Recent Mission Trips
At the Kirk we are involved in reaching our community, nation, and world with the gospel. Read more about some of our most recent mission trips.
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Peru/LEI Mission Team 2008
On April 11th, a team from Kirk of the Hills partnered with Literacy and Evangelism International (LEI) to travel to Ica, Peru. The mission trip was initiated to support LEI missionaries and their training efforts in the Ica area. Ica is located approximately 150 miles South and East of Lima.
The LEI missionaries in Peru have developed a good working relationship with the Communidad Christiana El Shaddai which is lead by Pastor Martin Laos. Pastor Martin requested that LEI help to assist in the destruction and reconstruction of a house of a parishioner that was damaged by an earthquake. The mission team from the Kirk was assigned that task.
Our team arrived at the residence of Pastor Martin Saturday evening where we stayed during our time in Ica. We were all very gracious to them for offering their home to us. The cuisine and their hospitality rivaled what one would find in the best hotels.
Sunday the 13th dawned bright and early. We ate breakfast and readied ourselves to attend the four worship services scheduled this day. The Church operates out of a rented building and will hold around 100 worshippers. Each of the four services was packed and the two evening services had people standing in the back with an attendance of around 150 each.
The church has three pastors - Pastor Nestor, Pastor Hernando and Pastor Martin. The services are very dynamic, full of loud, cheerful and worshipful singing. You cannot help but be swept up in the attitude of worship with everyone completely engaged and focused on the Lord. Clearly the Lord is at work in this place.
Pierre Smith was taken by the dynamics of theses services as well as the Communidad Christana El Shaddai’s expansion and seeding satellite churches in outlying communities that have no viable access to the main church.
Starting on Monday the 14th , the team spent the next three days assisting in the destruction and debris removal of the adobe home of Esther, a member of the El Shaddai church. Her home was severely damaged in an earthquake and was declared uninhabitable by government inspectors. The destruction of her current home was necessary to prepare for the reconstruction of her new residence that is engineered to withstand earthquakes up to 8.0 on the Richter scale.
Monday evening was spent training for evangelism outreach to the residents of the city of Ica and the surrounding communities using the Evangicube. During the Sunday services, Pastor Martin invited the attendees to come back on Monday to attend the EvangeCube training and that evening there were approximately 100 people in attendance to get the training. What a turnout! The people were so enthusiastic to get the chance to evangelize to their community.
The second and third evenings were spent supporting the evangelism teams from El Shaddai both in the city of Ica and a small community of Olivera that was really devastated by the earthquake.
Linda Furman was particularly blessed with this effort. She said that seeing so many church members attend the training and then see them boldly go out on both nights was very humbling.
Don Rossier assisted Sammy, an El Shaddai member and a person with a rather severe disability, to accomplish an evangelism effort in the town square of Ica. This was clearly way out of his
comfort zone, but he just followed God’s direction without resisting and everything worked out perfectly.
Thursday was our play day (mission trips aren’t all work). Pastor Martin wanted to show us some of Peru’s beautiful countryside and we were treated to a dune buggy trip in the wild sand dunes outside of Ica. Pastor Martin’s wife, Cotty, took us to the Ballestos islands off the coast of Peru. It was a great day of relaxation and enjoying God’s creation. That evening we went to visit the LEI Literacy Training Institute that was being held in Ica at a hotel. We heard the testimonies of the attendees and their trials and tribulations in just getting to the event.
The highlight of Jim Furman’s trip was hearing the testimony of the students at the LEI Literacy Training Institute as they told stories of them traveling hours by foot to catch the bus in order to attend the workshop. The dedication and sacrifices they made all in order to learn how to teach their brothers and sisters to read touched all of us.
On Friday, the team put on a puppet show for the students of the El Shaddai elementary school, Holy Trinity, featuring Amy, Julia and Roland Rice. The puppet show was a memorization exercise focused on a bible verse. It was a real success.
We had our last lunch prepared by the Pastor and his family which was an awesome oriental spread and then we had to say our goodbyes and head back to Lima for the trip home. We spent Friday evening and Saturday debriefing and sharing with each other about the amazing time we just experienced.
Clearly the Lord is at work in the community of Ica Peru. Everyone on the team was touched and blessed in many ways. Most of us were amazed at how much clearer spiritual things are when we are away from things at home that distract and cloud our spiritual realities. I think I can speak for all of us when I say we would return to Ica and the El Shaddai church any time.
Thank you for your prayers during our trip and please keep the El Shaddai church and their members in your prayers as well.
—Don Rossier
Nicaragua Medical Team '08
From April 17th to 19th I participated in my first Kirk mission trip to Popoyoapa - Rivas, Nicaragua where our team worked with missionaries from Christ For the City International (CFCI) during a medical clinic conducted at a local Nazarene Church. The clinic provided free diagnostic services to members of the local community, but more importantly, the church’s members provided one on one spiritual counseling for each patient using the EvangeCube gospel tool. The EvangeCube presents the Gospel in a picture format and the entire process proved to be a wonderful example of successful team evangelism at work.
My responsibility during the clinic was to assist our team nurses in documenting each patient’s vital signs and medical concerns. As one of the first people the patient saw, I would welcome them and do my best to put them at ease during the question and answer session. It also gave me a great chance to practice my Spanish and in the process, to embarrass myself on more than one occasion.
On Wednesday, the last day of the clinic, I was deeply touched by a young mother who came to the clinic seeking help for her two young daughters (See picture). The youngest daughter had been losing weight for quite some time and had no appetite. She was also experiencing stomach pain and she looked so sad and scared. I held the little girl on my lap as we talked with her mother and older sister about their medical concerns. As you can see by her photo, she is such a beautiful child. We finished our interview and sent them on to consult with one of our team doctor’s. For the remainder of the day, I could not stop thinking about that precious little girl and wondering if she would get better.
That evening, we attended evening worship services at the church and as I entered the church, I looked up front and there sat the mother with her two daughters. We waved at each other and during the entire service the girls kept looking around and smiling at me. Not long into the service, the pastor gave a report about the number of people from the community who had accepted Jesus as their savior. He then mentioned a family who had returned to church, and the mother who had rededicated her life to God. It turned out to be the same young mother and her two daughters. I was so happy to have witnessed first hand how one particular part of the “body of Christ” was fulfilling our Lord’s commandment to “go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature”. They were doing just that, beginning in their Jerusalem. After the service I spoke with the mother and learned that her daughter was doing much better thanks to the help she had received from our team.
Another part of the mission that touched me so much was the debriefing sessions where we each shared our personal observations about the clinic and all the good done in our Lord’s name. During the sessions, we were blessed with much joy and laughter, but also by some tears, as we reflected on the good we had witnessed and the personal changes taking place in each of our lives.
In summary, I would encourage anyone who has the opportunity, to go on a Kirk mission trip, because as is often said by those who do, “I received much more than I gave out”. The key to this is sharing the love of Jesus with each other and more importantly, with those we come in contact with – whether in word or in deed – and Kirk mission trips provide the perfect opportunity to do just that. --Arnie Dahl
Mission Arlington 2008
When I read in the Steeple that there was a short term trip to
Arlington, Texas I began to think. I should stop sitting quietly at
home, figuring and praying that someone else will respond to God’s missionary call. I gave Jim Furman the trip leader a call to find out what it was all about. Jim shared that the trip was a follow up scouting trip to discover the opportunities for small groups and our youth to travel to Mission Arlington on short term mission trips and suggested I take a look at their web site
(http://www.missionarlington.com). The web site (I encourage you to take a look) shares there goals and gives you a glimpse of life at the mission and what happens their.
When you look at the web site you will see the many ways Mission Arlington is doing God’s work in their community. It kind of takes your breath away. My first thoughts were that the mission does a good job of talking about all the things they would like to do, but I was not convinced that they could cover all the areas they spoke of. Boy, was I wrong.
We drove to Mission Arlington late on Thursday March 6 and were met and given a key to our apartment for the trip. We started Friday with devotions, it was impressive in that it included the staff, clients and volunteers and was in both English and Spanish so all could understand the message which was one of comfort. It gave me the feeling that the mission was a safe place to be. Today people of all ages gather each week to hear the Bible taught in multiple languages in 270 locations in Arlington and the larger Dallas-Fort Worth region. They meet in neighborhood homes, apartment club houses, mobile home parks, and in any other location where people can gather together to hear God’s Word.
Then the real work began, we were given a quick tour of the facilities, including the medical and dental clinics (5 dental chairs and a lab) along with the day care center, food storage and distribution, clothes distribution, holiday stores, furniture warehouse, publishing center and prayer garden they are amazing. Numerous buildings and equipment (all of which have been giving to them) allowing them to do the Lord’s work. Part of the equipment includes a fleet of trucks for the picking up and delivering of donations from the community. David and I were sent out with Tim and we made 4 pick ups that morning that filled the truck. The thing that impressed me, when we returned to the warehouse was more than half of what we picked up that morning was put on different trucks and delivered to those in need that afternoon. The mission is unbelievably well organized in the way they match the needs of others to the donations they receive. That afternoon we picked up a donation from Six Flags… they donated 4 large 4’x4’x4’ cartons of candy to be used in the upcoming Easter egg hunt. They were expecting over 3500 children and had plans to stuff over 100,000 Easter eggs. The impressive part of meeting Tim is that his first visit to the mission was doing required community service. That was over 7 years ago, he has now accepted the Lord and in fact is one of the Sunday leaders at an apartment complex and is on staff at the mission. It was rewarding to hear him talk of his church and how he looks forward to meeting with his group to share the word. 
My curiosity had been piqued by the mission claim that they have learned to take the church to the people since they could not get the people to come to the church. I asked Miss Tillie about it and she told us that, it wasn’t that the churches weren’t friendly and inviting, but that there seemed to be social, and economic barriers in the minds and hearts of people which made it difficult for them to get connected. “We decided then that if people couldn’t come to the church, for whatever reason, we would take the church to them”. While Miss Tillie’s response was indicative of how she and the mission get things done it was her next statement that I will always remember. She was very emphatic that Mission Arlington was not an organization but “a way of life”.
It was impressive to see in a town of 300,000, a group of Christians following the same way of life as shared in the gospels. How God watches and insures there needs are met. Impressive that in the week before Easter they have over 1200 volunteers coming to prepare for Easter weekend (stuffing over 100,000 Easter eggs) for an Easter egg hunt with over 3500 kids. There is much to be learned by volunteering at Mission Arlington and the feeling of helping others makes you glad you did.
—George Hertensteiner
Verse of the Day
