We wanted to with share you some of the things that have been going on with our family and Extreme Nazarene. God is definitely working in Extreme and it is more exciting to be a part of this ministry with each passing day.
First, Brad and I have decided to take on a second position with Extreme as a cluster support family. This was a quick change but one that was obviously initiated by God. We both had been thinking about this possibility separately and then it come up in conversation twice in one weekend while chatting with other members of Extreme. We came together to talk about it on a Sunday and decided that we needed to pray about this as we both agreed that we still felt called to the positions that we came here to do. When Wednesday arrived the subject was so heavy on our hearts that we knew needed to talk to Brian , the director, to see if it was even a possibility. Brad called Brian that morning to set up an appointment for the afternoon and we stayed home from school to continue praying. We went into Brian's office that afternoon and presented our plan of how we believed that we could function in both roles. Brian laughed a little and confessed that this was the reason he had invited us to dinner that Thursday. He was going to present this idea to us over dinner.
Brad and I were excited that not only had God been moving in our hearts, we had recognized this immediately! I don't know if you can related with us on the pure joy that is in your entire being when you realize that God is working in you. When you realize that God not only has a plan for your life but He is sharing it with you. He finds you worthy to work with Him towards the growth of His kingdom. To me that is very humbling and makes me incredibly nervous! But Brad and I agree that we have both lived outside of His plan and inside of His plan and life is incredible when you are in the hand of God.
So what is a cluster support family? Extreme Peru is built on a concept called 40/40. This brings 40 single adults from inside of Peru and 40 single adults from outside of Peru (right now from the United States). One Peruvian and one Non-Peruvian are paired together with the objective to plant 3 churches under the leadership of an established church. The goal is to plant 120 churches in Peru. Several pairs of missionaries (40/40s) live together in a home in their assigned community. Each group of 40/40s have a cluster support family that lives with them taking care of them much like dorm parents or resident directors in a college setting.
After sitting down with Brian to discuss the possibilities of us taking on cluster support while being able to accomplish our original positions it was decided that we would take the Cusco group. This is exciting for many reasons. First of all, it we will not move to Cusco for a year and half enabling us to complete all our travel for research of the 40/40 sites and to be apart of all the projects with Extreme Peru. Secondly, we are able to be apart of the church planting. We have the privilege to be apart of every aspect of Extreme Peru. Cusco will also allow us easy travel to the other 40/40 sites when they need Brad and I to come and visit for our original roles of logistics and medical support. When looking at the big picture it seemed that both of our positions were made to go hand in hand!
With the change of positions came a quick change in the schedule. We no longer needed to attend training with the current 40/40s in Iquitos as we will be attending the same training with our Cusco 40/40s next year (our 40/40s won't arrive for a year). So we needed an apartment as school had ended along with our housing. So here is the second change for the Hunt Family. We had to find an apartment. We needed to find a furnished apartment to fit into our budget. We had three days to look for an apartment before our bus would leave to Iquitos. We needed to travel to Iquitos even though we are not attending school to research the city for medical resources and logistical purposes since we will have staff there.
Monday morning, the first morning of apartment hunting the realtor drove us next door to our office building to show us a two bedroom furnished apartment. She told us the price and then said she would like to offer us a different price as the owner is the same owner of our office site. And amazingly enough it was exactly what we had budgeted. She also mentioned that the apartment had just opened up yesterday and oh by the way the owner would like to buy you a television. Two hours later we had signed the contract and two more hours after that we were moving into our new apartment! So we are now in a safe area of the city 10 steps away from the Extreme office. Our God is good and is taking care of even the simple details. There are so many more things to mention about our apartment but I will make that a different entry with pictures.
We realized that Tyler's visa was about to expire and we needed to get to Lima to finish our residency paperwork as soon as we were notified that it was ready. Thanks to God our paperwork was finished the day we realized we had an issue on hand. We had to change our travel schedule to allow time in Lima and are not scheduled to leave for Lima/Iquitos until May 29th. We are currently in Arequipa getting settled in waiting for an appointment time with the Immigration Dept. in Lima. So if you wouldn't mind lifting the issue with Tyler's visa up in prayer we would appreciate it. If we can get an appointment in Lima during the grace period we will not have to take Tyler out of the country to renew his visa. This is an issue of timing in an extremely slow moving process.
Just wanted to give you an update on our lives here with Extreme. Now that we completed language school (at an intermediate level) we have started working on the tasks we came to complete. I will keep you informed!
