Esther Peterson - Back in AR

Hi again everyone! Sorry to any you who I haven´t responded to. I had very little internet time in Chile. Well, let me fill you in on my life. I was in the city of Arauco for two weeks.We thought we´d be going to Coronel for the second week but the plans changed. The first week we spent ministering in one church. I stayed with the pastor and his wife and five kids and, wow, they were something else- in a good way. The pastor was full of heart and had a good sense of humor. I got video of him dancing on stage during the worship and photos of him showing us the clown costume he uses for children´s evangelistic programs. His wife was also very loving and she liked to say ¨Amen¨ really loudly all through the services. The kids were great, too, and at least two of them want to be missionaries. I learned a lot at that church. Our third day there each of us three girls in my team taught the youth group on a different subject. I taught on having a quiet time with God, and this time I taught in Spanish. It didn´t go so smoothly. I was just praying that I´d be able to finish, but at least I did it. In the afternoon we went door to door evangelizing with the youth. This was really scary for me because I´d only done it once before, and because of the language barrier all I´d said was ¨hola¨ and let the others do the talking. This time I was the leader of three other youth. It was a little scary, but it went really well. I still wasn´t able to do much talking, but God went above my expectations. In the afternoons we often went with the pastor to do visitation. It was really interesting because he would ask the people for some cooking oil in a cup and then we´d all dip our fingers in and go around anointing the house and praying over it. Then he anointed the couple, if it was a couple, and prayed for their marriage. At first I thought it was pretty weird, but now I think it´s a pretty special way to bless the family. We also went to the hospital one day to pray for people. One morning we did an anti-drug event in a public high school. We did two dramas, one of our girls sang, and our leaders and the leader of the YWAM base in Arauco shared messages and testimonies. It was really more of an evangelistic event, and all in a public high school! Each night at the church we did dramas and one person from our group preached, including me, in Espanol! I preached for 22 minutes on truth and love based on the book of 2 John, and it went pretty well. I don´t know that any lives were drastically changed, but the words kept coming (relatively smoothly), I got a number of ¨amens¨, the people said they understood me, and I actually kind of enjoyed it. Thank you so much to all of you who prayed for me. God answered your prayers. The second week we spent working with the very small YWAM base in Arauco, practical work duty on the property, being involved in their ministries, doing a prayer table in the plaza, and doing intercession for the city. Our second day working with the prayer table a group from the newspaper came and took pictures and interviews. I was on the front cover of the newspaper the next day!!! They said I was going to be on the TV too but we didn´t have cable TV so we didn´t get to watch. In this time I also learned more about spiritual warfare. We learned what the spiritual strongholds in the city were, many of which came from the city´s earliest history and the religions of its indigenous people, and we prayed specifically against them, breaking all curses in the name of Jesus Christ. On the 30th of October our group of three girls and one leader left on the bus for Santiago, where we had time in the morning to shop for souvenirs before continuing on over the Andes mountains to Argentina. I was very excited because Santiago had all of our American fast food restaurants that I hadn´t seen in four months, and I took pictures of them all! We ate lunch at KFC, and my Argentine friends were very excited because they´d only ever seen it on TV. We traveled on to Salta, to the town of Metan, where I am now. Our leader then went back to his wife and son in the base in Corrientes and we met up with another leader, the family from our DTS who wasn´t able to go to Chile, and one of the other students, my partner for the Tango (I took tango lessons in the base and now we´re using it in the outreach. We´re ministering in one church here until the 23rd, and then we go back to the base to graduate. Wow, sorry this e-mail is so long, but I could go on for pages about all my experiences. It´s really been an incredible time. Please pray that we would be a blessing here, and pray for protection from spiritual attack on all the students, leaders, and our families. And please pray specifically for Alex, the other American student who´s with the group that just returned to Argentina from Peru. He´s having major problems with allergies and was in the hostpital the other night until 3:00AM. It can´t be easy for him to be in a hostpital in another country like this, and if he doesn´t get better he´ll have to go back to the base, miss the second part of the outreach, and not be able to graduate with us. Thank you all once again for being part of this adventure with me. The next e-mail will be sooner and shorter . Much love and blessings to you all!!!!!!! In Christ, Esther