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May 05, 2008
April in Lima, Peru.
"But you 
be watchful in all things, endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry." 2 Tim. 4:5
I have experienced so many different emotions this month. It is hard to believe that my year in Peru is now over. It was such a life changing experience that I will cherish and continue to learn from in years to come.
During this month I was able to invite several families over for dinner. It was a great blessing to get to know my students and their families on a much more p
ersonal level.
They have all lived such interesting lives. I can't even imagine experiencing the hardships that some of them have gone though. Through the Lord they have overcome all these things and have such joy and peace. They were a great encouragement to me.
This little lady's name is Sofia. She has a fruit shop around the corner from the Bible College. Her son Carlos has been coming to the English classes for the last 4 semesters. He has learned a lot of English, but most of all He has drawn closer to the Lord. It was so great to hear about their lives, where the Lord has brought them from and where the Lord is leading them.
In coming to Peru it was never my intention to create a school that was dependent upon me. The Lord gave me His wisdom in order to organize and start the school. It has been my prayer that the Lord would be the center of everything and that He would remain in complete control.
All of the students completed their final exams and almost all of them moved up to the 
next level. They are all growing in their confidence and enjoying the classes. The best part however is that they are inviting their non-Christian friends and neighbors to come to the English school, and to church.
Thank you so much for your prayers about the Lord providing a new director in my place. He did. Her name is Rachel Mach, please keep her in your prayers.
Classes start May 5 so she has a lot to do in order to get everything ready. Please continue to pray for the students that will be coming this semester.
My last week in Lima was filled with such bittersweet emotions. I knew that the Lord had called me to go back to Bullhead City, Arizona and establish an Christian English School there. But at the same time my heart ached to remain with the amazing Peruvians that had become not just my students and my friends but my family!
The Lord is faithful and i know that if it is His will I will return to Lima someday soon perhaps not long term, but like Paul to encourage and comfort the body of Christ there.
About 10 of the Peruvians came to the airport to send me off. That was such a huge blessing to see all of their love to come out so late and be there for me.
My flight left Lima at about midnight and got to Ft. Lauderdale at 6:00 am. I had a layover till 12:00 pm but it was totally God because I had the opportunity to talk with a lady there in the airport and encourage her in her walk with the Lord.
At noon I left Ft. Lauderdale and went to Orlando. I had to switch planes again and left Orlando at 2:00 pm. My plane stopped in Albuquerque for about 40 minutes and then finally to Las Vegas where my Mom picked me up from the airport.
We went out to dinner with my sister and niece. It was a nice time to be with them and share a little bit about what the Lord has been doing in Peru.
This morning I went to church in my Peruvian outfit, and was blessed to see everyone. Some time this next week I'll have a time that I can share with the whole body the great work that has been started in Lima. Peru.
This is a picture of me and my Pastor after church today
Now I am here in Bullhead City, Arizona. I am now a national missionary to the United States of America. The Lord has put it on my heart to reach out to the Latino population here.
During the next couple of weeks please join me in prayer as it is my heart's desire to start an English school here in Bullhead. There is a lot of preparation that goes into starting a school many materials that need to be purchased, and teachers that need to be trained. But the most important part is that everything is covered in prayer.
Perhaps you or your church might be interested in hearing about how to start an English as a Second Language school at your church. I would be glad to come and share how the Lord has used this ministry to bring so many people to Him.
Thank you so much for continuing to prayerfully support me in this new ministry. I know that the Lord will be glorified and that many people with come to Him.
May God richly bless you and keep you. I would love to hear from you.
En Cristo, Grace
(This is a picture of me and my Mom. She was very thankful to have me back home)
01:29 Posted in Blog | Permalink | Comments (2) | Email this | Tags: missionary, Peru, USA, Jesus, Love, Hope, ESL
Comments
Hi Grace,
Your Mom is such a sweetie and I know she is happy to have you home.
Now that you are home do we continue to send our Monthly support to the same place? Just wondering.
You are Amazing and My Daughter Allie thinks you are the coolest.
Please don't let PC wear you hat any more He looks like a dork, lol
love, In Christ, J
Posted by: Jane Rogers | May 05, 2008
I’m writing this to inform you about a project I am working on something that will help missionaries like you raise awareness and support. I am in the planning and design stages of launching a missionary news website (GodWitness News) and I would like you to be part of it. The purpose of the website will be to increase awareness about what missionaries are doing around the world. It will be missionary related news, by missionaries. The design I’m working on will be similar to the Yahoo News or to the BBC News websites.
I’m a professional Internet marketer, SEO expert and web designer. I have been thinking for some time that there must be a way I can use my skills to further God’s kingdom. After doing some analysis, I discovered that although there are many missionary blogs and websites, there are not many that have been optimized correctly to get a lot of readership traffic. You are probably aware of this, but a couple of the most important ways to get a lot of traffic is by having a high Google (Google, because it gets the most search traffic) PageRank and by having new content – A LOT of new content.
That is were you come in, with the content. Before I launch the news website, I would like to get 100 (eventually, I hope to have even more than this number, but this would be a good start) missionaries around the world to agree to be “news journalists.” If you are interested, I would like you to be one of the 100. If successful, there would be thousands of hits a day on the website. You would benefit by having many thousands of people around the world read about how God is using you, the work you are doing, and the people you are working with. Hopefully, some of the people visiting the website would support you with prayers and/or finances. Maybe some of them would want to volunteer to help with some of the projects you are working on. You could also benefit from having increased traffic to your website (each article you write could have a link to your website).
If you choose to participate, I would like you to agree to provide at least 12 articles in a year’s time. If you don’t want to write that many, you don’t have to feel obligated to do so though. The topic choice would pretty much be up to you. You could write about events in the country, challenges you are facing, tips for new missionaries, how God provided for your needs, and more. The articles don’t even have to be all that long. If you want to write more detailed articles, that’s fine, but if you want to write short ones(minimum should probably about 300 words), that’s fine too. You can also submit videos and photos. I just ask that everything submitted is good quality (you know, dot the i’s and cross the t’s, spelled checked, etc.) and original. It’s fine if it’s been published in print before, but if the content is already on the internet, the news websites PageRank will be reduced if the content has a copy somewhere out there on the web (yeah, the search bots are picky like that). Search engines don’t care about copies of videos and photos, so no worries there. The reason I say a year is because that is the time period through which I will evaluate how well the idea is accepted and whether I should continue the project. Call it beta testing if you want But that is about the necessary time needed to make the website a success.
If you are interested, please contact me by sending an e-mail to joe@josephkolb.info. Please let me know your name, the country you are working in, your missions name, your website, your contact information, your website, and any questions you have. Please provide as much of that information as possible as it will be hard to keep track of everyone if I have so many participants. Sometime after I get your e-mail and once I get the site going, I will send you a user name and password for your publisher account. I may also send updates or more detailed article criteria (good titles, photo sizes, etc.). I will also send a statement of faith that will have to be agreed to. Pretty much Jesus is the only way, the truth and the light and no one comes to the Father but through him.
I think that’s about it for now. Oh, yeah one more thing, I would like participants to add a link from their website (if they have one) or blog to the news website. In-links is another way that Google uses to establish PageRank.
Thanks in advance!
God Bless You!!
Joe<
joe@josephkolb.info
Posted by: Joe | May 10, 2008