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Rich and Ramona Wagner
Biography,
Photos
Do you ever think that your life is totally out of control? I like to be in
control of my schedule and what I will do each day. An old expression says,
“Man makes plans, and God laughs!” Ministry opportunities are
coming so fast here that it's hard for us to keep up with any kind of a schedule.
We went a week without any water. Mechanical things broke. People keep
coming to the door or work project and want to talk. Plans constantly change.
Aren't you glad God is in control of ALL things? He is never surprised
or unprepared. He is our strength and our daily planner!
Greetings from rainy, dreary Cusco Peru! It is summer and rainy season here
so we have rain every day, usually when we are out and about trying to get things
done.
It seems like we just wrote, but I see it has been a month or so. Time is
just flying by, with so much going on. I'll start with our baby girl.
Evelyn Toque Blanco is the first baby we have taken into the Josephine House, our
refuge for unwanted or abandoned children. She was born at least 2 weeks early
and her 14-year-old mother couldn't care for her. She weighed just 5.5
pounds. She was too small to even have the newborn shots she needed.
Now three months old, she has doubled her weight and is doing very well physically.
You can see old and new pictures of her on our Photobucket page. We have just
updated it with about a dozen new pictures.
Evelyn is being cared for by Emelio and Gregoria, a Christian couple who take care
of the Josephine House, with close oversight by Grammy Ramona.
Recent giving to the House has allowed us to install the water system, finish buying
furniture and prepare the House for more tenants. We still need cabinets built
and installed in the kitchen and living areas, but we are ready to accept up to
12 babies right now. Ramona has been working constantly with the furnishings,
construction and legal work of the Josephine House. She is the Vice President
of the legal governmental entity of the House.
The same week we accepted Evelyn, the police found three drowned babies in the local
river. Throwing them in the river or leaving them in a remote field for predators
are the two main ways unwanted babies are dealt with. Just this week I stopped
two employees from playing catch with a skull they found while digging a foundation
for us. The lack of concern for babies or for the value and dignity of a human
life, even the earthly remains of one, are at times difficult to deal with.
Ramona and I have been making survey trips up into the remote mountains on our Honda
Bushlander, at least once a week. On one of these trips we found Leonardo
and Delia, artists and brand new Christians. Their picture is on PB.
They were excited that we stopped to talk with them about our ministry in Peru and
MTW's ministry around the world. They felt like they were the only Christians
in the area.
We have been back to visit them every week or so. That relationship has led
to what was to be just a meeting with some civic leaders in the small town of Pisac
last Friday. Ramona and I took along two emerging leaders from the Cusco Quechua
Christian community and another visiting missionary. We took everything we
need to show the Jesus Film and another on alcoholism. I'm glad we went
prepared.
I had to give a presentation of what a Presbyterian is, what the PCA and MTW are,
my personal testimony and a defense of infant baptism. Then, we got to show
the two hour long Jesus Film. It got too late to show the MTW Cusco produced
DVD on alcoholism. They were amazed that both movies were in the Cusco area
dialect of Quechua. They told of others who had come in past years and expected
them to understand everything in English or Spanish, which they couldn't.
That meeting has resulted in an invitation to show both the Jesus Film and the alcoholism
film on a big screen (that I will have to make) in the Plaza de Armas in Pisac next
month. That's the town's main square, where all the business and
cultural life take place.
Pray that these contacts will open doors to move even further up into the mountains
north of Cusco.
We have just made contacts in the past two weeks that will allow us to start working
up into the mountains west of Cusco. Next week we pray that we will be able
to make the first trip into a remote area called Añarati. I've
driven the road that leads past the road to Añarati. It's a sometimes
four-wheel drive road, sometimes impassable. The unimproved road to Añarati
branches off of it, and I'm told is a pretty rough trip, maybe a motorcycle
only trip. Pray that God will allow us access to this and other remote areas
to share the Gospel of the Christ who transforms lives and cultures.
The seminary class I facilitate now has nineteen people attending. Pictures
are on PB. The class is called “Building your Theology” and has
lasted so far, two and a half months. Tonight we start a three-week section
called “Relying on Revelation”, a study on finding, understanding and
developing revelation. Pray that God will use these classes to build strong
Quechua leaders.
The guinea pig (cuey) and chicken projects are starting to take off. Pictures
are on PB. The plan is to be able to take cueys and/or chickens to remote
areas as a community development type project. The goal is provide protein-starved
people with enough cueys and chickens to be able to have enough eggs and meat to
eat, with the ability to occasionally sell an animal for cash. We currently
have nine pregnant females, eleven that are almost ready to breed, and two males.
And one baby. We don't want people to become dependent on us, but if
they are sick or hungry they are in no condition to be able to hear the Gospel.
Community development projects like these, and the medical work we can do, will
give us more opportunities to make relationships, and thus be able to share about
Christ.
We noticed almost too late last week that our tourist visas were about to expire.
We renewed them, but please pray that our long-term missionary visas will quickly
be approved.
Ramona and I have just completed an 8-minute automatic PowerPoint presentation complete
with Quechua music. Ninety-five pictures give an interesting insight to our
ministry. If you would like a copy on a CD please let me know and we will
send you one.
Thank you for your continued prayer and financial support.
Lord Bless,
Rich & Ramona Wagner
Mission to the World
Hinterlands Project
Cusco Peru
Good morning from Cusco Peru! Ramona and I pray that you are Spiritually well, and
growing in His grace.
Rock the House! What do you do in a remote mountain village when everything is quiet
and you want to get their attention? You “Rock the House” of course!
We were trying to find a way to get the people's attention so that we could
tell them that we were going to show the Jesus Film in a village called Uspabamba.
We took an evangelistic team there on Good Friday. They went door to door and talked
to people on the road and paths. But there were more we couldn't get to because
of the rough terrain.
So for the first time in all eternity, the glorious harmony of the vocal group Acappella,
singing a capella, in Spanish, was heard all over the village, thanks to our amplified
speaker system. Ramona kids me that my music is only loud enough for me when it
vibrates the windows. We stuck the speakers out the door & windows and I think
even the trees were vibrating! Even trees of the forest will shout out the glory
of God, right?
Well, it worked. We were told to expect about 20 people. So Ramona and a young Quechua
girl prepared chicken and rice for 20 people, max. The problem was that over 50
people showed up to hear Quechua Christians tell about how God had changed their
life, and to watch the Jesus Film. There are no stores in Uspabamba, no place to
get more food for the people. Some of the Quechua men on our team said that we should
just give real small portions of food to the people and maybe we could stretch out
what we had. I looked at the crowd as they watched the movie and saw children that
had obviously not eaten much lately, some of the adults were just as thin.
So we prayed that God would feed His people that night. I told the men to fill everybody's
plate and not hold back. They thought I was crazy. (I get that a lot.) God fed over
fifty men, women and children that night. Not just fed them, but fed them until
they were full. All of the children came back for seconds, many adults did as well.
The people didn't really know what had happened. They just knew that they
had been hungry and had been fed. The children left with potbellies they were so
full. Our team was amazed and encouraged. God did what we asked Him to do.
I've thought a lot about what happened that night, and I've asked myself
what I really expected God to do? What do we really expect to see when we talk to
God? Do we really expect to see Him do something, or is our prayer just the automatic,
right thing for a Christian to do? I'll leave you to answer that question
for yourself. But here in Cusco Peru, and the surrounding remote mountain villages,
we are expecting God to move in wonderful ways to communicate His Gospel to those
that He has chosen. By the way, we've been invited back to Uspabamba.
Last Friday we went to another small village called Sunko, and projected the Jesus
Film on our screen tied to the fence of a basketball court. Again we started with
the Acappella music, and by the time we started a DVD on alcoholism the dirt seats
going up the mountainside were filling up. By the time we started the Jesus Film,
the usable dirt bleachers were full and people were lining the rim of the “bowl”
the basketball court was in. As a tool to try and get an idea of how many people
came that night, we had a sack with 100 small loaves of bread in it. One peace of
bread per person equals how many people were there, right? Hungry children and an
enthusiastic evangelistic team didn't let that tool work, so I've given
up on trying to estimate how many people attend these events. Inside a building
it's easy, but when we are outside at night, in close to freezing weather,
it's just not worth the effort. A LOT of people showed up that night.
That seems to be what our pattern will be like, at least for a while. Every Friday
night we will go to another remote mountain village to give a Gospel presentation
and show, at least the Jesus Film. This month, we have been asked to go back to
Pisac where we showed the film in a small building, to show it again this time outdoors
in the Plaza de Armas, which is the main town square. We will also take a team back
to Colliani this month, the first place we visited in December. This time we will
leave two Quechua Christians there for two weeks, to start a small discipleship
group. We will replace those two with two more at the end of two weeks.
Each time we go somewhere we try to learn from our mistakes and make what we do
better. At the basketball court in Sunko we saw that our 4' by 4' projection
screen that worked so well inside a building, didn't do as well in a large
outdoor setting. So yesterday we made a 10' square screen out of white plastic
to use for our outdoor presentations.
Like this coming Friday night in Chimpawayu, where we will hang the screen on the
wall of the municipal building. And for the following Friday? I don't have
a guess as to where we will go. The Quechua Christians have taken over the scheduling
and locating of new venues for what we do. I'll just load up the truck with
the generator, projector and all the soft drinks, cookies, etc. that we need to
do our presentations, and go wherever He has led the Quechuas.
Please continue to pray for these trips, and for the seminary class I facilitate.
They are Spiritually exhausting. Pray also for Ramona. She goes on about every other
trip, and they are very physically demanding for her.
Pray also for our community development projects. Our chickens and guinea pigs are
starting to mature and will soon start to reproduce. That will allow us to put projects
in remote areas that will provide protein and a very small income to people who
need that help very badly.
I just bought some large 4” pvc tubes and plywood that I will use to build
a prototype hot water heater that should work very well this close to the sun. (14,000
feet in altitude) The goal is to take it families with lots of kids, and for the
medical work as well, so that they can have hot water to promote cleanliness and
better health.
Pray that God will continue to provide opportunities to share His Gospel, in conventional
and unconventional ways. All of the funding from the guinea pigs to the cookies
and the video projector all come out of my support account. There are no special
projects that pay for them like we had in Colombia and Mexico. So please pray that
God will continue to provide for the ministry that He has set before us.
There are a few new pictures on Photo Bucket from these last trips. The link is
below.
We thank God for your prayers and financial support. Thank you for the part that
you are playing in the remote mountains around Cusco Peru.
Lord Bless,
Rich & Ramona Wagner
Mission to the World
Hinterlands Ministry
Cusco Peru