Jeyachandran Family

Camping during the lockdown

29 Jul 2020

What do you do when your kids are desperate to get out in nature but the country is in a lock down? We had to get creative.

Camping

 

We went camping on the roof of our apartment building.

Roof

We were treated to some amazing views of the mountains at sunrise. 

Christine and our other daughter Amelia were more sensible and decided to sleep indoors.

mountain views

Praise God for amazing views in our beautiful city of Arequipa!

 

More than doubling search traffic

14 Dec 2019
We’d like to see more Latin American churches send missionaries. We play a small role in that project with a website (movilicemos.org)  that provides resources for churches and Christians interested in serving in missions. Last year we uploaded more than 1400 resources - PDFs, Powerpoint Presentations and more to a website we created. Read more about the project here.
 
The homepage says “The job is huge, search for resources here”
 
This year we wanted to help lots of people to find these resources. We’ve more than doubled the number of people who found us through Google searches and this is how we did it.
 
We identified the top 150 resources on the website - the resources with the highest downloads. We then created a summary of the file in a format that Google and other search engines could index - using HTML. 
 
The main work we did was putting a summary of the text from resources into HTML so Google could index it and improve search traffic. The results are better than we expected. Since December there has been almost a 4 times improvement.
 
Traffic via Search
Movilicemos-Analytics
 
We’ve also worked on making this site load quickly, especially for mobile users. It ranks in the top 5% of websites in terms of performance.
 
Through this website we will continue to provide training and resources for Latin American Christians interested in missions. Please pray that the Latin American church becomes a powerhouse in sending missionaries - especially to unreached people groups.
 

Brushing Teeth and Praying?

28 Oct 2019

We believe that praying makes a difference. When we work, we work but when we pray God works! We got together with our students and asked the question “How do we make praying for our university friends a part of our daily life?” We had tried before with only limited success. How we could make praying a daily habit, one that we would never forget?

Brushing teeth

All of us brush our teeth every single day and we never forget. Could we make praying for our friends a new habit by connecting it with an existing habit (brushing teeth)? We started with 3 students and we now have 16 students praying daily. We hope to keep expanding this.

What do we do?

When we start brushing our teeth we smile and give thanks to God for the many things he has blessed us. We then pray for 3 university friends - the same three friends everyday. We pray that:

  1. God will open their heart
  2. God will create opportunities for us to listen to our friends and share how Jesus has impacted our life

We keep each other accountable by posting in a WhatsApp group and each student has another student who reminds them if they forget to brush their teeth.

We look forward to seeing what God will do through prayer.

Helping to send Latin American missionaries

15 Feb 2019

The Great Commission is a mandate to go and make disciples in all the world. Churches in Latin America are capturing the vision to send, not just receive, missionaries.

SIM seeks to empower churches to send missionaries to go into unreached parts of the world. Chris Conti, a SIM missionary in Lima, has been working to empower the Latin American church in missions for several years. Peruvian missionaries have sent missionaries to countries in Africa and Asia - including areas that are difficult for westerners to enter.

Web team

We’re excited to play a part in helping Latin American churches send missionaries. Chris Conti’s team, worked with hundreds of pastors and missionaries around Latin America and have got together a huge volume of resources to help mobilise churches and help prepare Christians who want to serve in missions. I’ve been helping get this information online so it’s available to anyone with access to the Internet.

Web team members

The task has been huge. With more than 1400 resources, PDFs, Powerpoint, Word documents and videos, I realised that it would be impossible to do alone. I was able to automate the process of creating pages and uploading files but some things only a human can do. So it’s been great to bring together a team of University students to work on the project. I trained students in the basics of web development and in turn they worked on this project 4 hours a day, 4 days a week during a part of their University break. Most on the team are Computer Science students so they picked up the concepts quickly but we also have an Education and an Mechanical Engineering student. As a team we’ve been able to progress at a rate that I never could have imagined before.

Examples of resources that we’ve uploaded (in Spanish)

Praise God for the demand for these mission resources and that it’s constantly increasing. We work with two websites that together have more than 20,000 visits per month. There are plans now to have this translated into English and French.

Please pray:

  • Thank God for our little web team
  • Pray for Chris Conti and her team who produce the content
  • Pray that the Latin American church becomes a powerhouse in sending missionaries - especially to the unreached.

Web team members

Connects Australian Christians to mission opportunities

27 May 2018
I love seeing innovation in missions. A good friend named Steve has worked on the problem on how we can connect Aussies with mission opportunities across lots of mission agencies. He has worked with Missions Interlink to create a platform called MissionSeek  We’d love to see local churches, who are the ones who will send missionaries, to help to promote this:
Here’s more info on how you can promote this at your church.
 
Here's a short video (1:16) that explains what is MissionSeek.

"The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few." (Matthew 9v37)
 

Kids Prices for Horror Show

02 Apr 2018
Our daughter Annabelle, when she was just 7 years old when she came home upset really wanting to change her name. I was surprised because “Annabelle" is such a beautiful name and everyone seems to like the name. I asked her to tell me more and soon enough she told me that kids at school were teasing her. There was a movie called “Annabelle” and kids were often quoting lines from the movie to her. I looked up the movie and it’s a horror movie about a doll called Annabelle. “Seriously!” I thought, "how many parents would let their 7 year kid watch a horror movie". Here in Peru, sadly it’s not that uncommon.
 
Annabelle Movie Poster
 
Just today I came across a flier for a horror show called the “House of the Demon". I wasn't surprised, given that here in Arequipa the horror genre is extremely popular. What surprised me was that there were kids prices for the horror show.
 
Kids prices for Horror Show
 
We can’t control society and its values. Please pray that we can raise resilient kids that will fill their minds with the right things and stand strong in the face of peer pressure and teasing.
 

Ladies Conference and Ministry Update

18 Jan 2018

The ladies conference went very well and we had about 45 people attend which is a big jump from the 15 who attend the weekly meetings. The theme was “Loved by God” and we certainly think they got the message. We also found they loved the ‘Pineapple story’ which is a challenging story and they could relate to it. A picture tells a thousand stories so below are some photos. 

Group

I made a silly face to make them smile and they did.

We still have a slight generational difference, especially in terms of education but God is slowly breaking down barriers. At the last meeting I asked everyone to comment about what they were learning from God and 95% were confident enough to respond which is a big step forward and an encouragement. Some of the ladies went up to the kids club (at church plant) yesterday to serve Christmas treats and give a small gift. How wonderful is that? They’re serving others.

This is where the seed was first planted in my heart last Mother’s day-  the idea of teaching women about God’s love and empowering them to serve. It is almost full circle… So join me in praying that by Mother’s day 2018 (May) we can see the women’s group leaders teaching the kids club mothers. Now that is my dream… Let us see what God has planned.

Many ladies are from the Quechua speaking highlands. Very different to student ministry with modern youth.

Janet spoke about liberating your soul from past hurts and Nica helped organise the conference.

We presented each lady with a rose to bless them and help them feel loved. Gift giving is not as common as in the west.

We provided lunch and a craft for the ladies.

Ana is a faithful servant with good questions and willingness to learn. Rosa is a great spiritual leader who is now using her own examples in teaching the ladies. Pray for them.

Amanda - a beloved friend, talked about God's love for us and how we can love our spouses and families.

 

6 Tips for Peruvian Christmas

21 Dec 2017
  1. Don't try and to sleep before 11:30 and 12:30 as you will be woken by the continuous noise at surprisingly close proximity - fireworks - they love them here.
  2. Most evangelical churches don't have services Christmas eve or on the 25th. We miss this tradition. This year was an exception because Christmas eve was on Sunday.
  3. You have to learn to love Panetón (fruit bread) and hot chocolate as everywhere you go you will get it or give it. If you have an employee you buy them one.
    Kids with Panetón
  4. Peruvians celebrate on the 24th evening with their families and open presents at midnight, and eat at midnight but each family differs slightly - some eat early, some eat at midnight and some wait for the morning and food varies too between chicken or turkey.
  5. Great tip from a taxi driver - buy your turkey live (though many Peruvians eat chicken) - get the turkey drunk on Pisco (like wine) so it tastes better when you kill it and cook it. (We didn't follow this tip).
  6. Churches and other Christian groups often do charity events at Christmas. This may be a Christmas outreach or play, a gift for children or a hamper basket and of course chocolatada - hot chocolate and Panetón.
    Church Outreach

Merry Christmas from our family

 

Today I met a Mormon

04 May 2017
I just met a Mormon as I walked in the front door of our apartment. My response was to refer to Revelations 22 that states that words should not be added to or taken away from this book. I stated that the extra books of Mormonism were such an addition.
I didn't remember everything different between our beliefs but he didn't respond to this key point. I invited him and his partner to return and chat since he knew where we lived. We can only pray.
To my surprise my exact words were quoted back to me afterwards by Amelia and Annabelle had a lot of questions about Mormons. This experience gave us the opportunity to discuss 1 Peter 3:15 with them.
“But in your hearts revere Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have”.
We discussed my manner and looked at some other key differences between Mormons and evangelical Christians in simple terms (though that wasn't easy) and told them they'd always meet people with different views so they need to know what they believe.
The school where the kids attend is Christian but populated mainly by kids of the dominant Catholic religion (nominal and practising). Annabelle said the kids at school sing the Christian songs and read the bible at school but they don't change, not really.
That gave me the opportunity to swing back to us and our response to God. We have the common struggle to live God's way. We all need God's help to change... our children, we as parents, the children at school and the people we reach out to. We all need Jesus and his mercy. Call out to God today: “Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love; according to your great compassion blot out my transgressions. 2 Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin”(Psalm 51:1-2). Humble yourself before the Lord God. Who knew meeting a Mormon today which lead us again to humble confession and thankfulness to God for Jesus.
 
Celebrating Easter with the family at a sunrise service

Studying the Bible in the Darkness

13 Mar 2017

In Peru, expect the unexpected. At the moment, we’re visiting lots of churches to share our about the University ministry and invite students to join. On Saturday night, we visited a church youth group and peering in the front door, it was completely dark inside. I looked back out on the street and there were no street lights on. I looked back into the church and I could vaguely see a small group of young people at the front.

We enjoyed a Bible study from Exodus, led by the pastor. He had someone standing behind him with his phone, slightly illuminating the Bible so that he could teach from it. At the end we shared about our university ministry called "Comunidad Bíblica Universitaria” and I showed a short video from my laptop. After the meeting we chatted with students who were applying to enter university and got their details. Several had their entrance exam the following day so we took the opportunity to pray with them.

Here are two photos I took that night with my phone in the darkness. For the second photo we used the light of a mobile phone.

 

Please pray as we visit churches and connect with students, that many will be keen to study the Bible on campus. Pray that Christian students will be bold and not be afraid to identify with Jesus, in universities where many are embarrassed to stand out, especially with their faith.

 

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