Author - Mark Cote

[Be advised that this post contains a very disturbing yet miraculous story]. Eleven years ago this morning, we heard our newborn daughter cry. Piercing and penetrating, Victoria Grace’s cry signaled a miracle. Despite a “birth defect not compatible with life,” her cry declared that she was alive. But her cry also pointed to her grave condition. Due to the deformation of her head and brain, her cry sounded different, a reminder of her approaching death. Victoria’s cry was life and death, and our King heard.

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Memory is an amazing function of the human brain. Its capacity to enrich life abounds. Tragically, in a fallen world, the memory of past trauma haunts and hurts survivors as lasting evidence of the enemy’s aim to steal, kill, and destroy. Yet the redemption and renewal of the mind in the New Creation opens the door to new memories and healing from past trauma. Research indicates that new pathways in the brain connected to new behaviors require hundreds of repetitions. One leader shared at our missionary retreat in January that doing so in the context of play drastically reduces the number of repetitions required to take on these positive changes. Simply put, the natural play of children reminds us as older children that play plays a critical role in healing and the renewal of our minds. We already have some very special playful memories to share with you from the first two months of 2019!

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In 2018 we have encountered many challenges in the ministry, but God’s grace has answered each one. So we close 2018 and open 2019 by giving thanks for a few of the many gifts of this season.

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KA Peru’s new Country Director recently commented, “I’m sitting here smiling about the success of the last few days.”

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Sometimes doors close. As I write this blog, the plan was for me to be settled into a hotel in Bonito, Brazil, resting and preparing for a large conference that begins tomorrow, where I would have had the privilege to address around 1000 child welfare officials and workers in Brazil with the hopeful message of trauma-informed care, including some of our own family’s story of loss and redemption with our daughter, Victoria Grace.

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In late spring, from a place of being worn out, we called out to our Father, trusting Him to speak and guide us to a place where we could begin to heal. We read Exodus 15:25-27, and He first called us to Himself as our healer:

“There He made for them a statute and regulation, and there He tested them. And He said, ‘If you will give earnest heed to the voice of the Lord your God, and do what is right in His sight, and give ear to His commandments, and keep all His statutes, I will put none of the diseases on you which I have put on the Egyptians; for I, the Lord, am your healer.’ Then they came to Elim where there were twelve springs of water and seventy date palms, and they camped there beside the waters.”

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The Kids Alive Pucallpa ministries and our lives have been “teaming” with life over the past couple of months! Read More

If you were to ask Kristin what she loves to do, she would be hard-pressed to select specific things or activities. But this year we have been learning together how she thrives when she can “harmonize” with those around her. Harmony requires a melody, and what Kristin loves to do is come alongside and fill in around the service and work of others, which she does here on a daily basis. To catch up with Kristin is to do so constantly…

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“God will use any number of extraordinary things to chisel the detail of His ‘lily work’ in His children…He will use anything and everything, no matter what it is, and we shall always know when God is at work, because He produces in the commonplace something that is inspiring” (Oswald Chambers). Here is our family pictured on March 4, 2018, 10 years following our Victoria Grace’s passing from this earth into our Lord’s presence. Her living legacy of God’s victory by His grace marches forth. Here are a few glimpses of recent glordinary goings here in Peru…

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Only God Himself is pure, honorable, and powerful enough to cover sin and cast out fear. Because He is love, Peter and John tell us that His love both covers a multitude of sins and casts out fear (1 Peter 4:8; 1 John 4:18). John describes this love as “perfect” love, which carries the sense of completeness and wholeness. For the children we minister to through Kids Alive Peru, God’s love for the whole child casts out fear. It begins by seeing God’s love formed in our own lives as His servants, and it extends to children like the one in this story…

 

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