Today was our first full day serving on the mission field and I can’t believe some of what has already happened. I don’t have any insane awakening or deep thoughts I just want to give a “day in the life of” kind of post and share some stories.
I woke up this morning just before 7. I took a quick peek at my phone and had a notification from my Bible app highlighting Corinthians 13. I read the whole passage. There God talks about love,and how we can preach fancy sermons, and have faith to flatten mountains, but if we don’t love we have nothing. I thought that was such a befitting way to start not only the day but really our ministry in Trujillo.
After digging into the word I grabbed breakfast with my team. We ate up some eggs and bananas before starting our day. Afterwards we took a walk down to the nearest hardware store and bought some paint. I know it sounds super cliche but we spent our morning painting the school here in Trujillo. It honestly was a lot of fun and a great team building experience.
After words we dig into some amazing Peruvian food I won’t even attempt to name. All I can say is it was delicious.
After lunch things got more unexpected. We were cleaning out the school and found an old toilet that we were going to get rid of. The lady who cooked for the school asked if she could have it because she didn’t have a functioning toilet. Not realizing what we were getting into we agreed to take this toilet to her house.
Me and my teammate Joshua took of walking towards her house carrying a toilet. We didn’t realize she walked about a mile to work everyday. We ended up taking turns hauling a toilet across the desert of Peru in the middle of the afternoon. We finally made it to her house after sweating off a few pounds. I didn’t realize that people lived in such poverty.
Her house was an open air mud hut. It was four mud walls with only a partial roof on one side. The beds were under that roof. In the middle there was actually a full cactus. The back wall had a little farm built against it where there were a few chickens and a surprisingly large number of Guinea pigs. The bathroom was a little concrete bowl that set atop a pipe that in the ground. It was an all around depressingly nasty living space. We absolutely destroyed her nasty little concrete whatever and jerry-rigged this toilet to the pipe.
I’ve never seen someone so genuinely happy to have a half working, unprofessionally installed toilet in their home. It was so humbling, because I’ve been so ungrateful and honestly oblivious to the blessings I’ve had.
After that humbling experience we stopped at a little store because the pastor offered to buy us some Peruvian icecream to try and reward us for the exhausting and kinda nasty work. I didn’t feel I needed a reward, but I wasn’t turning down free icecream. It became a very funny interaction when the pastor convinced the girls working the store that we were professional soccer players. They didn’t buy it, but I still got icecream so I didn’t care.
After making it back to base I took a quick shower and got cleaned up to go down town. Our leader had to go down to the mall into so i was going to join him. We ended up hoping in a taxi straight from “Fast and Furious.” This guy just speed through traffic weaving between cars with absolute precision. If you ever needed a getaway driver this was the guy you wanted.
We somehow made it to the mall alive after avoiding multiple very close accidents. Our leader went ahead and got what he needed at the mall and then we made our way to the church we were supposed to go to. Our taxi from the mall to church didn’t put us right at the church and unfortunately we didn’t know where to go.
We called the pastor and asked for help so he sent a friend to meet us. It at that moment dawned on me that there me and two other missionaries stood in a foreign market waiting for some guy we have never meet to come call our name and lead us to a place we had never been. Somehow that seemed like a totally normal thing on the mission field.
We went to church which was so cool. I didn’t understand most of what was said, but just realizing that everyone was worshipping God regardless of their language was awesome. I liked that environment.
After church we shot back to our base and had a great dinner. The food here is so good. We ended up talking for ever, and our leader shared his testimony and story. It was already past midnight before we headed towards bed.
I honestly can’t believe that was all one day. It sounds like a crazy story straight from some book, but that’s my life right now. If that was only the first day I can’t imagine what the next three months hold. All I did was say yes to God’s calling and he has taken me on the journey of a lifetime.
That’s a brief summary of a crazy first day serving in Trujillo. It’s going be a crazy ride.
