On the runway!! We got less than 2 hours til our next flight!

On the plane… They changed our gate… We ran and made the plane! Now we are ready for take off!

The journey home begins!

In the middle of it right now… Decided to throw away the timer!

Pastor Charles King’s Video of our trip

Here is video footage of our trip from Pastor King. You can also see 170 of his pictures on Pastor Jeff or Amber’s facebook wall.

Here is a link to a youtube video from Pastor Charles King with pictures of our trip!

Peru Missions Video

Got to see the Pacific Ocean… No beach all rocks! Still beautiful! Got to watch a guy dive off the rocks about 100 feet… This trip has been amazing… It feels like we’ve been gone so much longer than 11 days! We love and miss u all!

Charles King our missionary friend along with Joe Mercer posted some pics!! Hope you enjoy them! God did amazing things in us and through us!

Hey its Jake again, Im rooming with tony and we r doing the blog tonight. It is 12:08 AM so sry for any bad grammer. Today we woke up at 6 AM to be packed, ready, fed, and on the bus to head to Melita’s church in Pucallpa. We got our bags on one bus and all of us on another bus then watched Pastor Jeff get on a motorcycle-cart-thing with Carmen and Jose and leave us? We were really confused and began asking a ton of questions. Joe then explained to us that PJeff had left his backpack on the boat that just pulled away and he was going to go to the “dock” where the boat was to get it back. His backpack consisted of his Apple computer, his Apple iPad, his Apple iPhone, and many other “necessities”. On the way to pick him up with the bus, I was sitting pretty close to the front so I witnessed it, but we hit two ducks that landed right in front of our bus. One died, but the second one survived. We then picked up PJeff and headed to the church. At the church, we met and greeted every teen in the youth group. Some of them spoke English well. They started the celebrations with a dance to music sung by them. Zach F. got picked by Melita to dance first. Then the youth group leader picked me to dance and we had a lot of fun and got really sweaty. Then we went right into doing the Family Drama for them, Then again for the kids to watch their parts… then again with them doing it with us……. Then again with them doing it with us. Then they did it by themselves! It was so good. During that others taught them the Heart Skit, which they picked up quickly and became better than us in their unique way. It definitely helped that they understood the songs. We showed them everything and taught them that, doctor skit, and walk of life. We provided them with everything they need to do an entire service. It was awesome. Right before the food kitchen started, we prayed in a big circle holding hands. It was cool to know that I was praying in English, but the guy right beside me was praying in Spanish yet we were both praying to the same amazing God. We also threw together an entire kid’s service last minute and did it for all the kids coming for the soup kitchen. They loved it, but I didn’t enjoy doing the Adam and Eve skit on solid concrete. We made the best out of it though. The kids went and lined up and ate, It wasn’t until later when PJeff told us that it became very real and sad. PJeff told us he found out that most of the kids at the soup kitchen are sons and daughters of prostitutes so they have gone through pretty rough times. It was amazing though that when PJeff asked the kids at the end of our service if they could raise their hand if they had Jesus in their heart. Each and every hand in the entire church went up. Such an amazing sight. I was really tired and ended up falling asleep on a bench afterward  and the kids were laughing at me, but it was hard for us to leave, the kids even ran after our bus as we drove away just to spend just a few more seconds with us. We then got to the little bus stop of an airport and caught our 40 minute flight over the Andes Mountains. We landed and drove straight to the hotel. It is the nicest hotel I have ever stayed at definitely five stars compared to the boat. I went straight to my room and took the best shower of my life. First off, It was warm…amen. Second, the water was clear and not brown muddy water. Third, I smell GOOD! We then had KFC for dinner. We skyped Hanna Ito and all of us used our iPods or someone else’s to get on Facebook. We then hung out and had awesome devo’s from Erica and Mr. Jobe. Let’s get on thing straight here… Mr. Jobe is so awesome. Well now its 1:10 AM and Tony fell asleep at around 12:10 AM so he was no help, but good night or good morning. I’m going to sleep.

Hey everyone, Tony here.   I am writing to you from Lima, Peru on Tuesday morning since Jake took so long to write last night, I decided to get up early this morning and send this out.  Pastor Jeff is still has three days to go with sending uploads anyway so if I am done before he gets up we are good.  We are so sorry that we have not been able to send the uploads all week, but we have been writing them everyday so that when the service was available we could catch all of you up on what God has been doing in and through us this week.

It is going to be very difficult to put into words just how awesome this week was for the people of Peru, the kids in our youth group, and for me personally.  I can tell you all that my absolute favorite thing about this week has been stepping in when the kids have been praying for people and translating what they are saying so that the people here can understand just how powerful are the words being prayed over them. Our kids are so on fire for God and they cry out in boldness, without shame, and with the anointing of the Spirit in their prayers for the people here.  It is just so amazing to see and a blessing to experience.  Their prayers not only extend to the people of Peru, but over each other, over the leaders of this trip, and over the youth and parents who are back home.

My second favorite part of this trip has been our times of devotions and prayer both in the morning and especially at night.   Morning has been a time of personal reflection and devotion with God and God has been speaking to me very strongly each morning through the book of Ephesians which talks about unity in the church, in the family, and in spiritual warfare.  Surprisingly, with so many of us thrown together into such small quarters for 8 days, the conflicts have been very minimal and almost non-existent.  I believe this is due our time spent in prayer with one another and the prayers going up from the people back at home.  At night, we have reflected on the things that God did in and through us that day, two people do devotions and then we spend time in prayer on the roof of the boat, however, one night it was in a field after watching “The Passion of the Christ”.  It is these times in the evening that I have had some wonderful opportunities to pray with your children individually as the Spirit has led me and to pray over individual kids as a group.  Once again, you would be proud of the passion with which your teens pray over one another.

Since Joe (our leader) has been to these villages several times before, much of what we have been doing this week has extended to instruction for families in how they are to act according to the Scriptures along with our message of salvation, the giving of food, the instruction of how to obtain clean water along with good personal hygiene, and times of fun playing with the children.  We have gotten to be with a village for an entire day and get to know the people much more personally than is possible otherwise.  We were really able to focus on some discipleship and raising up local leaders to carry the torch that has been lit and passed by Joe, his team, and our work this week.

Unexpectedly, as Jake has described so eloquently above, we were able to some ministry on Monday that was not a part of our original schedule and it turned out to be one of the most rewarding experiences we could have on a missions trip.  Too often we come on a trip and we present our message right up to the last minute and then are shuffled away to get to  our plane to return again, but yesterday we were able to do something out of the ordinary.   We were able to multiply ourselves by taking the dramas that had been so impacting over the week and share them with a local youth group who will be using them in ministry to continue to reach the people of Pucallpa and the surrounding area.  This is the reason that this blog has been named as such and then to spend so much time in the church playing with these children who come from such a horrible past, to bring a light into their lives for a day was just such a wonderful and inspiring experience.  As I was making music CD’s with my laptop for Jose and Carmen for them to use the human videos here in Peru, I had a large group of children who wanted to see every picture that I had on my laptop both of my family and of our trip here to Peru.  We started playing a game where they would guess the names of the kids featured in each of the pictures and they got pretty good with the names of our kids by the time we were done.  Erika was the winner, hands down, as the most recognizable (not sure why …. Hmm).  But she was closely followed by “Santiago” (James), Leah, Ellie, “La Altisima” (Brooke), and Korina (Corinne).  Well, they also got Raquel (Rachael) and me correct every time, but we were sitting with them and that may not be fair.

At any rate, your kids were absolutely wonderful on this trip and I am thankful that I was counted worthy to spend this time with them.  I was with half of them last year in Nicaragua so I knew them pretty well already as well as working very closely with many of them on the drama team, but it was so nice that those relationships have been strengthened.  I also got to know Jake, Justin, Zach F., Lyle,  Rachael, Erica, Cherith, Ally, and Deanna much better since our times together before this trip have been limited.  I am so thankful to God brought this team together “for such a time as this” as He put all of the right pieces in place for this trip to be the success and inspiration that it was to me.

I cannot say enough just how great these kids were in their dramas (it makes their drama leader proud), in their prayers, and did I mention their testimonies.  Wow!  God is really doing amazing things in the lives of these kids.  I had devotions the last night on the boat and the Word that God had given to me to share with them is to be “making the most of every opportunity” when they get home.  God has been speaking to all of their hearts about His will and plans for them for the future and the encouragement was to be sure that they are looking to the left and right all along the way to God’s ultimate plan – to realize that every circle in which they find themselves whether it be college, the classroom, athletics, music, the stage, their personal friendships, and most importantly, their homes – these are places where God has specifically placed them to reach particular people that can be best impacted by their testimony.  I am counting on each of you as parents and friends to hold them accountable to do this as it is God’s plan for each of us.

Shout outs:

To Cammy, Brayden, Kyler, Liam and Caelyn:  I love you all very much and I am looking forward to seeing you all very soon.  I can’t wait to get home and to give you all a hug and tell you all about the people of Peru.  Even though I wasn’t with you over the past 10 days, you were all in my heart and on my mind as I ministered to the children and gave instruction on the roles of each member of the family.  I trust that my experiences here will continue to help me grow in my relationship with God and to be a better husband and father and a better Godly example in our home.

To Mackenzie, Kaitlyn, and Sarge:  It was nice to talk with each of you on Skype last night.  I know that you guys were used mightily by God in Panama.  It was sad being on this trip without the two of you, but God’s plans were to have these two specific teams ordained to the work that he wanted done.

To Erika and Rachael:  It has been so great getting to know each of you on this trip and it is going to be sad to see you go to college and to Georgia, but we know that God has great plans for you in those places – do not forget to trust in Him to show you how you can be an influence in those new places.

To all the parents and other Frequency members:  Unfortunately, we were not able to read many blog comments this week, but we thank you all so much for your prayers and your strength at home as we have been gone.  Your friends and children are amazing, if I have to be away from my family for 13 days, there is no place else that I would rather spend the time.  I hope to work with and get to know many more of you  during future trips so start planning now!

Hola, from the Amazon! Brooke here, Cherith is supposed to be blogging with me but she just fell asleep. And we have a very early morning tomorrow, and no one likes a cranky Cherith. (:

OKAY- recap of the day, here we go. Today was our last day of ministry! So sad! But so good! We had an extra long service today in the village because we had to set sail around 4 if we want to make it to Pucallpa in time for tomorrow. Anyway, we walked across the plank and to village through a forest of banana trees! I told my favorite joke the whole way! The banana trees had leaves that were bigger than I am! It was pretty sweet to be walking through a jungle in the Amazon surrounded by all these really loud birds that we thought were monkeys… We eventually made it to the village and it was HOT. Definitely the hottest day so far. We had an absolutely fantastic service where we broke out all our favorite dramas and Wilder-Beast even jumped in on “Walk of Life” and made me laugh so hard that I almost couldn’t even do my part, pahhahaha. The service went really well and by the end of it all we had about 33 salvations! It was extremely hot.

We came back to the boat, took a nap, then headed back to finish up and hand out bags of food and Spanish Bibles.

We headed back (sprinted back, I don’t know why…) and broke out the trash cans and steel can things on the deck as we sailed into the sunset and out of our tributary and onto the ACTUAL Amazon River! It’s HUGE! I think we all agreed when we said this was the most spectacular thing we’ve ever seen or been a part of. Fosho. We all did one of our Stomp Routines on the deck and it WAS SO COOL. Random native dudes were floating by giving us the WEIRDEST looks, but it was the sickest thing ever, so we didn’t care. After that little adventure we all took pictures and hung out on the top deck (what I like to call the “Poopdeck”) and watched the sun set and the water turn from red to purple to blue to black. We ended the day with pancakes- I mean cornbread *cough cough. They were delicioussssss. Then we had devos lead by Jake and Tony under the stars back on the top deck, which were awesome as well.

For a last day of ministry, we definitely had a memorable time. We’re all really going to miss it here.

SHOUTOUT TIMEEEEEE!

Okay, so in the shoutout video we just made, James and I forgot to mention my dear love, Mackenzi (“I remembered”- Zach). So I dedicate this part of the blog to you, I’m so sorry! Maybe we just wont show you the shoutout video…. J LOVE YOU SOOO MUCH CHICA!

Love you too, B.B. J you know who you are… <3