Donations Bring Fruit

Dear Family and Friends,

Greetings in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.  I am sure that many of you have seen the reports that Peru is in first place when it comes to deaths per capita from COVID.  One older brother from the church died from COVID a few weeks ago.  About the same time an elder from one the churches in Colca also died from COVID.  These men loved the Lord and were both well advanced in years.  Several others have gotten sick but almost all have recovered as far as I know.  The number of new deaths in Peru is dropping every day.  As of the first of September, all the stores in Arequipa have been given permission to open.  I’ve even seen some restaurants that have opened their dining rooms.  We still have curfew for some odd reason and Sundays are still more restricted as far as leaving the house.  I never have figured that one out.  Curfew now starts a 10 pm instead of 8 pm.  We are planning on doing two more, maybe 3 more donations, and then we will be done with that.  The people are returning back to work and we don’t want to be a crutch.  It has been a very difficult time for almost everyone here and who knows when the economy will recover.  But we want to thank each and everyone of you that gave for those donations.  It was a real blessing and gave us the legal means for visiting the people.

We have seen some fruit from our donation ministry.  Two boys from La Molina have trusted In Jesus.  Their mom and their younger siblings have told us that they are behaving themselves.  The two boys have told us that although they still struggle with saying bad words occasionally, they don’t say them like they used to and they always feel guilty when one slips out and run to God asking for forgiveness.  They’ve even started giving thanks to God before eating.  Their names are Jefferson (11) and Jeyson (9).   Please pray for them as their family life is not very good.

Back in 2017 before I got married, I had a Bible study in my apartment with Julian and Angela helping out.  One of the persons that attended was Noemi.  She was somewhat interested in baptism but then kind of fell away.  Because of COVID, she started listening to the messages I was transmitting and Julian visited here once or twice.  Through that, she decided to get baptized.  Julian and I talked with her and it was obvious to see here desire to be right with God and follow Jesus in baptism.  Last Saturday we baptized her and one other young man that Bob Rich had talked with.  What a blessing.

This week, Jeronimo and I went to Cancosani with a food donation and to share the gospel.  There were about 30-40 people present and everyone, kids included, listened to the gospel for 30 minutes without wiggling, talking, walking around, etc.   You might say that was a small miracle.  Jeronimo shared his testimony with them challenging them to take heed to the message.  We would like to go back there and maybe have a day of preaching with them.  They seemed genuinely interested and informally invited us back.

Angela and I both need glasses and she needs to finish her dental treatment.  We hope that now that Arequipa is relaxing a little, that we can get these things done and out of the way.  We also want to start up the home Bible study again.  It would be against the law, so pray that we would have wisdom in that.  We also would like to start up the Bible study in Rosario (Uchumayo) again so pray for that also.  All church meetings, family gatherings, etc. are still prohibited in Peru.  That being said, live streaming messages are not prohibited and so I continue transmitting 3 days a week through Facebook live.  I also help out the church by transmitting the service every Sunday morning.  Basically the brothers send me recorded videos and I organize it all and then transmit it out as a live broadcast.

Finish Strong,
Jeff and Angela Anderson