What dream did you have last night? Maybe you didn't have one. Maybe you had a couple slices of pepperoni pizza and you had a crazy dream. Assume for a second that you're a pastor in Peru. The gospel of Jesus Christ has come and there are a few believers in your village. Because you're the first to believe, you were supposed to teach the people about Jesus. You have a Bible in Spanish, but Spanish is only the trade language. You grew up speaking Quechua. These few believers are looking to you to teach them. Since dreams are so important in your culture, and since the way all other spirits have revealed themselves have been through dreams, you teach the people based on the dream you had the night before.
Now this may seem crazy to most of us. But the truth is the just two years ago the pastors that we went to train in Peru, were teaching the believers in their villages in the Amazon jungle based on the dreams they had the night before. We so often take for granted the biblical teaching that we get every Sunday at our local church. We take for granted that God, who created the universe, revealed himself in a way that we can understand. We take for granted that this God can be known not just by priests or pastors or missionaries but by everyone.
I had the privilege of going to Peru for nine days to teach 32 pastors how to study the Bible. This was a very unexpected trip (a general video recap can be seen here). There was room for one more person to go on the trip and I jumped at the opportunity. So Trevor Holloway, Dustin Greenup, and myself went to Peru with Reaching and Teaching Ministries.
Reaching and Teaching Ministries exists to not only share the gospel with the unreached people groups of the world but to train them to be disciples and disciple makers. The founder, Dr. David Sills, has traveled all over South America. And what he has found is that people have come to share the gospel of Jesus Christ, but because there's not any followup teaching and training on how to be a disciple of Jesus, many people just added Christianity to their religion and Jesus is merely a good luck charm. We were told of a common practice in the jungle and in the villages closer to the city where a person draws a circle with a cross in the middle of the house when someone is sick. Then as people walk over the cross, a little bit of the sickness is taken away until the person is well. As you can see, solid biblical training is essential!
The group of 32 pastors we taught in October, have already had four other modules in the last two years to help equip them to be able to understand and teach the Bible. This training on hermeneutics was a tall task and all three of us felt the weight of what we were doing.
Expectations can be killer. I once received some advice that has been so valuable. Expect nothing and be pleasantly surprised. That is true and so many ways. Whether it is parenting, marriage, or training pastors, unrealistic or unmet expectations can harden hearts and kill relationships.
And so it was with us. We were to stay in a hostel and our expectations were pretty low. However our accommodations were great! It was nothing fancy by any means but it was nice and good. I was able to have a clean room with the bed and the ability to hang my mosquito net. A huge plus in my book.
Now for the unmet expectations. All three of us were already scrambling because of the short time to prepare for the training. But the first morning we got there we were told that we need to write a test for the pastors on the teaching they had two months ago. We didn't even know what they learned. There was no way that we could administer this test! So the head pastor, Jairo, went ahead and gave the test and all went well.
That same morning of class we were told that we needed to have printed material for all the pastors in Spanish. There was no way that we could do that. We had just finished the teaching material for ourselves in English. So our week of training was already starting on the wrong foot. This is the point where we thought "what in the world are we doing"? What miscommunications happened that we didn't understand what we needed to have with us for this trip?
But the most amazing part was that this unforeseen curveball that was thrown at us actually drove us to prayer and total dependence on Christ. That fruit of humility helped us to depend not on ourselves but on Jesus. So I can say the five days of training were very valuable for the pastors and us. We saw pastors who were able to really understand that the Bible is not a mystery. It is written in a way that it is very understandable. And by the end of the week I can say most of the pastors we're excited to go back and teach and train their church who Jesus is and how to live as a Christian.
I can really say that I learned so much from these pastors. Meeting men who traveled for four days in a canoe, being eaten up by mosquitoes, through three different river tributaries just to get training that they desperately need was very humbling to me. How often I take for granted all the training and the tools that are readily available to me.
Some of the men that lived deep in the jungle told us of tribes that were unreached. One tribe believes that a rainbow is a curse from God. So every time they see a rainbow it causes them to fear someone will die. It is so sad that what was meant as a promise of God's goodness and faithfulness has been twisted to make people fear! These pastors are going to these tribes to bring light to the darkness and to set people free from their bondage to sin and fear. What a joy to be a part of that!
These same pastors also spoke of little groups of Christians scattered across the jungle who had no pastor and no one to teach them. There's another group of pastors gathering together in January in the heart of the jungle but there's no one coming to teach them. We were asked to go train these pastors too. We aren't able to go, but it brought to our mind the need for training and the need to reach the unengaged.
Thank you so much for your prayers and support! This is been a wild month for us but God is so faithful. I'll have another update on our recent trips to Mexico very soon.
Serving alongside you,
The McKenzies!
