Awaken has a heart for missions both abroad and in our own community.
Various trips will take place throughout the year.
Stay up to date with our local missionairy family, Zeb and Mora Peterson, currently serving in Central America.
Mora is the daugher of Pastor Doug and Miki Markofski.
They have three sons, Aziel, Francis and Elionai.
Panama Mission Trip January 2020:
December 31st, 2025
HAPPY NEW YEAR! It has been 5 years since we were feet on the ground in Panama for the first time after we felt God inviting us to partner with Him here. We rang in the new year with lots of excitement and lots of new friendships as we prepared to serve our DTS outreach and then continue as staff with YWAM. We could never have envisioned all that these years would bring. Now, as we cross the threshold of one year into the next, we lock eyes with Jesus, our hope and strength as we continue this journey with Him. We hope this update finds you well and full of joy in Christ Jesus!
Ministry & Life updates
“I never thought a Ngabe could do something like this”
Helping people worship God and understand how much He values their worship will never stop being my favorite part of missions. I (Mora) had the joy of working on a dream project the past few months! The quote above is from one of the students I was able to help train and encourage in worshipping God and singing new songs to Him. To see individuals understand that they are created to worship God and believe that He values their expressions of worship is an incredible thing to witness!
When we first came to Panama God planted a seed in my heart about recording songs of worship from many cultures and languages and encourage them to sing new songs to God. The past couple of months I had the joy of stepping into this with 3 of the tribes we have here in Panama. Altogether 13 songs were recorded in the mother tongue language of the Ngabe, Embera and Kuna tribes. 4 of these songs are new songs that the tribes wrote based off of Jonah’s prayer in Jonah chapter 2. These songs have been put on the solar powered devices to be distributed to their people alongside the oral translation of the Bible.
I am teary as I write this because of all God did during these months. A dream from His heart became a reality here in our corner of Panama! We know from Revelation 7:9 that every nation, tribe and tongue will be worshipping God together. God values culture. God values language. And God speaks the languages he created. It was an absolute honor to help bring value to these cultures whom God loves. He loves their voices, and He values their worship and songs. My goal is to continue working with the indigenous here in Panama to record more of their songs as well as encourage them to create new songs of worship to God using scripture.
Life changes you. Death changes you. This year we experienced both. It’s quite the thing to process when you go from seeing someone daily to not at all. We are still finding the words for it all but we wanted to share this update as this was a big part of our past couple of months.
On a Saturday morning in November, Zeb was with our friend Pedro in what we didn’t know would be some of the final hours of his life. Early that morning Zeb drove our landlord Pedro (who lives on the property with us) to the hospital because he was sick and having a hard time breathing. Later that evening Pedro passed away due to multiple heart attacks. It was devastatingly sudden and full of grief for us and many of our dear neighbors and friends in our community. Pedro loved our family and we loved Pedro. He had a soul desperately searching for truth, but he spent much of his life burdened and did not want to talk about Jesus. We spent most of these 3 years of knowing him “living evangelism” through modeling Jesus and the Kingdom of God in the way we live life as a family. Our connection with him was up and down, yet over the past 3 months the Holy Spirit had been nudging us to be more intentional and bolder with witnessing to Pedro, and I am forever thankful that He did.
Zeb and I were overjoyed to see a change in Pedro’s openness when we started to share more. He started to ask questions, and God gave us numerous opportunities for conversations with him in his final months. He started to read the Bible, and the Lord was restoring parts of his mind that he had been losing as he grew older. The weeks leading up to his passing we presented the gospel over and over and encouraged Pedro to make Jesus the Lord of His life. We never had the gift of knowing if he did or not before he died. The day he died Zeb was with him at the hospital and Pedro didn’t want him to leave. So, Zeb stayed and he read him scripture, prayed with him and encouraged him to Jesus. Many of our letters over these years shared prayer requests for Pedro so that is why we wanted to share this news with you. Pray for us to continue to be a bright light for Jesus towards those that are in our path because of Pedro. We know that God can use even his death to bring others to Himself.
The main thing we are taking from this is how important it is to listen to the Holy Spirit. We did not know those would be the last days with Pedro, but God did. There wasn’t more time, as much as we wish there could have been, for him to hear the truth. We felt God tenderize our hearts towards Pedro these last months and give us great faith that Jesus would change his life. I am reminded of how important it is to not give up on people by growing weary of their unchanged hearts. God is always working, and His time is always right. We must continue sowing the seeds wherever we can, trusting God to tend the soil.
The second thing is to make the most of every opportunity. People’s souls are worth it. Each person that God puts in our path is an opportunity to live the light of Jesus. There is no clocking in and out of sharing the gospel. Our journey discipling Pedro and his death has really moved our family to be more aware of this on a new level.
Already Pedro’s passing gave us a fresh boost of urgency to share the gospel with others that we are discipling, including the women at the Ngabe camp, some of whom gave their lives to Jesus. For this, we rejoice!
Though we don’t know for sure, we pray that Pedro is with Jesus. And we pray that as we share this with you that you, too, will be emboldened to preach the gospel, make the most of every opportunity and never give up on people who still need Jesus. Because so many do, dear friends. Don’t grow weary. Jesus is WORTHY to receive the reward for his suffering!
Overall, It was an exceptionally busy, beautiful, heavy and refining end of the year for our family. Our oldest son turned 4 years old, our youngest started crawling and our middle son started fighting with his brother in two languages…. (the joys of raising bilingual kids haha)
We are thankful for the rest that we have been able to have this month of December. We took some family adventures here in Panama and enjoyed time with Zeb’s wonderful family who visited us for a few days.
LOOKING AHEAD:
January -Week long outreach with the Ngäbe tribe and First Free Church from Wisconsin
March- Zeb teach in the DTS in Panama
May-Missionary Member Care 4 week seminar in Costa Rica
“Let us not lose heart in doing good, for in due time we will reap if we do not grow weary.” Galatians 6:9