I Need To Give My Life To Jesus

This was the cry of a 13-year-old boy named Kevin. He had been coming to our meetings since 2016. At the beginning, he used to sit and listen to every word and, months later, he would be the first to raise his hand to answer questions from previous lessons.

In the last few months Kevin wasn’t the same, at each meeting he would listen, answer questions but he would appear to be facing a battle. He was wrestling with the question, “How Jesus can save people from sin and death, and how can Jesus alone give life a real purpose?” At our last meeting, before breaking for the school holidays, after everyone had left Kevin stayed to speak with us saying that he wasn’t leaving because he had something important to tell us. Then he cried, “I cannot do it anymore, I cannot continue living like this, I need to give my life to Jesus.”

Our obedience to go to the village of Chachas in 2013, a very remote village in the Peruvian Andes, 12 hours’ drive from the capital city of Arequipa, continues to be fruitful. In 2016, we started holding a mid-week Bible study and in an informal setting. In 2017, we added a worship time before sharing God’s Word. This has been especially encouraging as these children and young people not only learned to sing with their lips, but with their hearts, singing out to God through Christ-centred songs.

A challenge to other villagers to come to know Jesus

This obedience of taking the Gospel, not only to Chachas but to the nearby annexe of Nahuira, where a family have opened their home for a Saturday Bible study and prayer time, continues to encourage us. This is an incredible opportunity to help this family know more of Jesus and help them to grow in their faith. It is also a challenge to other villagers to come to know Jesus and surrender their lives to him as they see us Saturday by Saturday learning and praying together on this family’s patio.

There are other villages higher up – people living at 14,500 feet above sea level and above – that have been reached through our obedience. On a trip to visit these villages, 7 hours’ drive from Chachas, people responded positively to the Gospel presentation and have requested more opportunities to hear of Jesus and this wonderful God who gave his only Son to bring people back to him and enjoy a loving relationship with him.

During these past three years, we have seen that God has been gracious and compassionate to the people in Chachas and so far, eight people have come in repentance and accepted Jesus as their personal Saviour. We have seen others who have heard the message, but are still battling and wrestling with God but following their syncretistic practices of Inca traditions and Roman Catholicism. Some have heard, but expressed no desire to follow Jesus. But still many have not heard the wonderful news of the salvation Jesus alone brings to sinful people.

We see the need for more labourers, as the harvest truly is plentiful (Matthew 9:37). Recently a group of ten people from our church in Arequipa helped with children and young people’s outreach in Chachas and in Soporo, another nearby annexe. The response was amazing as we saw children and young people who have never made it to our meetings come to the outreach activities. We also saw adults coming into contact with the team in a way we have not seen before.

 

This made us realise that, not only the need for labourers is urgent, but the responsibility of the local church in praying, equipping and mobilising people to reach these unreached areas is paramount. Through our obedience and example many churches in the city of Arequipa have recognised that taking the Gospel to their own people is the church’s primary mission.

In December 2016 our church, ‘El Camino’ (The Way), invited Edward to be part of a new church plant in the city of Arequipa starting in 2019. This invitation came as a surprise at first but, after praying, talking to different pastors and receiving wise counsel it became clear that God is opening a new door for the Zarate family to minister in the city of Arequipa. This new project is not taking away the vision to continue to reach the Andean communities, but is an amazing opportunity to start a church plant with a mission mind from the outset. It is also an opportunity to encourage other local churches to commit to the cause of local missions, and to equip, train and mobilise those whom God is calling to go and share the Gospel of Jesus with the Andean people.

We believe firmly that, in 2011, God put in our hearts the desire to leave the UK to return to Arequipa. He called us to go to the Andes to share the only way of salvation found in Jesus Christ, that, through his sacrifice on the cross, even the people in the mountains, forgotten by their government but not by God, may experience the forgiveness of sins. We believe there are still many who, through the efforts of local churches in Arequipa, will hear the Gospel and say, “I cannot do it anymore, I cannot continue living like this, I need to give my life to Jesus.”

– Eduardo Zárate