Last week we spent some
time in Simatauca, the Quechua community where we are building our
house. We were invited to their 24th anniversary
celebration. We took advantage of it so that we could announce the
medical campaign that we will have there this week. Our church is
working with La Fuente clinic, which is a missionary medical clinic
in Cusco. We have been friends with these doctors before we even
arrived in Cusco. They offered to help us with the community through
this medical clinic. Medical clinics are great for building
relationships and trust to introduce the biblical gospel for the
first time. A team of doctors from Alabama have arrived and we will
hold the clinic on this Wednesday and Thursday.
The community has a
mixture of Catholicism and Andean beliefs, which is common amongst the Andean people. Every since the Spaniards forced Catholicism on the Inca, the Quechua Indians adopted some of the Catholic beliefs to avoid being destroyed but they also kept many of their animistic beliefs. What has occurred is a complete syncretism of Catholicism and the Incan mythology. All kinds of Christian symbols and rites are used every year, but they only reflect the hidden Andean religious meanings. For example, praying to the Virgin Mary might satisfy Inti, the god of the Sun. Pachamama, the mountain god and god of earth, provides fields with fertility and allows the farmers to reap the blessings. Yet, on the top of that mountain that is worshiped is a wooden Cross—there to symbolize the blessing of Pachamama. There is very little distinction between the two religious systems and neither are the pure forms of what they were.
Everyone
speaks Quechua and Spanish is their second language. We will have
Quechua people there to help translate. Please pray for us and the doctors as we care for their physical needs and their spiritual needs by sharing the gospel with them. We are praying that God will work in at least one family that will be willing to start meeting on a regular basis to study the Bible. To our knowledge, the biblical gospel has never been preached here.
2 comments:
Good morning, how are you?
My name is Emilio, I am a Spanish boy and I live in a town near to Madrid. I am a very interested person in knowing things so different as the culture, the way of life of the inhabitants of our planet, the fauna, the flora, and the landscapes of all the countries of the world etc. in summary, I am a person that enjoys traveling, learning and respecting people's diversity from all over the world.
I would love to travel and meet in person all the aspects above mentioned, but unfortunately as this is very expensive and my purchasing power is quite small, so I devised a way to travel with the imagination in every corner of our planet. A few years ago I started a collection of used stamps because through them, you can see pictures about fauna, flora, monuments, landscapes etc. from all the countries. As every day is more and more difficult to get stamps, some years ago I started a new collection in order to get traditional letters addressed to me in which my goal was to get at least 1 letter from each country in the world. This modest goal is feasible to reach in the most part of countries, but unfortunately, it is impossible to achieve in other various territories for several reasons, either because they are very small countries with very few population, either because they are countries at war, either because they are countries with extreme poverty or because for whatever reason the postal system is not functioning properly.
For all this, I would ask you one small favor:
Would you be so kind as to send me a letter by traditional mail from Peru? I understand perfectly that you think that your blog is not the appropriate place to ask this, and even, is very probably that you ignore my letter, but I would call your attention to the difficulty involved in getting a letter from that country, and also I don’t know anyone neither where to write in Peru in order to increase my collection. a letter for me is like a little souvenir, like if I have had visited that territory with my imagination and at same time, the arrival of the letters from a country is a sign of peace and normality and an original way to promote a country in the world. My postal address is the following one:
Emilio Fernandez Esteban
Avenida Juan de la Cierva, 44
28902 Getafe (Madrid)
Spain
If you wish, you can visit my blog www.cartasenmibuzon.blogspot.com where you can see the pictures of all the letters that I have received from whole World.
Finally, I would like to thank the attention given to this letter, and whether you can help me or not, I send my best wishes for peace, health and happiness for you, your family and all your dear beings.
Yours Sincerely
Emilio Fernandez
Dear Doherty Family,
The Morgans will be praying today for your clinic over the next two days. We will be joining in prayer for you as you ask for one family to start meeting with you on a regular basis.
In Christ,
The Morgans
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