I am now a member of the Xtreme Team! I will be leaving in February for training in Virginia and then leaving in April for Peru! God is amazing and I have learned so much in this whole application process.
You may be wondering what exactly I'll be doing for the next two years - well, I'll tell you.
Our vision is to evangelize and make disciples of those who live in the nearly inaccessible darkness of the Amazon jungle and high mountain regions of Bolivia and Perú. We engage multiple groups, but mostly groups with only a few hundred population, and we focus on groups where there has been little or no previous work. Most have already been contacted, but some still live as nomadic peoples who have no knowledge of God or his Word.
We do not build churches or pay pastors. We don't plant churches as you would see them in the States. We don't translate hymns or our favorite choruses. We do not do social work or relief aid as a general rule.
We do share the Word of God in their language in ways that they can understand and memorize. Our goal is to see a New Testament church planted that relies on the Word for its practices, a church that will reproduce itself and exist long after we have gone back home.
We place emphasis on the Word of God, prayer, reproducible or simple missions methodologies, and obedience-based discipleship.
As a member of the women's team, this is our goal: advanced discipleship and women's evangelism/discipleship. Generally, we will engage a people group after the men's teams have finished their engagement. Many times it is not appropriate for our men to talk with the women in the indigenous communities, so we are there to ensure that we have given all people comprehensible access to the Gospel.
There are many different people groups that the various Xtreme Teams target, but all have certain similarities, such as:
They are all geographically isolated and difficult to access. None are just a couple of days away from "civilization" but a week to two weeks away.
They are also all functionally illiterate. Some groups have no concept of what a book is, much less the Word. Others have national schools nearby, but they still do not function as literates.
In every group, there is no or very limited evangelical presence before we engage them. In some groups there are no believers, in others, five believers out of a thousand population. We may engage a group that is more evangelized, but only if they are lacking in discipleship, the indigenous believers are not reaching others, or the group is geographically divided in several parts, one section with the Gospel and the others without.
Here is a little more about the training I will be receiving in Peru:
Every new arrival to the Xtreme Team goes through four months of training at our Xtreme training camp. No cushy facilities here, we simply rent some acres of jungle alongside a river and pitch our tents. The first month is dedicated to learning Spanish, because our Latin missionaries arrive the second month and all classes are taught in Spanish from that point on. We teach indigenous missions strategies, church-planting, orality, Chronological Bible Storytelling, how to live in an indigenous community, first-aid, and camp-cooking. However, our focus is on prayer and building up the Body of Christ, for how can we teach these things if we don't first learn and practice them for ourselves? After training, each new Xtremer is assigned a team and people group whom they will engage for remainder of their term while working under the guidance of a strategy coordinator. The training is difficult and long, but the Xtremers leave ready to begin an even more difficult work and function as part of the Body of Christ.
I am so excited to begin. Please continue praying as God prepares me for the field.
