Twelve Stones

I headed off to the UK at the end of August to arrive in time for my parents' joint 80th birthday bash, held at their church in Porthcawl. The whole family was present, including some who made it all the way from Southend, and a big home crowd from Gilgal B.C. who really showed such love and appreciation for my parents – I know I was quite touched by it. To everyone who worked at getting the church ready and cleaned up at the end: THANK YOU!

I then had a couple of weeks in the U.K. to recover from all the excitement and enjoy the benefits of technology-assisted working. The invention of smartphones and WhatsApp have allowed people like low-income Peruvian pastors to be easily contactable even from other continents, bypassing the requirements for more expensive personal computers and less reliable landlines. As a result, Pr. Julio and brother Eulogio were able to send me photos of the newest eco stoves they are now constructing for the brothers and sisters at Nuevo Eleuterio-km980 and I have been able to use online banking to transfer the funds to pay the agreed installation costs. Conditions-permitting, the 24 eco stoves could be fully installed by the end of October: please continue to accompany us in prayer not only for the practical aspects of the project, but for the spiritual impact. Over the last six months, I've been out to the church for their Friday afternoon service almost every week, including a couple of additional visits for church anniversaries, stove inaugurations and visits to the mayor's office. I've had the opportunity to teach at the church many times and although the Scriptures and the approach vary, the underlying message is basically the same: salvation in Christ is the start of whole-life transformation through the Spirit, such that we, the people of God are called to be a foretaste of his coming Kingdom, a counter-cultural community, salt and light in all we are and do, out of love for God (and all he has made) and for one another. Each eco stove will have the phrase 'Cristo Viene' ('Christ is coming') embossed into the iron hotplate as a reminder of where the stove came from but also as an exhortation to hope and perseverance in faith.

Being in the UK was also no obstacle to the preparations for the Eco-crisis and the Gospel online course, offered by IBTS in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. As I write now, at the beginning of October, the introductory week of the course has already started and as project lead I'll facilitate the first tutorial of what will now be a weekly event until December, this Wednesday. I would be lying if I said I wasn't disappointed with the uptake for the course, in three years we've not received more than six participants per year, currently we have four – one more recently pulled out due to ill health. Even though environmental issues aren't going away – I read only today that the Amazon rivers are at their lowest levels since records began and even closer to home, one of Piura's main reservoirs is estimated to have only 20 days of water left in it ( I have now refilled all my emergency water bottles…) – we're clearly not exciting people's interest to engage theologically and practically with the issues through the course! Please join me prayerfully to consider how best to continue developing this tool with IBTS in order to inspire and equip more Christians, especially in the Global North, to act on the hope and the responsibility we have as God's people to be good stewards of God's creation, until Christ comes again.

In early September I also had the privilege of presenting on the topic of 'What does carbon offsetting look like for mission agencies?' for the Mission Agencies Creation Care network, for which I'm also now on the Steering Group. This group is part of the Lausanne/World Evangelical Alliance Creation Care Network (LWCCN), and comprises a small group of people like myself who work for mission agencies i.e. not faith-based nature conservation, community development or advocacy NGOs, but who are tasked with raising awareness of creation stewardship and its practical outworkings in our respective organisations. We meet via Zoom, from practically all corners of the globe, once a month, to share about our challenges and successes and to pray for one another and our organisations. Once again, please pray with us, for discernment of the Spirit's guidance and creativity as we each seek to communicate both within and without our organisations about the Biblical precedents for embedding conscientious creation stewardship principles into all we do as we participate in the integral mission of God.

Finally, in the latter half of September I re-packed my suitcase again and travelled to South Korea to attend the 4th Lausanne Global Evangelisation Congress (L4), followed by the LWCCN's Global Creation Care Forum. Honestly, I was quite daunted by the whole thing to start with – I'm mainly used to small events with maximum participants of a couple of hundred, but the expectation of being one of 5,000 onsite participants, approximately 4,980 of which I'd never met before and potentially only 2 of which I'd only met before in the flesh…Long story short, it all turned out fine! The most striking part of a thoroughly striking experience was 'The Twelve Stones of the Korean Church', an amazing theatrical presentation of the history of Christianity in Korea, performed by our Korean hosts including a selection of pastors, missionaries and theologians. To all our surprise, the presentation culminated in a heartfelt prayer of ecclesiastical repentance over the recent decline of the Korean Church, in part due to encroaching materialism and hypocrisy. It was incredibly humbling!

In the interest of brevity(!) I better stop there. Thank you for your continued prayers and support and for your hospitality – and please pray for rain here in Peru!

Love,

Laura