Ambo

Last week I went with a group from College Street Baptist Church in Walhalla, South Carolina to the Huanaco area where they have been working for the last 4 years with the Ambo-Pasco Quechua people. For a week we lived on a farm, just outside of the province capital, a “large city” of about 16,000 people. From this base, we worked with two pastors in Ambo, pastor Sobrado and pastor Baldeon. Both of these men have established, growing churches but they have the vision and the heart to plant churches in there surrounding villages that have no body of believers. We went with pastor Sobrado (and his whole famly) to visit a village that has been on his heart (I do not remember the name and I’m pretty sure it is not on any map) and it took us about 3 hours in the truck to get there. Pastor Sobrado also has a list of 4 other places that he would like to plant churches in the next year. Another day we went with pastor Baldeon and 4 members of his church, to a town called Quio where he would like to start a work. Our whole group spent the afternoon just walking around and talking to people, going into their homes if we were invited. We were able to share the gospel one-on-one with many people in the town and two people prayed to receive Christ. Finally on the last night we had a big evangelical service in conchamarca to support the ministry of the two small evangelical churches there. It was really neat to see two different denominations come together for the purpose of reaching out to their town!



In my research of how the churches have grown I found that there are over 100 churches in this province and at least 18 new churches have been started since College Street began working in this area. None of these churches were started by them but were started by pastors that they have been training and encouraging! This is so exciting and exactly the way we want things to happen. When College Street stops coming altogether, the local church will still be reaching out to the areas around them where people are lost, planting churches, and teaching new believers. Please pray for Pastor Sobrado, Pastor Baldeon, and their congregations as they plant churches in new areas.



Random funny story: When we were spending the day in Quio, it had been raining a lot (and rained almost the whole time we were there) and I happened to be looking at a flock of sheep on the side of a nearby mountain. While I was watching a large chunk of dirt/grass broke off and the two sheep standing there tumbled/rolled down the mountain for about 50 feet. When they finally stopped, they stood up and started looking around as if to say “What just happened?” It was really funny, I wish I had a video to share. Oh well.