come and work alongside us here for a time rehabbing the discipleship training center and seeing how God is moving here first hand. We are putting together a work team to come in the summer. Let us know if you are interested.

Or perhaps he’s call you to financially support the work.  Please visit this link to give directly to the work at the Shawi Discipleship Center. 

However it is the Lord leads you, we invite you to join us as we work together to make disciples of all nations.

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