Kingdom Businesses

My name is Mack Jennings. I will be bringing you up to date on the Kingdom Business side of Project New Hope International.

Our Kingdom Business segment of the project in Peru currently consists of a dairy located in Viru, an agricultural area about 45 minutes from Trujillo. It is situated on a ten hectare (about 22 acres) parcel of leased land that is also used to grow chala (a corn like product that is used as one of the primary foods for the cows), has five barns for raising up to 11,000 cuyes (a small furry animal that is a food staple in Peru), space for a sizable plant nursery and other developing potentials.

The dairy was formed in 2007 with the construction of the needed buildings, the hiring of a highly qualified veterinarian/dairyman, Javier Vasquez and the purchase of 48 pregnant cows and milking/sanitation equipment. Through the generosity of several institutions, we were able to purchase an additional 32 pregnant cows this year and, with births, we now have a total of 140 cows (a few deaths occurred and all male cows are sold within six weeks of birth). All of the cows that are not producing now will become producers within one to twenty-five months. In fact, one of the initially purchased cows is about to become a grandma, when Esperanza, the first born cow from the 2007 lot gives birth in a few a few months. Then, in about twenty-five months we will add the fourth generation!

The life cycle of a milk cow is birth, impregnation at sixteen months and then delivery at twenty-five months. During that period, they do nothing but eat, so they are expensive resources until they begin producing milk with their first birth. Then, about three months following the first birth, they are impregnated again, so they have a baby cow about every year, producing milk for ten months of that year, with two dry months. A cow is generally good for about seven pregnancies. We use a special semen that has been genetically engineered to produce 75% females, as we have no use for the baby bulls whatsoever.

We had six cows born in October, expect eighteen more in November and will continue to grow the heard of milkers until we reach our optimal size of 420 cows (land restraints will prevent us from growing any larger on our present location).

We hope to grow faster than the birth method will allow by purchasing more pregnant cows. A pregnant cow and the food it eats until it begins producing milk is approximately $2,500 to $3,000 and we welcome contributions for that purpose. Obviously, not all contributions can be of the size to make a purchase on its own, so smaller appreciated contributions will be grouped together until accumulated funds are sufficient to acquire a pregnant cow. BUT WAIT, we also gratefully welcome any help we can get for feeding the new borns for the first twenty-five months.

The next Kingdom Business blog will discuss dairy progress briefly and then also reveal progress we are making in establishing new businesses and their evangelical outreach potential, alongside new university community partners.

A church in the city of Trujillo

A church in the city of Trujillo - what should it look like? Consistent with the LifeWind (community transformation) and the Bridges (Bible story telling) approaches, the church in the city will resemble the house church model. This model seeks to develop small groups that can meet in homes and be lead by nonpaid leaders. The idea is that every believer who can tell Bible stories can be a church planter! Does it work? In just a couple of months there are four house churches meeting in the city, with a total attendance of over 70 people.

Our trainers have prayerfully identified two barrios in the city where we are launching our city work. Roger and Rosa are their names. Would you put them on your prayer list? The city of Trujillo is made up of 59 barrios. A city barrio is any identified community regardless of economic status. The first barrio is the community surrounding the PNHI offices - a middle class area. The second barrio is toward the outskirts of the city in a community called Buenos Aires - a poorer area. A church is meeting every Sunday evening in the offices. A church is meeting in a rehabilitation center in Buenos Aires.

The goal of the Trainers is to go into the barrios and build relationships, explain who they are and make themselves available for holistic service. The LifeWind strategy is the more long-range approach and will take a full two years to fully develop. But it has the potential to be exponential in its growth over time. The idea is to build relationships with the plan of building a barrio committee who is willing to be trained to lead their community in health and wholeness. Eventually 15 community health trainers are equipped to go into 15 homes each with a message of health and Bible story telling. Out of this come several house churches. All of this will take time.

While I was in Trujillo a few weeks ago, Roger, Rosa, Mike, Danell and I went to see the barrio committee, a group of dedicated people who have tried to make a difference. They had stopped meeting because they could not find others interested in helping. We were a breath of fresh air to them and we gather the names of others in the community who care. They told us about a school just a few blocks away that needed all kinds of help. Roger and Rosa are on their way toward earning the right to be heard.

In the meantime, the Bridges strategy has us starting house churches wherever we can. Along with story telling, our trainers are teaching the Peace Treaty, a gospel presentation that leads people to a personal walk with Jesus, at every opportunity. So - long range community transformation is taking place and short term evangelism is being done simultaneously. As people come to Jesus we ask them to be willing to open their homes for weekly Bible story telling, which will be considered a house church as soon as it gains viability.

The approach is simple. We believe it can be dynamic. Church planting movements are built on the notion that by building no buildings and having no paid pastors, the church can proliferate at a rapid pace. This is happening all over the world. Pray for a Trujillo city church planting movement and pray for Roger and Rosa. In a few years we will see a dynamic church planting movement in the city that grows exponentially, is decentralized and is not dependant on American dollars.

Stories - by Mike Butka

Last month we started working in Buenas Aires Sur, it’s a place that is in the city and very close to our offices. It’s very poor and has a reputation of being a very violent neighborhood. We’ve built a relationship with a Christian guy named Luis who is in charge of a drug and alcohol rehab center. He has been a good contact for us because he knows a lot of people and is introducing us to them so we can start puentes groups and Life Winds. So last month we asked him if we could start doing “Peace Treaties” with some of the guys in the morning. Forty five guys live there but some of them are able to leave for work so we only have about 25 guys to work with in the mornings. After the first week I (Mike) thought to myself – are we wasting our time – because it seemed like the guys weren’t really that interested. I’m glad God doesn’t give up on us as fast I did with these guys! During the next three weeks I starting noticing changes in these guys, they were on time, attentive, asking questions and seemed like they were enjoying themselves and were interested in learning. After the 3^rd lesson, which talks about baptism, not one person wanted to be baptized, but they had tons of questions about it. So we answered all of them and finished up with the “Peace Treaty” the next week and again asked who wanted to be baptized. Two guys wanted to be baptized the following week. So we bought a plastic pool because remember these guys aren’t allowed to leave the premises. As the team was leaving our offices to go baptize the two, I asked "are all of you guys are going to be baptized?" They looked at me and said no, just two. You guessed it, 5 men got baptized that day! The following week 3 more got baptized. With the ones that got baptized we are starting a discipleship program with them and the rest we are doing Puentes. This is our first experience in Buenas Aires Sur!

The next miracle happens in the Women’s Village! Abuse is very common here in Trujillo! The problem is that these women have no place to go if they decide to report abuse. We have a place that can house 16 women for temporary care. We want to provide care to women who experience any type of violence that have no place to go. We not only will be helping the women that come to the village but we will be doing a lot of preventative work and promoting a city of peace! We had our inauguration Oct. 9^th. It was a success as 75 people attended the 2 hour event. A lot of influential people attended including the mayor of the district, lawyers, the press, and several people who work in the social worker industry. In order for the women to stay at the village they have to go through the legal channels. Even though we are anxiously waiting for the women the work continues. Mara, the director of the village and her team are working hard making contacts and doing a lot of prevention seminars in universities, school and women’s groups. They are also training volunteers. Our goal is to have 100 volunteers by December! As I write this, we have 85! Please continue praying for the Women’s Village and for us to raise money here in Trujillo and in the States. If you’re interested in donating please contact Terri Smith tls0615@yahoo.com.

November's 1st Update - by John Hendee

This will be the first real update since the Board of Directors for Project New Hope International has returned from Peru. One area that I feel the need to bring you up to speed on is winning souls for the Kingdom of God. I keep getting good reports from Mike in Peru. We have been and are making some huge changes in the team in Peru and those changes are starting to bring significant results already. Recently I was working with Mike and Danell on getting the Ambassador training program working well. They have taken it to heart. They are both great Ambassadors!!! They have lead many people to Christ in their time in Peru. But as new field team leaders they decided that they wanted to make it a goal and strategy to train every new Christian how to use the Peace Treaty. I learned years ago that the first things you teach new Christians is what they will do for the rest of their life. In many places the first thing we teach them is to 1) sit and listen in a class or service 2) become a teacher of those who sit and listen. We want new Christians to learn how to share their faith so they will be doing that the rest of their life and be equipped to carry out the great commission.

SSSOOO…

It is starting to take affect. In August our team had 35 people accept Christ and be baptized. They did it in pools, lakes and the ocean. We hope to put our team on the road to leading hundreds to Christ. A tip of the hat to those doing God’s work in Peru! Great job! Keep it up. You are being a great model to us in the U.S.