Interesting Times

– May you live in interesting times. (Old Chinese curse)

For several weeks now we have been cruising along with the school and had no major disruptions. The continuity has allowed us to cover a lot of ground, and we are making some real progress. Alas, our blessed monotony must come to an end. This land will not tolerate anything like a routine for very long.

(While I was writing this my wife found a mouse in the kitchen when it ran across her feet. We tore up the house chasing it before I finally bludgeoned the thing to death with a broom. Bracy thought mousey was cute but Benjamin opted to feed the twitching body to our kitten; never a dull moment.)

Amelia, the boys and I have to travel for 8 hours to the capital city tomorrow. We are especially grateful for the people from our home church who pray for us each day of the week. We would like to ask for special prayers for our safety and success in this week ahead.

Since we are roughly at the end of something like a semester at the school, we gave everyone a vacation. This is a kill-two-birds-with-one-stone-trip. First, my sister and a young lady from our church are visiting us for their summer vacation. Thus we will be picking them up from the airport in Lima on Wednesday and escorting them back to Huánuco. Second, our tourist visa will soon expire and we need to apply for residence visas.

When we first arrived the immigration agent generously gave us a 6 months tourist visa. (It is hard to believe that it has been almost half a year.) Since 6 months is the maximum, Benjamin, Bracy and I must now apply for residence visas. Amelia, of course is a Peruvian citizen and does not have to do anything further. However she is our door into the country long-term. Most missionaries apply for religious visas. Since I am married to a Peruvian, we are eligible for family visas.

Immigration woes are often one of missionaries’ biggest headaches. Thankfully, Peru is really not a hard country for outsiders to immigrate into (nationals emigrating out is another story). The truth be told, the Peruvian government is fairly open to foreigners, as are Peruvians in general. However, this process does involve Peruvian government agencies. Which means there is quite a bit of red tape, paperwork, running across town from one office to another and paying lots of fees.
Furthermore our family funds are tight. That, in itself is no surprise. We were fully aware that we were moving to Peru in the throes of the largest economic recession since the 1930’s. Even in the prosperous years before 2008, I knew that charitable giving to most missionary organizations had been declining annually. These are interesting times to be initiating a project like this. Also we both recognized that fund raising was not our forte. Still we felt that we had sufficient support, knew how to live frugally and had a strong enough motivation to launch out when we did. Neither of us regrets that decision to come to Peru. For our students’ sake, we even wish we had been here four years ago. However, this was not really feasible until last year.

At present, the bulk of our finances comes from our home church. Despite the limited size of this little congregation in East Texas, they keep bread on our table and us on the field. I am grateful for their support and for my wife’s wonderful administrative abilities. She shops at the open market, where she haggles fiercely and gets the best deals. She washes our clothes by hand, keeps a full house and somehow manages to feed twice as many people on a fifth of our former income. That is on top of teaching the little ones, counseling nieces, nephews, friends, other parents and being a general mother to everybody. We finish most days exhausted but very content.
Usually we are quite busy and happy to be that way. It is only when we pause at times like now that we realize how thin our supply lines are. Living like this risky, to say the least and that is from someone who eschews uncertainty. However we feel that the long-term goals we are pursuing more than justify the short term difficulties. When we consider how our time invested in a handful of young lives can reverberate outward for years even generations to come, we feel it is well worth the effort.

Also, it may be that God is allowing us to grow into a position of wider influence. The Lord knows that if we had more income we would certainly be doing more. Eventually we need to hire more teachers (all four of us are volunteers right now.) Someday (hopefully soon) we need to move out of the living room into a real school, which I would like to build.
Besides our school, I have been teaching Christian History once a week to a couple of pastors. They want to bring in more pastors and would like me to lead them in studying systematic theology, hermeneutics, homiletics and that kind of stuff. This is something I have not talked about because our main priority is the school. However it looks very promising. The best way to influence a church is to influence the pastor, the parents and the children. We are doing exactly that. There are even more exciting possibilities with children and college students which I will wait to talk about until they materialize. Let me just summarize by saying that it you want to work in ministry, opportunities abound here.

In the meantime we have to pay the bills and continue to work. I am amazed at the end of every month, but somehow the bills get paid, no one goes hungry and we are still here. I am writing this because everyone on our mailing list has shown an interest in our ministry and asked to be informed about what and how we are doing. We are doing well but could be doing much more.
Obviously we need more money. However and perhaps even more, we need wisdom. While we can handle the management of day to day operations down here, Amelia and I are only two people. We lack the larger organizational support structure to raise and channel funds, resources and people to this field. I would like to ask you for input. Surely among the several dozen friends, family and fellow ministers who get this letter is the God-given wisdom that we need. If you have any insight, connections, or ideas that would help fund and flourish this ministry, please do not keep it a secret. We would love to talk to you. E-mail is the easiest way to communicate but in about a week I will be back in Huánuco and can be reached by phone at the number listed below. I am quite serious, you people are our friends. If you can help us, if you believe that our labor is worthy of the kingdom of God, if you see something useful that would help further this ministry, then by all means let us know. We will as always be very grateful.
These are indeed interesting times we live in, but they are God’s times. And, as the Psalmist said, “My times are in your hands.” That makes them the best of times. I cannot think of a period in history to be alive than right now. I cannot think of anywhere we would rather be than right here.

May the Lord bless you richly,
Gary and Amelia Tebbe