First, a Christmas message (approx. 500kb, short voice recording)
For a little fun (it has nothing to do with Christmas, but I just had to share it), click here, then come on back when you're done.
On my Christmas page, there are links to a few things, including a sweet story titled Trouble at the Inn. (As always, feel free to visit my home page as well.)
I'm sorry if some of you have been filling out my survey and looking for the results. So far, I have only gotten one set of results; I think it is not working, because even the results from when I filled it out are not showing up! Hopefully it will be fixed soon, but I make no promises.
And now, here's a cool update on Peru:
ENTIRE QUECHUA VILLAGES IN THE ANDES TURN TO CHRIST
By Dan Wooding
AYACUCHO, PERU (December 9, 1999) -- Dr. Dana Pankey, President of Missionary Action Projects, reports that whole Quechua villages in the high Andes are turning to Christ.
“The phenomenon began about three months ago, when the first set of village leaders approached Joshua Saune, leader of the Quechua Evangelical Church of Peru, saying that all the families in their village had voted to become Christians,” said Dr. Pankey. “Joshua organized a team of three pastors, who spent a week in the village, giving Bible instruction and talking with the people, family by family. By the end of the week everyone had made a decision for Christ. Leaders were selected and baptized and placed in charge of the new congregation.
“At least three similar requests have come during the past few weeks.” Dr. Pankey was in Peru to conduct a Pastors and Leadership Conference for the Quechua Evangelical Church of Peru, a fellowship of more than 200 congregations. He was accompanied by Dr. Jack Eggar, President of Awana International, and Dr. Dale Kietzman, President of Latin American Indian Ministries. Dr. Pankey and MAP sponsors similar training sessions in many nations of the developing world.
After completing the training session in Chosica, about thirty miles from Lima, Pankey and Kietzman traveled with Joshua Saune to Ayacucho, at 9100' in the war-ravaged Andes Mountains, to view the Romulo Saune Schools developed to care for some of the 14,000 orphans created by the Shining Path guerrilla activity over the past decade. Joshua Saune has had his grandfather and his two brothers savagely killed at the hands of the Shining Path guerillas.
They visited a second school in the village of Chaqipampa, which is above the 12,000' elevation. In an informal meeting with village elders, Pankey, who is an educator and long-term advocate of community based Christian education, encouraged them to continue with the plans being made by the community to extend the schooling beyond the five grades they have at this time. He committed MAP to help with some of the material needs involved. The Shining Path, or Sendero Luminoso, a Maoist guerilla movement, has been responsible for the deaths of 100,000 people in Peru, including many Quechua Indians. Shining Path was founded in 1970 by Abimael Guzmán Reynoso, a philosophy professor at the University of Huamanga in Ayacucho, and emerged in the 1980s and 1990s as the deadliest insurgency in the Western Hemisphere.
For further information, contact Dr. Pankey at Missionary Action Projects,
P.O. Box 44012, Phoenix, AZ 85064, USA, or e-mail him at +-+-+
Love you guys, bye! ~Lily :)
to be updated soon