Peru Mission Debrief

I’m a Christian and I went with a group of young adults from my church to serve the people of Peru. We didn’t get any reward out of it. We went because we wanted to. We did construction work, heavy construction work half the time and played with kids from a refuge the other half of the time. We were not physically prepared for the construction work (mixing cement by hand, wheelbarrowing sand and cement back and worth, shoveling, etc.) so after the end of each work day, we were all very sore. On the third and fourth day, we interacted with the kids at the refuge which is a school as well as a rehabilitation center. We all learned something about God and had a lot of fun. We had two translators with us, and by the end of the trip, saw one become a believer. We did some sight seeing in Lima on our last day and along the way, created more inside jokes in a week’s time than we would of in 10 years.

OK, so you want to know more.  Good!  I picked out some experiences that particularly stood out to me. The first was when we arrived at the Pucallpa airport. Victor and his wife Anna (directors of the Refuge of Hope) came to pick us up. We had a tour bus, a very small one. Imagine the ones that are not very safe and would be the type to fall off a cliff. That’s the one we were on. To get it started, the driver asked if the guys could give it a push. Yeah, you know you’re in a developing country when you need to push a car to pop the clutch. As if that wasn’t a good enough indication, we were on the road for less than 5 minutes before our bus took a turn and started driving on dirt road. Missions trip, here we come. Now, our whole team was excited. This was what we came here for- the adventure.

Once we arrived at the refuge, we went straight to their church building as service had started. The building was what many people would consider a shack. At the front was a guy preaching a sermon. I didn’t understand a word, except he was on fire about what he was talking about. And once in a while, a guy in the audience would say “Alleluia”, “Praise God”. It was literally shouts of joy at hearing the Gospel. So then I realized this about the “religion” I subscribe to. It’s written in the Bible that the church is the people, not the building itself. There wasn’t a better picture of that than where we were standing. In terms of language, we were miles apart. But in spirit, we were brothers and sisters. And we relied on that as our common ground for the rest of the trip.

The next day, Victor the director of the refuge tells us about the story of how he came to want to build the school. Victor was four when he had Polio. The village he grew up in, everyone had Polio. And if you remember, a lot of people died. Knowing and seeing what Polio did to the kids in the village, his parents tried everything to find a cure. The ones lucky enough to have survived Polio usually suffered some form of handicap. They tried everything but nothing worked- Western doctors, Eastern doctors, witchdoctors. As a result, he became paralyzed from the neck down. For two years, all he could do was move his neck. Think of the anguish his parents went through. One day, a stranger came and said he had a solution but would involve letting Victor go with him to the jungle. Pucallpa was already considered in the jungle region so this must have been going into a forest of some sort. His parents were very reluctant since he could have been a kidnapper, murderer, or something worse. Not having any other option to see their son get better, they finally let the stranger take him.

Victor was placed on top of a platform supported by columns. And then the stranger left. Victor, alone woke up to complete darkness and just started screaming. He eventually blacked out. He would wake up once in a while when the stranger would bring him food and water. Still after the 5 days, he did not get better. He was returned to his parents, which now all hope was lost. There was no medicine to heal the disease. One night, his mom took Victor out for a walk. Very upset, she just sat on a bench and just started screaming and yelling. To who? To what? To circumstances in life. At the abyss of desperation, she cried out saying “Jesus, help me”. Then again, and again, and again. At that moment, Victor felt his body and said to her that he would like to stand up. He did and for the first time in 2 years, he ran. After that miracle, Victor went to a public school in the area but was constantly bullied. He was still very weak from the disease so kids would just push him and he would fall over easily. One day, he told his mom he won’t go back because “even though we live in the jungle, those kids are more barbaric than we are”. Around the age of 9 or 10, he got the idea to start a school for kids with disabilities. He left the idea and didn’t pick it up until after college. And so, the school was built and it still stands 20 years later. It is built completely by hand, a majority by groups such as us who came to help with the construction. You know, we always hear about a friend of a friend of a friend who had a miraculous healing. I heard it straight from the primary source. God is real. When we’re at our lowest and don’t have anywhere or anyone to turn to, we can turn to him. He’s there. That’s both scary and reassuring.

Now here’s something that I personally learned from this trip. Prior to this, I was very apprehensive about working with kids. So you might have noticed, I’m not the best with kids. Nor do I go out of my way to be around them. This trip killed all doubts. It was the third day and we stayed to work at the refuge. We knew there would be construction work as well as interacting with the kids. In the morning, I was asked whether I wanted to do construction or hang out with the kids in an English class. I chose the former. Heck yeah, I was going to break my muscles instead of playing with kids. And I had the endurance for it- shoveling, breaking up sand, wheelbarrowing it back and forth. I attribute that quality to my parents, who have insane amounts of endurance. Back to the story. It was about noon when my team lead told me to finally take a break. Go play with the kids at the church he said. Fine, so I did. I walk in and see this kid throwing a beach volleyball around and I started hitting it back and forth with him. Then a little girl comes in, also holding a beach volleyball. She had no one to play with, but saw me and I kind of just made the gesture of “let’s go, throw it at me”. And then all hell broke lose. I started hitting it back and forth, then another girl comes and joins and now it’s 2 on 1 with me hitting it alternating to each girl. We did this for a good hour. Then the church got packed with kids lined up against the window watching the jocks (one teaching the kids how to play American football and the other playing volleyball with two sets of kids, and another telling a kid to beam me with a soccer ball when I wasn’t looking). Then we played some more outside, and then we had a soccer game. So that would be 3 hours of running around on top of the 4 hours of construction work we were doing. Nice.

The next day, our last day we did more of the same. Only something really wonderful happened. I was going about my own business and the same girl, Analis saw me. She called me by my name, smiled, ran to me, hugged me and wouldn’t not let go. How great was that? We played some more volleyball later on. For the first time in my life, I experienced what it would be like to be a father. It was good.

Finally, I’ll leave you with this story. The guys were planting trees when Americo told us a story he heard. He heard about an Ethopian runner who was in a race. He was the only runner from that country. As the race went on, more and more runners dropped out. He finally finished, but was way behind even the last person. A reporter saw this and asked him why he just didn’t quit because he wasn’t going to win 1st, 2nd, 3rd, or even 5123142th place. He said prior to the race, his king had asked him to do one thing- finish the race. The runner used that as motivation to keep running because his king, the person that rules the country he was in personally asked him to finish the race. Americo said in many ways that is like the Christian walk. You don’t need to come in first in terms of how holy we are because we can’t. All we’re asked to is that we not quit because just like the race, keeping in step with the Christian faith will be tough. But at the end of the race, we’ll be rewarded by our king. So, I’ll keep running.

There’s more, so much more.  But to get the 2 hour version, you’ll have to ask me about it.