Roseville Lutheran supports Pastor Dana Nelson at the Iglesia Evangelica Luterana Peruana (ILEP) in Peru. Roseville Lutheran provides $20,000 annually to support her missionary work as she spreads the Word of God in Peru.
Please keep Pastor Nelson and her family in your prayers throughout the year. Look for emails and correspondence from our missionaries The Table, on the Mission and Outreach bulletin board, and on the website.
January 18, 2012
Dear Sponsoring Congregations, Friends and Family,
Greetings from Peru! I am so excited to tell you that our congregation “Cristo Rey” has a new address…. or at least a new “punto de referencia”. If someone in Lima asks us where our church is, and how to get there… we can now say, “Two blocks from the ‘Jorge Chavez’ station of the new electric train!” Yes! The train is up and running, and it makes a stop right near our little lutheran church. This is truly wonderful. Journeys around the city that normally take one or two hours on crowded city buses in heavy traffic now take about half the time. It is so good, especially for the people who live in the densely populated outlying districts of the city, (vast majority of Lima residents). For this first month that the train is open (after some 20 years of stop-and-go construction) – it is free to the public! They won’t start charging for tickets until mid-Februrary, so that the people of Lima can freely become comfortable with it, get to know how it works, test out its routes… This should help the traffic in Lima considerably. And for the millions of folks who work 10 or 12 hour shifts, cutting a couple hours of transportation time means a little more time at home with their families.
We are going on an adventure to Huancayo! This weekend my family and a handful of our brothers and sisters from church will drive a full day through the Andes mountains to get to a small lutheran church called “Ciudad Regufio”. (City of Refuge). It is the only church of the ILEP that I have not yet visited! The people of Cristo Rey here in Lima have a tradition of sending clothes to their “hermanos y hermanas” (brothers and sisters) in Huancayo for Christmas each year. This is the first year that the missionary Pastor Fredrico (of Hermansburg Germany -OMEL) is not here to drive through the sierra to deliver the clothes with his truck. So Tom my husband offered to go! We are making a family/congregational adventure out of it. We will drive through the16,000 foot overpass, (which we haven’t done since 2008), and will stop to drink coca-leaf tea to help our bodies adjust to the altitude. The kids drink it with sugar. The deeper question is… how to make projects and exchanges like these more sustainable, and not rely on foreign missionary vehicles and money for gas. I am very excited to get to Huancayo and see my brother Hector, who was an intern in Cristo Rey for a year… and will soon be called and ordained to serve in the Peruvian church. When we arrive this Sunday evening Hector and I will lead a joint service together.
Domestic Violence is a serious issue all over the world as we know. Peru, where there is a lot of machimso, is no exception. I am thrilled to have found an excellent program to prevent and stop domestic violence in Peru. It is called “Alto a la Violencia”. (Stop the Violence). In ILEP we have hosted, so far, three of these trainings. The photo below is a small group that gathered in Cristo Rey for a workshop. The tall woman in the center of the photo (next to me) survived an incident of her boyfriend pouring a huge pan of boiling water over her face and body when she was sleeping. Now that she has recovered and healed, she is speaking out, teaching others in Lima what to do if they are in violent relationships, how to get help, how to be safe, how to seek justice and protection, and know their rights as human beings. In St. Paul, Minnesota before I went to seminary I worked for a time as an advocate in the Latina organization “Casa de Esperanza” in their domestic violence shelter. I am passionate about ending domestic violence in the world and grateful that God has called me here to Peru to continue this struggle in a small way. God bless the people of the “Alto a la Violencia” project as they carry on their important work! They do such good and effective trainings that there is talk of replicating the project in other South American countries.
I finished my first semester at the UBL seminary (Universidad Biblica Latinoamericana). I really enjoyed teaching “preaching”. Now in Cristo Rey I am having more students preach (two Sundays each month) so I can continue to mentor them, so that the ILEP will have more and more trained Peruvian leaders, teachers, preachers, pastors, missionaries. This new year 2012 I am focussing more on strengthening local leadership, and eventually hopefully “working myself out of a job”. There are several congregations right now which do not have pastors. So we run around a bit filling in so that the gathered communities can have Holy Communion once a month or so. (See the photo of the one-story light-blue painted church “Cristo Salvador” (Christ the Savior). I had seminary students lead worship and preach at Cristo Rey one Sunday and I went to this church to fill in, and we will do this until they get a pastor.
Have a wonderful new year! Que Dios les bendiga mucho. Thank you for your prayers and support.
Paz,
Pastora Dana
2011
Dear Sponsoring Congregations, Friends and Family,
Greetings to you from Lima, Peru! Here at “Cristo Rey” Lutheran Church, we are getting ready and excited for the annual Reformation Sunday celebration, when all 10 congregations of the Peruvian Evangelical Lutheran Church (ILEP) that are here in the capital city gather together for worship and lunch! Even though we are all in Lima, it takes about an hour to travel from one congregation to another. This year the hosting congregation is “Belen” in the central district of Breña in Lima. Cristo Rey will rent a bus so we can all arrive together. (The electric train is almost completed! For sure by next year we will be able to zip around this huge city faster.)
Our Estrellitas de Jesús (Little Stars of Jesus) girls’ choreography ministry is practicing hard learning some new liturgical dance moves for the Reformation celebration. We’ve been selling pieces of cake after church raising money to buy material for their new dresses. (My waist line is expanding a bit – we are eating lots of cake!) Rosa in our church has volunteered to sew them their matching flowing red dresses they designed for the occasion. If you have heard the popular Latin American praises song, “Si tienes fe como un granito de mostaza” (from Matthew 17:20), then you know that the music for their choreography is very upbeat and lively!
Oscar, a middle aged computer programmer, husband and father of three, came up with the idea to show “the Martin Luther movie” next Sunday after church to gear up for the Reformation celebration, and to provide a crash course in Reformation history for those new to Cristo Rey. Thankfully Oscar is organizing everything, making invitations, popping popcorn, and transforming our sanctuary into a neighborhood cinema for the day.
One more piece of news I want to share is that I have started teaching, one night a week, at the UBL Seminary (Universidad Bíblica Latinoamericana.) Its main campus is actually in Costa Rica, but there is a small satellite campus here in Lima. I teach homiletics (preaching), and it is so much fun! I have twelve students, and the class is so diverse! Two Lutherans (from ILEP), one Catholic Benedictine monk, one Mennonite, one Presbyterian, and six Pentecostals from a variety of independent churches (such as the “Union Pentecostal Church of the Sower of the Seed,” “The Peruvian Church of God of Prophesy,” “The Evangelical Pentecostal Church of Jesus Christ,” etc.) There is never a dull moment. The students are great.
Have a wonderful Reformation Sunday, a meaningful All Saints Day, and a happy Halloween or Dia de los Muertos. You are in our prayers.
En Cristo,
Pastora Dana
