June 25th-July 1st

[Jeffrey Surrett]

Friday Saturday    Sunday        Tuesday

From children to adults (June 25th) I had the privilege of teaching the 3rd and 4th grade chapel at LMCS to start the day. It was a joy to spend a little more time with the students that I had taught for a week. We talked about how we can give God our talents, interests, motives, expectations, and time and that He will use what we give Him to bless us and others. Since one of my goals is to assist in the training of teachers, I was asked to observe several of the classes of the school and discuss some of my observations. I was able to observe five different secondary classes and then meet with the academic director of the school. I am looking forward to being able to do more of this in the future. Since we needed to drive across town, we tried to leave around 3:30pm to beat the traffic so we could be at Los Sureños for a church leaders' meeting that started at 7:00pm. It only took us about an hour and a half to get there giving us a little time to rest and eat before the meeting. The church leadership meeting went well as I challenged them to be faithful in the small things including avoiding the pirating of music, videos, and software which is commonplace in Peru. It is quite the temptation for them since they can easily buy a pirated copy of something for less than 10% of the full price but we cannot expect the blessings of God if we make excuses and refuse to do what is right. After taking some time for individual prayer, we came back together to look at the faithfulness of God. It is amazing how He is faithful towards us even when we fall so short. Second Round of Conferences (June 26th) The teachers conference started with a smaller group but then grew some as the morning progressed. In many ways, a smaller group is nice as there is more chance for interaction.  The youth conference theme for this year was about developing a biblical worldview. The teens and singles (still considered youth in Peru) were attentive as we taught about making sure that we evaluate our culture and beliefs to make sure that they match up with what the Bible teaches. Sunday Preaching (June 27th) After last year's trip to Lima, I started to receive emails from a church that I had not visited previously. It seemed to be a solid church with a good missionary vision and though I did not know anyone in the church, I was hoping to visit the church. Through a series of apparent coincidences, the Lord allowed me to meet the pastor on Tuesday and after talking to him for about two hours, I asked if I could visit the church. He said that would be fine and to come prepared with a message.  We arrived at the church at 8:45am since Sunday School started at 9:00. We found that the Sunday School teachers meet every Sunday at 8:00am for a devotional time and prayer prior to the Sunday School. All the classes start together in the main auditorium for a couple songs before dividing into their Sunday Schools. For this morning, the teen and adult Sunday School classes were combined for a message from one of their missionaries to Cuzco, Peru. After Sunday School, the church gathers in the main auditorium for the Bible quizzing contest from 10:00am to about 10:20am. Each week, the classes study a chapter of the Bible and then are given the chance to earn points by answering questions. Points are also scored with attendance and promptness with a winner declared each month.  The church is striving to build an orchestra and teach people to play various instruments. They had several people including children playing recorders, flutes, violins and a piano keyboard. They have a person in the church who gives lessons on playing the violin and they would like to see more people be able to learn. If you happen to have a violin or other instruments in working condition that you no longer use, we could possibly arrange to get them to this church. After singing a couple songs, the missionary that spoke in Sunday School showed a presentation of some of his work in Cuzco. The pastor of the church then introduced another missionary from the mountains of Peru who would be speaking in the morning service. After his message and a couple more songs, he also showed a presentation of his work. Pastor then invited me up to speak. We finished the morning service at about 12:45pm. The church was attentive to the messages and seemed like it was not out of the ordinary to be finishing at that time. It was encouraging to see a church that is growing and seems interested to study the Word of God. For the evening service, we were back at Los Sureños for an evangelistic emphasis meeting. The church is divided into four groups with each group working at bringing in visitors for the evening service. They have these special evangelistic meetings the last Sunday night of each month. After general congregational singing and after each group presented a special song to the congregation, we had the message time. I spoke about how as in the days of Noah, God would be coming back to judge the earth. I taught about God's holiness, but also His mercy and His long-suffering. After the message, there were 4 salvation decisions including one teenage girl whose grandmother had brought her and who came up to me afterwards and told me that the angles in heaven were celebrating because her granddaughter had been saved. As iron sharpens iron (June 28th) I had the opportunity to meet with a group of 8 Peruvian pastors to discuss the state of the local church in Lima. I wanted to find out from them what they were observing in the churches, what they would consider helpful from a missionary coming into Lima, and what obstacles to avoid. We had a good discussion with them for about three hours. One of the things that they requested was either additional training in certain areas or access to more resources such as good books that would help them to continue to develop as pastors. These pastors have a genuine desire to serve the Lord and to grow spiritually but their financial resources are very limited and books are relatively expensive. We have therefore established a library where we will try to stock good Christian books for them to use. Some books are great to read once or twice and then pass along. For these kinds of books we would like to buy two copies and keep them in the library. Other books are good to have on hand for more continual reference. For these, we would like to buy them in a larger quantity and allow the pastors to keep them. If you have any suggestions for good Christian books that have helped you (especially if you know that they are available in Spanish) please email me your suggestions. If you would like to contribute funds towards the purchase of books for the pastors, please also email me.  Teaching faithful servants who will be able to teach others (June 29th) One of the local churches schedules a retreat once a year for many of its church leaders. This would include any ushers, Sunday school teachers, deacons, pastors, and a few others. As part of the retreat, my Peruvian hosting pastor and I were asked to teach and preach a total of six sessions. I was responsible for three of the sessions speaking about making decisions based on biblical precepts and principles, being faithful in the small things, and evangelism. It was encouraging to see that they had made a special time and effort to grow as church leadership to be able to guide the church more effectively. Oh yeah, I need to do that too. (June 30th) As we finished up our trip, I had to finish a couple computer projects for a couple missionary families, clean up and pack our stuff. We were also able to spend a little more time with our host missionary family and eat dinner with them all before heading to the airport.  This night was a test of patience, and godly character. I drove the car that I had rented for the last week of our stay to the airport. It took over 2 hours to drive the 20 miles to the airport. We then got to stand in line for 50 minutes to get our boarding passes and check in our luggage. After spending 30 minutes with one of the pastors and his family who had come to see us off, we had to head back through security. Passing through security went fairly quickly, but then we had to stand in line for another 40 minutes to get through immigration. We were ready to be heading home.  Run first; breathe later (July 1st) Our flight from Lima to Atlanta was uneventful and both JD and I were able to get some sleep in spurts. Our problem was that we did not have a very long layover before our scheduled departure to Dulles and our plane arrived in Atlanta 20 minutes late. We then had to go through immigration, pick up our luggage, go through customs, drop off luggage, go through security again and then get to our gate. There was a group of 18 people on the plane with us that were also trying to make the connection. I was hopeful that the plane would wait for us since there was such a large number of people who needed to make the connection. I was partially right. They did wait, for a little while.  JD and I had to run through the airport and arrived to the gate about 2 minutes after the scheduled departure time. We made it onboard. Half of the other group made it as well but then they closed the door about 8 minutes after we made it on to the plane stranding the other half of the group. We praise the Lord that he allowed us to make it. Back to normal Thank you for your prayers for us on this trip. We do thank the Lord for helping us to make further contacts for ministry, develop some deeper relationships, acquire a deeper understanding of the Peruvian education system, and see some fruit of our labors with some salvation decisions. Please continue praying for us as we would like to get to the field on a full-time basis as quickly as possible. We are aiming for next year in June or July to head back down with our whole family to stay.

Sending Church Emmanuel Baptist Church 4681 East Trindle Rd. Mechanicsburg, PA 17050 717-761-7000 www.ebc-ebca.org

Contact Information 225 Gettysburg Pike Mechanicsburg, PA 17055 717-791-9116 www.surrett.org je...@surrett.org

Mission Agency Open Door Baptist Missions 1115 Pelham Road Greenville, SC 29615-3603 864-297-7890 www.odbm.org