I want to tell you about one of the most passionate, encouraging people I have ever met.
My team had the pleasure of working alongside a new church in a relatively poor neighborhood of Lima for two weeks this month. Our mission was to evangelize in the markets near the church, letting people know about the service times and the children’s programs and inviting them to check it out. Every morning we arrived there, we each got a stack of tracts to hand out with all the information, which was a great compensation for our general lack of Spanish knowledge, and spent two hours walking up and down the aisles of indoor and outdoor markets talking with the vendors there. We focused specifically on the vendors and not the shoppers for a couple reasons. One was that anyone that was there to shop was generally in too much of a hurry to have a decent conversation with us, and the vendors couldn’t run away or ignore us as easily, but the main reason was that we weren’t just there to talk to as many people was we could in the two hours we had – we were there to build relationships over the course of those two weeks. The people that sold in these markets were there every single day, selling anything from fruit to clothing to electronics, working to support their families. We had the chance to visit and revisit the ones who were most interested in what we had to say, which was the main vision behind the work we were doing.
The market shut down around noon every day, and we used the early afternoons for lunch and rest. We would then spend two hours later in the day at a local park and soccer field, where we would play soccer with the youth that lived in the area. The idea was to reach the adults in the neighborhood through our market ministry, then switch gears to reach the kids through soccer ministry. There was usually enough of them hanging out there to play America v. Peru, and they loved every chance they had to show off to the Americans. The games usually lasted for over an hour, and we were all exhausted by the time they were over. Afterwards, we would share a short word and testimony with them, and invite them to the children and youth program that the church held every Sunday morning. At the end of that, we’d let them know to be back, same time tomorrow, to do it all over again. A lot of them weren’t very engaged in what we had to say, but for whatever reason they kept coming back, and we saw a lot of the same kids show up each afternoon.
The man behind all of this vision was Pastor Jorge – a Venezuelan who had just moved to Lima with his wife a few months ago for this specific purpose. He told us that way back in 2012, he had felt a calling from God to move to Peru to start a church there. At the time, he was leading a church of over one hundred people, with men’s, women’s, and youth programs. The church was engaged in its local community, and by all accounts was doing very well. He stayed for several years after that, but eventually the call from God to move on was too strong to ignore. In 2018 he moved to Lima, just a few months before we met him. He holds his church services in the bottom floor of his rented home, but he has his eye on a couple properties and hopes that soon, the church will have its own space. For the first two months of living in this neighborhood, he told us that he didn’t even hold services – he spent all his time building relationships with people that lived or worked nearby. That led him to the market, and to the soccer field. It was a perfect opportunity for a team like ours to enter the picture, not because we had anything unique or special to offer, but because our numbers helped him cover a lot more ground than he and his wife could on their own.
With every word he spoke to us, and with every interaction I watched him have with people in the community, I saw his heart pour out over this city. He is a man who truly lives what he believes, and wants nothing more than to show the love of God to every person he meets. I know without a doubt that God called him to this place, and that his efforts to reach the people here will be rewarded. Right now, his church is small, but his vision is huge. I’ve often seen people with grand visions get excited to talk about them but never act, but that is not the case here. Pastor Jorge has a grand vision for this church, and this community, and he lives it out every day. Not only does he live it out, but he is excited to bring people in to participate with him. Just a week before we arrived, a young man named Angel, also from Venezuela, got connected with the church after just being in the country a few days. Pastor Jorge took him under his wing, and he did ministry with our team every day.
He was beyond excited as well to bring us into this grand vision. He knew our Spanish was limited, and he knew that we’d never really done this type of ministry before, but none of that mattered to him. All he wanted was for us to share his passion, and he knew that God would take care of the rest. In the markets, that looked like him encouraging us to talk to people, especially when we were uncomfortable or unsure of ourselves. He regularly told us that our lack of Spanish was not important – that the people we talked with would appreciate whatever efforts we were able to put forward, and that they would actually be more willing to pay attention to us than to him because we were Americans trying our best to speak in their language. This led to some truly God-ordained appointments and relationships that we were able to build over the two weeks we were there. In fact, our whole second week was spent not meeting anyone new, but just revisiting people we had met during the first week. A few of them even attended the church for the first time while we were there, and we are all praying that those relationships continue long after we have left.
In the park with the youth, his passion and excitement looked like playing soccer with all of us, and keeping up with the game even though he was twice our age. He used this for a lot of trash talk when we would act tired, saying that he was over fifty and still going strong. He wouldn’t let us quit, and I loved it. Each day before we left for the park, he would also ask which one of us felt led to share with the youth we met that day, whether that be through a Gospel message or a personal testimony. He wasn’t discouraged when the youth would act disinterested, and encouraged us through any discouragement that we might have felt. He told us over and over again that we were just planting seeds, and that God would be faithful in bringing those to fruition. If everyone was as loving and encouraging as this man, the world would truly be a better place.
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There were two instances during our time with him that he wanted us to go with him on home visits, even though they weren’t originally part of our plan, and again, I saw the love he had for his congregation overflowing. Pastor Jorge knew that these visits were important, and wanted us to be a part of them. One morning, we got to go to the home of a police officer that had just given his life to Christ two months prior, but his wife still had not. She was at work when we went to visit, but we still got to spend two hours speaking life and encouragement into him. He was incredibly appreciative of our time there, and thanked us over and over for the visit, and for our encouragement we brought into his situation.
The other home visit happened at what I first thought was a very inconvenient time. John, who is our team’s translator, stayed home sick the day it was supposed to happen, but Pastor Jorge was not deterred. He brought us to the house anyway, trusting that God would work through the language barrier. Honestly, I had my doubts, but I went along anyway. This home visit was with an older woman who had been a Christian for decades. She was a strong part of this church, and led weekly Bible studies and prayer meetings in her home. The visit was simply for us to come alongside her and encourage her in what she was already doing, and to share our testimonies with her and one of her daughters.
(I want to give some personal history here, because this was probably one of the coolest moments of this month for me. I studied Spanish for four years in college, but that was three years ago and I haven’t practiced much. A lot of it has been lost, and I’m not super confident with what I do remember. I generally don’t offer translation unless it is very basic, and I rely on John for translation as much as anyone else on the team, because I can’t keep up with conversations very well.)
We sat down in the home, and the pastor explained, in very basic Spanish that most of us could piece together, what we were doing there. He asked for testimonies. Andrew, who has picked up quite a bit of Spanish in the last three months, offered to share. I helped with a couple words here and there when he needed it, but after a few minutes, what he was trying to say was too complicated for what he knew, and I jumped in without even thinking about it. I translated the rest of his story, and afterwards she asked for another one. Katie, who knows very little Spanish, volunteered to share, and I was able to translate the whole thing. Afterwards, I was also able to translate for the woman’s daughter, who shared a lot of her mother’s testimony with us. The whole visit was such a God-ordained opportunity, and we all went away from it feeling so encouraged. All of my teammates afterwards were also super encouraging to me, because in the three months we’d been in South America, I’d never done anything like that before. I think Pastor Jorge knew the whole time what would happen. He had faith where I lacked it, and God worked through that faith for the good of our whole team, and the family we visited.
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I want more time with this pastor, and with this church. I have seen God shine through him so incredibly often, and with such a passion that is rare to find in anyone. We took him out to lunch on our last day with him, and went around the table sharing words of encouragement with him for his ministry. The common theme between all of us was this: We came here to encourage him in his ministry, but now we are leaving feeling like it was more the other way around. He gave us exactly the experience we needed to push us into the next month, and I could not be more excited to see how God uses the growth we experienced here to lead us in the months to come.
