Missionary Report from Manuel Cortez

Recent Events

Ministry

In the first place, I give thanks to God for His care and protection at the start of this new year, 2021. 

We started our activities in the Ashaninca community of Maucayapi in the middle of March. We have needed to adapt our meetings in the community according to the situation we are presented with in our mission field as there are restrictions by the government due to the pandemic that we are going through with the continuation of COVID-19 and now also the state of emergency in the Atalaya province due to drug trafficking. 

For example, we were holding our Sunday school classes on Sundays - we have classes for adults, young children, intermediate and young people. In these last two weeks we have had to hold them on Mondays due to the curfew and not being able to move around for Easter and for the presidential elections. We are waiting to clarify our Sunday school activities due to the state of emergency that has been declared in the province of Atalaya. 

On Tuesday mornings we are visiting the homes of the Christians with the goal of encouraging them and strengthening them in their daily walk with the Lord. During these visits we are getting to realise the experiences and needs our fellow Christians in the faith are having.

On Wednesdays we have a meeting with the women where we perform two principle activities, one is to share the Word of God with the Christians and other ladies who are invited from the community who aren’t Christians. The other activity is to teach them how to sew.

We continue to meet on Thursdays in the evenings for prayer.

In seeing the needs of the children who attend the Sunday School who cannot read well, as a team we decided to support them in reinforcing their schooling in the area of maths and comprehensive communication. This is with the children in the Maucayapi community on Friday afternoons. 

Personal Life

I continue to learn about the dependence and leading of the Lord in regards to doing the best thing in the difficult moments that I am presented with when visiting the Christians and the conversations that we have with them. When we see that there aren’t changes in their lives it annoys me and I sometimes feel like giving up on them and concentrating on those who want to follow God but later I think that Jesus never did this, he worried about the sick and poor in spirit.

Later God gave me peace and tranquillity and encouraged me to continue on. Showing me His love, and compassion for everyone and desire to help them.  

Family

My mother has been fainting in these last few days and a couple of times she has felt unbalanced in her body and we don’t know why.  I hope that my family who live near her have taken her to the doctor to find out why this is happening.

My mother-in-law continues with the problem with her eyes and is losing her sight more and more. 

My wife continues with her health problems. She continues to have pain in her hands and legs, possibly an osteoarthritis problem.

In regards to my health, I continue to have pain in both of my shoulders. I continue with radiculopathy (pain caused by compression, inflammation or lesion of a spinal nerve in the lower back).

Thanks to God the pain in my knees has improved, despite the arthritis detected in the knees. 

Prayer and Praise Points

1) That God will give us wisdom with the diverse problems there are in the lives of the Christians in the community of Maucayapi.
2) That the adolescents will have a personal encounter with the Lord and receive Him as their personal Saviour.
3) That God will help us in every visit to the homes of the Christians to know how we can help them in their spiritual lives.
4) That the Word of God will bring changes in the spiritual lives of the adults, adolescents and children in the Ashaninca community of Maucayapi.
5) That God will supply the economic needs to continue with finishing the classrooms for the Sunday school in the Maucayapi community - plastering of the walls, doors, windows and painting of the classrooms.
6) Prayer for my family, that God will strengthen us to seek Him every day and that we will apply what the Lord is teaching us from His Word.
7) Pray for the health of my wife and I, that God will help us to improve so that we can continue to serve Him in this place where we are developing the ministry. 

Need: I am needing a new computer for communication and work (materials to improve the work with the children and adolescents in the Sunday school). The computer I have at present is quite old and I occasionally have problems, it goes slow, sometimes delays in responding and sometimes doesn’t respond at all.

Comments

I give thanks to God for you all and the support you send us voluntarily and sacrificially for the ministry God has entrusted us within His grace to reach those who don’t know Him and to strengthen the spiritual lives of our brothers and sisters in the faith.

On the other hand, I want to say that your prayers have been, are and will be very important in God’s ministry. He has sent us to take the Word of God to different people that don’t know the Lord.

Your offerings have supplied our needs and the needs of our ministry that we are developing in places God has permitted us to go in the missionary work.

God bless you

Manuel, Lucy, Stephanie and Sue Abigail Salazar