The Book of Acts comes alive in Sullana, Peru

The church we were working with on Monday morning wanted to start a new work in an outlying village. The week before, the pastors had identified the biggest and nicest home in the area and prayed to be able to use it for the cell group meetings even though the family living there were all unbelievers. This home was about 1,000 square feet and built out of concrete block instead of grass mats. In it lived 8 adult family members and all of their subsequent children. When we arrived we were warmly greeted and welcomed by the family. We needed to wait for the rest of the team to arrive before we could really start the day, but not wanting to waste the time just staring at one another, we prayerfully proceeded. One of our team members shared a testimony and the gospel with the family and we watched breathlessly as all 8 adults surrendered their lives to Christ. Hamilton, the head of this family, immediately became our biggest asset. He helped set up our sports equipment, carried and poured dirt of a different color to mark out lines on the dirt field, paid a local to watch over our equipment and belongings while we worked and arranged for the SportReach event to be announced over the community loud speaker system. He then advocated and arranged a soccer match with the local men so that they too would come and hear the gospel. How did the soccer match go? Well, we humbly lost a soccer ball but we had a great turn out, over 40 adults heard the gospel in this location and 14 of them came to Hamilton’s house that night to begin being discipled in the word of God.
P.S. Wednesday morning when we went to work in a neighboring village, Hamilton had already told the men, “If the Americans come to your village go play against them, you will win a ball!” Not knowing this in advance, we were stunned to find a group of adult men, in their matching jerseys waiting for us when we arrived. Praise the Lord we did get to keep our ball from this match with a 7-4 victory, but even better, another 11 men heard the gospel.