Peter and Cali are going on their 9th month of being in Bolivia. I haven’t met Cali, but Peter is a very people-oriented man who loves adventure and more importantly loves the Lord and pursues Him whole-heartedly. He hails from Utah, but spent a lot of his college years/early post-college years in the Cleveland, OH area: a lot different than the hot, tropical city of Santa Cruz, Bolivia where he currently resides. Listening to his story and the journey of how he ended up here was truly an inspiration and one that really grabbed my attention as he is involved in a type of ministry that I’ve felt God placing on my heart the past 6 months: sex trafficking.
Peter was a very successful man back in the States. After graduating from college, he got a job working for a company in Cleveland where, as he would say, the Lord blessed him immensely. I forget exactly what type of work he did, but regardless of what it was Peter made it big. He had a lot of big deals come through in his commission-based position and as a result the owners of the company were looking to him to hand over the reigns of the company as their retirement plan. Life was looking pretty good for the 23-year-old. That’s right…he was 23!!! I will be 23 in just under 2 months and my most prestigious job position was a student supervisor in food service at my college. (Now I loved that job, but when you compare it to running a multi-million dollar company, well…you get the idea).
But Peter gave it all up when he felt the Lord calling Him into something bigger than himself. I forget the whole journey, but he ended up finding himself in Thailand working with a sex-trafficking prevention organization “Remember Nhu.” After spending about 8 months there the organization asked him to start a new chapter here in Bolivia and so the now 25-year-old has been here ever since. It’s been a slow process at times, filled with lots of paperwork, but Peter loves it here and knows this is where the Lord has him. He knows so much about not only the extent of sex-trafficking in Bolivia, but also some of the more root causes such as poverty and corruption and tribal discrimination that plague the country. Talking with him was very insightful and really gave me a bigger heart for the country.
So far, Peter has been focusing on and investing in a people group called the Ayoreo, which is one of the poorest indigenous groups in the Santa Cruz area. And because of their severe poverty, they are an out-casted people who are often hated, feared, and abused by their fellow Bolivians. As a result, Ayoreo children are often prone to the sex-trafficking and prostitution industry as a means for providing for themselves and their family. Peter drove Julie and I by their little, walled-in community outside of downtown Santa Cruz and it was amazing to see just the drastic divide of wealth here in this city especially. Most of Bolivia’s wealth resides here in Santa Cruz and as a result there are some pretty nice places/houses. But the wealth of Bolivia/Santa Cruz is only distributed to a small percentage of the people and so where one block will look pretty nice, one block over and you will be in the slums. And that’s what this community looked like: trash everywhere, mud-brick houses, dirt roads, etc. This is the community that Peter has come to love and has to devoted his life to minister to.
I write this blog to sing a song that isn’t popular in today’s western, “Christian” culture: a song of surrender and conceding to the will of the Father regardless of where it takes you and what you’ll have to give up along the way. We live in a culture of independency and self-control where we decide what the course of our life is going to look like. If someone wants to be a doctor, they go to med school and become a doctor. If someone wants to start their own business, they go and start one. Now I’m not saying that God just disregards our passions and desires and takes us in a completely different direction (although I’m sure He might); I believe He does wire us uniquely so that we can pursue our desires and still be in His will. As it says in Psalm 37…
“Take delight in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart.” Ps. 37:2
The Lord gives us desires and passions so that we can walk in them, but so often we think that the way we walk in them is our decision. We forget that we are His creation and that, for those in Christ, we’ve been bought at the price of His Son and we are no longer our own (1 Cor. 6:19b-20a). I pray that, especially during this Easter season, we will be reminded of the cross and not only the sin that its saved us from, but also the life that its called us into: a life of surrender to the Father. This is the life that Peter and so many other people we’ve met on the Race so far have stepped into and it’s my hope that by sharing this story, it will motivate us all who call ourselves followers of Christ to step into that life as well. Christ’s death and resurrection has brought us into something so much bigger than ourselves; it’s brought us into His Kingdom. And His Kingdom is not some future hope that we wait in anticipation for; it’s alive and present right here, right now. As Jesus said on the Sermon on the Mount…
“Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” Matt. 6:10
God’s Kingdom is here. His will is being done. And He’s calling us to be active in it. He’s calling us to surrender to it…to Him. I’m not sure what that will look like for you (or for me at times), but I pray we will remember what He’s done for us and brought us into two thousand years ago and that we’ll press into what He’s leading us to. Happy Easter everyone! Christ has risen!! Thanks for all your prayers and support! Love you all! To find out more about the amazing ministry of "Remember Nhu," please visit their website at www.remembernhu.org to read more about it! And keep praying for the millions of children who are at risk for sex-trafficking and for the ones who are already trapped in it.
