On July 9, our dear church was blessed to celebrate five years in Chorrillos, Lima, Peru! God was immensely good to us, and our church was packed out and overflowing! We fed around 462 people the Word of God, as well as goat, rice, and beans shortly thereafter. The night before, we had a quick emergency because our contact for the big stove we had planned to use fell through! Around 10 other women and I gathered together after choir practice and began to pray to God to provide for our very urgent needs of a stove and three large pots. Not two hours later, we had a much larger stove, I got a call offering us 30 large pans, and God sent us our very own chef to help with the preparations all day Sunday. Now that’s my God! He sure poured out His sweet love on us that day! Our choir kicked off both services singing, “He is exalted; the KING is exalted on high.” I pray that everything we did that day truly brought honor and glory to Christ our King. He is worthy!!!
The very next morning, the Lord saw fit to allow us to lose our church building. Of course, we know that the church isn’t a building where we meet, but having a police force, with riot gear and a moving team of over 20 people, lawyers included, pulling everything out of our building was a bit disheartening! In my human flesh, I arrived at the church quite angry at how in the world this could happen to us. It was not long after that the Lord began to show me another perspective. Maybe He saw our crowd on Sunday and decided it was time we moved to a bigger location! After all, half of the work was already done for us! What a blessing it was that the Lord did not allow the evictors to come not one day before our anniversary. It was as if the Lord was holding His hand up and protecting our property until we could have one last special day there. In technical terms, it was not our fault at all that we lost the property. We had been renting, and our owner was involved in a lawsuit over the property and lost. Please pray for him and his family, as they lost their home and land.
We have been looking for a new place to move; and, to be quite honest, options for buildings large enough to house our church or even land that large are very difficult to find, not to mention extremely expensive. Most land and properties we have found here are between $800,000 and 1 million in U.S. dollars. The Lord has blessed us with a temporary, one-room building for the month of August. We are praying that this month the Lord will provide and show us the next building He already has prepared for us. We have been able to locate a property that already has a building, as well as a house/office facility for $530,000. It is a beautiful place, and we are seeking God’s heart to know if this is indeed the place He would have for us. Please pray that the Lord would clearly direct our steps and provide for these needs.
As Elisabeth Elliot so graciously puts it, “This is part of the story, the story of the love of God for me and of my love for Him.” Thank you for your part in His story for my life. I am grateful.
For His glory,
Heather Kokubun
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- Dennis and Natali Llontop, our interim pastor and his wife. Please keep them in your prayers!
