Rich & Ramona Wagner

Do you ever think that your life is totally out of control?  I like to be in control of my schedule and what I will do each day.  An old expression says, “Man makes plans, and God laughs!”  Ministry opportunities are coming so fast here that it’s hard for us to keep up with any kind of a schedule.  We went a week without any water.  Mechanical things broke.  People keep coming to the door or work project and want to talk.  Plans constantly change.  Aren’t you glad God is in control of ALL things?  He is never surprised or unprepared.  He is our strength and our daily planner!

Greetings from rainy, dreary Cusco Peru!  It is summer and rainy season here so we have rain every day, usually when we are out and about trying to get things done.

It seems like we just wrote, but I see it has been a month or so.  Time is just flying by, with so much going on.  I’ll start with our baby girl.

Evelyn Toque Blanco is the first baby we have taken into the Josephine House, our refuge for unwanted or abandoned children.  She was born at least 2 weeks early and her 14-year-old mother couldn’t care for her.  She weighed just 5.5 pounds.  She was too small to even have the newborn shots she needed.

Now three months old, she has doubled her weight and is doing very well physically.  You can see old and new pictures of her on our Photobucket page.  We have just updated it with about a dozen new pictures.  Here is the address:

http://s227.photobucket.com/albums/dd146/WagnersinPeru/

Evelyn is being cared for by Emelio and Gregoria, a Christian couple who take care of the Josephine House, with close oversight by Grammy Ramona.

Recent giving to the House has allowed us to install the water system, finish buying furniture and prepare the House for more tenants.  We still need cabinets built and installed in the kitchen and living areas, but we are ready to accept up to 12 babies right now.  Ramona has been working constantly with the furnishings,  construction and legal work of the Josephine House.  She is the Vice President of the legal governmental entity of the House.

The same week we accepted Evelyn, the police found three drowned babies in the local river.  Throwing them in the river or leaving them in a remote field for predators are the two main ways unwanted babies are dealt with.  Just this week I stopped two employees from playing catch with a skull they found while digging a foundation for us.  The lack of concern for babies or for the value and dignity of a human life, even the earthly remains of one, are at times difficult to deal with.

Ramona and I have been making survey trips up into the remote mountains on our Honda Bushlander, at least once a week.  On one of these trips we found Leonardo and Delia, artists and brand new Christians.  Their picture is on PB.  They were excited that we stopped to talk with them about our ministry in Peru and MTW’s ministry around the world.  They felt like they were the only Christians in the area.

We have been back to visit them every week or so.  That relationship has led to what was to be just a meeting with some civic leaders in the small town of Pisac last Friday.  Ramona and I took along two emerging leaders from the Cusco Quechua Christian community and another visiting missionary.  We took everything we need to show the Jesus Film and another on alcoholism.  I’m glad we went prepared.

I had to give a presentation of what a Presbyterian is, what the PCA and MTW are, my personal testimony and a defense of infant baptism.  Then, we got to show the two hour long Jesus Film.  It got too late to show the MTW Cusco produced DVD on alcoholism.  They were amazed that both movies were in the Cusco area dialect of Quechua.  They told of others who had come in past years and expected them to understand everything in English or Spanish, which they couldn’t. 

That meeting has resulted in an invitation to show both the Jesus Film and the alcoholism film on a big screen (that I will have to make) in the Plaza de Armas in Pisac next month.  That’s the town’s main square, where all the business and cultural life take place. 

Pray that these contacts will open doors to move even further up into the mountains north of Cusco.

We have just made contacts in the past two weeks that will allow us to start working up into the mountains west of Cusco.  Next week we pray that we will be able to make the first trip into a remote area called Añarati.  I’ve driven the road that leads past the road to Añarati.  It’s a sometimes four-wheel drive road, sometimes impassable.  The unimproved road to Añarati branches off of it, and I’m told is a pretty rough trip, maybe a motorcycle only trip.  Pray that God will allow us access to this and other remote areas to share the Gospel of the Christ who transforms lives and cultures.

The seminary class I facilitate now has nineteen people attending.  Pictures are on PB.  The class is called “Building your Theology” and has lasted so far, two and a half months.  Tonight we start a three-week section called “Relying on Revelation”, a study on finding, understanding and developing revelation.  Pray that God will use these classes to build strong Quechua leaders.

The guinea pig (cuey) and chicken projects are starting to take off.  Pictures are on PB.  The plan is to be able to take cueys and/or chickens to remote areas as a community development type project.  The goal is provide protein-starved people with enough cueys and chickens to be able to have enough eggs and meat to eat, with the ability to occasionally sell an animal for cash.  We currently have nine pregnant females, eleven that are almost ready to breed, and two males.  And one baby.  We don’t want people to become dependent on us, but if they are sick or hungry they are in no condition to be able to hear the Gospel.  Community development projects like these, and the medical work we can do, will give us more opportunities to make relationships, and thus be able to share about Christ.

We noticed almost too late last week that our tourist visas were about to expire.  We renewed them, but please pray that our long-term missionary visas will quickly be approved.

Ramona and I have just completed an 8-minute automatic PowerPoint presentation complete with Quechua music.  Ninety-five pictures give an interesting insight to our ministry.  If you would like a copy on a CD please let me know and we will send you one.

Thank you for your continued prayer and financial support.

Lord Bless,

Rich & Ramona Wagner
Mission to the World
Hinterlands Project
Cusco Peru

http://s227.photobucket.com/albums/dd146/WagnersinPeru/