Like I said in the previous post, while we’re serving in Peru, we will alternate ministries every week.
But Mondays are our free days! And we were all looking forward to the beach!
We left for the beach around 10 a.m. and didn’t come back until our 7 p.m. curfew (I’ll talk about that later, if I remember…)
We played volleyball, Frisbee, played in the ice cold ocean, chilled in the warm sand, shopped, and ended the day with a group of us drinking sangrias and playing Phase 10 at a beach-front balcony restaurant.
It was the kind of super relaxing day that we needed before delving into a week packed with draining spiritual and physical work.
Tuesday, we had a “special” activity for the day. After we woke up and saw that our compound dog, Inca, had had six puppies in the night, we split into groups and went into the neighborhoods, sharing our testimonies and telling people about Inca Link and the work they are doing with the programs and trying to do in building the orphanage.
We met some wonderful people in the neighborhood that we ministered to; some people who have already impacted my life in Peru on the second day we were there!
We met teenage Angie and her mother. Angie’s mom said that they were Christians already but would appreciate prayer for Angie. Angie entered and they both told us about Angie’s fear of the Holy Spirit. She was afraid to believe strongly because she had seen the Holy Spirit in others and knew it wasn’t something you controlled. And that scared her. We prayed for Angie (and her family) and gave her a photo of N Squad with words of encouragement on the back and the promise that we’d continue to pray for them. Then, they gave us marcianos! That’s where my love for them blossomed from.
Marcianos are a frozen fruit, milk and sugar treat. They are homemade and sold from storefront shops as a way to make money. And they are delicious! They cost equivalent to twenty cents and are so worth it! They are normally made in lucuma (a local Peruvian fruit that I have grown to LOVE!), coco (coconut), mango, and fresa (strawberry).
We also met Juan, a self-professed Catholic man who owns the shoe stretcher workshop he answered the door to. At first I thought Juan was being sarcastic with us. He asked questions that he seemed to know the answer to, like, “So, now that you’re a Christian, you think your life is perfect?” and I was afraid we were going to lose him.
But he surprised me. His questions opened up and he dug in deep with us. He wanted to hear more testimonies about how God had taken our life of crap and redeemed us into what we are today. We stood outside his door for a long time and answered all his questions as he continued to brush off the woodchips and metal shavings all over his body and clothes. He asked us to come back and visit again, so that we could talk for a longer time. Juan is the type of man that you can see sitting beside and talking for days on end.
We met a few more, some very receptive and some who didn’t understand why we tried to “feed [his] mind when [he] need[ed] food for [his] body and alcohol for [his] brain”. It was a stark contrast.
Tuesday afternoon began the first week of “real” ministry. Team Veracity was assigned to work alongside Team Kingdom Seekers in construction on the Inca Link compound.
We hauled bricks, pulled weeds and dug holes for a new electrical box.
Then it started to rain.
No one was sure what to do because it “never rains” in Peru. That day, though, it did. And it rained a lot!
When we went into our room we found a surprise. The rain was leaking through every inch of the tin roof that was over our beds. Buckets were grabbed and placed under leaks. Since it “never rains” in Peru, they don’t build structures for rain. We have no support beams throughout the room and the rain piling on the tin roofs were slowly collapsing them.
The staff members measured and cut support beams quickly in order to drain the water off the room’s roof.
After sweeping and squeegeeing all the excess water off the pooling piles on the floor and fixing the collapsed bathroom roof, we went back out to finish pulling weeds.
Then Holly arrived. We have deemed that week “Holly Week”. Holly Week is the roughest, toughest Spiritual week that you will probably ever encounter, but also the most rewarding. I already touched on our vulnerability sessions in the other posts, so no need to repeat that.
Wednesday, Sarah and I completely rewired the outlets in the intern house. Fernando and Valentine called us master electricians and loved trying to ignore the communication barrier and talk to us. It was a fun day! I think we are now qualified enough to be masters and open our own shop or something! Hah
Thursday, we pulled weeds in the planter boxes all around the compound. Apparently, I am allergic to some plant in there. After a few hours, I broke out in hives and was itchy and hot. I took a few Benadryl and was knocked out for the rest of the day. The drugs, combined with my exhaustion, made me super sleepy, I guess.
Friday, I helped Valentine and Fernando rewire the kitchen, since I was so amazing the last time! We knocked that out quickly and then I was able to move on to knocking down a literal wall. We had to knock down a few retaining walls so that they can put in a wheelchair ramp for kids when they come.
The use of the sledgehammer was excessive for me, though, and resulted in a huge, gnarly blister on my thumb. (Today, though, it’s finally almost completely healed!) But we destroyed that thick, concrete brick wall!
Saturday, we finished breaking down the other walls and pulled the final weeds. Then, Tony, the only male intern here who happens to look just like my cousin Graham and even acts just like him, took us all out to ice cream as a “thank you”.
Sunday, we went to Valentine’s church service at 8 a.m. and then had an afternoon of relaxing. I did laundry and read my bible and journaled, while other’s went to the mall to spend the day using the WiFi there.
Monday, we went back to the beach for the day. I hopped on the WiFi at a café and was finally able to talk to my family and Francis. I found out my packages FINALLY arrived in Uganda from when I sent it around Thanksgiving! My sponsored child got her package and so did my friends!
Tuesday, we found out that we are doing a daycare ministry this week. We did a bible study with the staff members there and then cleaned and ate lunch—fish stew complete with the fish head and a pile of rice probably 10 feet high. (Maybe a slight exaggeration about the height…)
I spent the day interacting with the 3 and 4 year olds in their class. I fell in love with a little boy the second he walked into the classroom. He was extremely filthy, literally covered in dirt from head to toe. He sat by himself at a table apart from his peers and didn’t say a word. As he ate, I sat beside him. He looked at me very skeptically, but continued eating.
A few minutes later, his hand came up and rested on my other arms. Success! I had won him over!
I spent the rest of the day being followed by Pedro, my 4-year-old shadow. When I sat next to him, he’d wrap his dirt-caked arms around my neck. When I stood and walked, sure enough, he was there behind me.
He loved my camera and kept asking for more photos with me. We had times where we would just look at each other and he’d erupt in giggles but then his hands would quickly fly to his mouth to cover it up like he was trying to keep it in.
The next thing he said changed my entire attitude for days to come.
As he held up his craft we had made in front of our faces, he said, “Escuchanme. Es un secreto!” and giggled uncontrollably. He was so adorable! The videos I have of him giggling as we repeated the same scene over and over melts my heart!
Unfortunately, that was the last I saw of him for the week.
The rest of the week, we did work at the daycare. Sarah and I were assigned, by Valentine, to sand a handrail that they had built and then sand all the joints where putty had been placed. Then, we were finally instructed to paint it.
That took three days to complete while the other girls were painting a room.
And that is a very quick recap of what we’ve been doing so far in Peru!
Now I’ll touch on the “7 p.m. curfew” I mentioned at the beginning.
We are stationed, at the Inca Link Peru compound, in a very dangerous area of Trujillo.
Gangs run the area and child “members” are the majority. The older members recruit young kids to do the “dirty work” because the Peruvian government overlooks the horrible crimes that kids commit since they are “just kids”.
The old members lure children as young as 9-years-old to do anything they ask of them: murder, sell drugs, trade firearms– anything. Child soldiers are no joke. Our contact says that they pay a child member 100 soles, about $40, to murder someone on their list.
There is also a man in the next neighborhood who is said to train children that same age on how to rob and kill at knifepoint, specifically Americans because they typically have more than 100 soles on them (which, like I said, is what they would get paid to carry out a hit and this way they get all the money for themselves).
Another teenager in one of the area gangs has a rap sheet of murders that he has committed that they have evidence of, numbering in the 20s, and his sentence? A few years in a juvenile detention center. But he’s escaped numerous times to carry out hits for the gang and literally gets caught in the act. But nothing is amended to his sentence. Our contact says that he has killed more people since being in the center than he did before and nothing has changed.
Most taxis refuse to drive two where we are staying because they know that they chances of being robbed or murdered are high and, in order for them to pass peacefully, they must pay off some gang member in the area for “safe passages”. And most of the drivers don’t want to get in the middle of it.
The only way of transport we have from our ministry sites, sometimes an hour away, and our home base is public conveys. The conveys are 12-passanger-vans with a driver and a conductor (who tries to load passengers on and collects money). The beginning of the “M” line convey is a few hundred feet from our base’s driveway.
We are usually the first ones on the empty conveys and have been told to be super aware because nothing is stopping them from basically driving off the dirt path with us in the car and taking us and/or our stuff.
As we head back to Victor Raul at the end of ministries, or even today on the way home from church, Peruvians (often older women) caution us, warning us how dangerous the area is that we directed the driver to take us to. Everyone knows the dangers and people avoid the area, if at all possible.
We also just heard that two days ago, two American women were walking down a road a few blocks from our compound at 3 p.m. and were captured and raped. They went to tell the police and file a report and the police refused to listen because they were going on their lunch break and knew the gang members who committed the crime and didn’t want to get involved.
And this is all during the day.
Needless to say, the area gets worse after dark. That is why we are required to be inside our locked, gated compound by sun down every night.
I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t scared hearing the stories. I have yet to feel unsafe when riding to the ministry sites and seeing the beach on our free day (it’s an hour outside of where we are and in a very different culture and we always go in groups of about 20, so it’s a lot safer), but my heart breaks hearing those stories of the danger that surrounds us here and how desperate the people are.
I say this all, not to frighten you (although I’m sure I just killed my parents hah), but to ask for you to join with us in continuous prayer. It’s literally another world here and there know of no hope.
I hear it every day in the stories we’re told that keep us updated on the security threats.
I see it in the dirty faces on the side of the street years younger than my “little sister”, Corrie Jane, as I wonder if they are enticed with money and candy in order to kill people for family members.
My heart breaks for the people in Victor Raul, but I know that I serve a God who does the impossible.
Inca Link Peru is planting seeds of change in this community!
God will show up bigger and better than ever before and we’re going to see a revelation!
It might not be this month, this year, or even this generation, but God has already started a work to being hope to these hopeless and I’m working to bring in all the additional prayers possible for this area to see that change in their lifetime!
I want child soldiers to be able to return to school because they know the importance of an education.
I want the locals to see Americans coming to help, instead of being a literal target for any crime that brings them pleasure.
I want the gangs to realize there is a bigger dog in charge of that area now; that God rules where Satan once did!
I want freedom for this village oppressed under Satan current, horrendous reign!
For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.
2 Timothy 1:7
