This month team Jubilee partnered with Camino De Vida, a mega church in Lima, Peru. The church has six campuses scattered around the city. This church is amazing. They have a ton of outreaches that we have had the opportunity to join.
One ministry is delivering wheelchairs. The church finds people who are in need of a wheelchair, orders them, assembles them and delivers them to people all around the city. A couple of us got to hand out wheelchairs the first day we arrived and it was one of the most impactful days. The first woman we gave a wheelchair to was shot and now breathes out of a tube. She suffers intense physical pain. I was given the opportunity to share the gospel with her and encourage her. Her conditions are tough. It was amazing to see the relief and hope in her eyes as we encouraged her that soon her physical pain will end completely.
The second wheelchair we handed out went to a young boy who was mentally handicapped. He smiled so big when he sat in it for the first time. We prayed for him and his mother before we left.
The last wheelchair went to a man who was accidentally shot while he was walking home one day. He went from being a hard worker determined to support his family, to immobile and hopeless in one moment. He said the sudden change in lifestyle was so shocking at the beginning that he tried to commit suicide. It took a lot for him to adjust and find new ways to support his family. He was encouraged by our service and our listening ear. We reminded him of the Lord’s faithfulness, support, dependability and promise of complete restoration. He was a sweet man. Our hearts broke for him.
We painted a lot this month. Each paint job was intentional and gospel focused. A couple of us painted a whole street’s worth of homes a few blocks away from one of the campuses. We also drove to the slums up in the hills just outside the city and renovated an old woman’s home. We cleaned the clutter that had piled up in her home, washed all of her dishes and painted the whole outside of her house. She was a sweet old woman who was frail and did not have the strength to keep her house clean. While I was painting the inside of her home, two of the volunteers from Camino De Vida sat with her for hours and told her all about the Lord and what Jesus did to save her. As we left, we prayed for her and she had a huge smile on her face.
On Saturdays we went out to the local market and invited children to kids club. If they agreed to come, we took them back to the church and had a small Sunday school session. We played games, did a craft and told them a Bible story. Some children came every week and some came once or twice. Some of the children were really rowdy and challenging, but getting them exposed to the gospel as much as possible was the goal. Those two hours were a beautiful time when children came wanting to have fun, but left with more knowledge of Jesus and a craft to share with their parents. In the afternoons on Saturdays, we visited an orphanage for disabled children and loved on them. The first week I told stories to my friend Becker for hours, the second week I played in the park with my friend Jeremy who had autism.
The first day we got here our Camino De Vida team leader, Mikayla (a vivacious 22 year old and full time missionary here in Lima), told us there was a cool opportunity to serve in the jungle for three days if we like love to go. Of course we said yes. The Peruvian military was planning to provide free health care to a small jungle town and we were going to serve food, hand out wheelchairs and play with children. It ended up being some of the most exhausting days on the whole race, but also hands down some of my favorite days on the race.
(Paige, Mikayla and I on a military plane traveling to the jungle!)
(Left to right – Mikayla, Taylor, Paige, Myself, Emmyshop)
We traveled with 70 volunteers from Camino De Vida to serve in the town square next to the clinic. We stayed in a hostel that was an hour drive from the town square. We woke up at 4am each morning to give ourselves enough time to set up and make breakfast. We had a carnival station with games, a station with free manicures, face paint, a wheelchair distribution station, a group of volunteers painting a hospital and a hard working group of cooks making meals everyday.
We handed out 1000 breakfasts to the people in line the last morning we were there, 300 lunches everyday and tons of soda cans to children everywhere. It was crazy. It was tiring. It was amazing.
(Wheelchair distribution staton within the clinic.^)
I was part of the kids team. We danced with the children and put on a small skit for them every day at 2pm. I also helped paint faces, hand out gospel bracelets and serve food! The crowds were crazy, the days were long and the Lord was all over that square. I loved seeing a church body work so hard to serve a community and it was amazing to be a part of it.
A couple of my favorite moments from the jungle were:
1. Cleaning the bathroom floor with Elba the last morning we were there. She is a sixty-something adorable woman who volunteers her time and give her all to serve even though it is physically very tiring for her.
2. Having a mini dance party with Arturo while painting the hospital.
3. Unloading millions of soda cans out of the truck with Brian at 545am.
3. Learning the fruit dance with the ladies on the kids team.
4. Mashing apples in the mobile kitchen, not knowing Spanish and taking the giant bucket of apple juice to the wrong place and getting sent back. “Lo siento! Gringa loca!!!”
5. Doing push ups in the river after a day of painting with Brian and Arturo.
6. Handing out and explaining gospel bracelets by reading off what my friend and translator Astrid wrote down for me. What even is a language barrier? 😉
7. Becoming friends with two little girls named Sarai and Jennifer. We hung out every evening. We wrote notes back and forth and they taught me how to say all the colors in Spanish.
This church is amazing. Their saying as a church is “Para serverte con mucho gusto” which basically translates to we serve gladly. They live by the idea that it is better to give than to receive. All of the volunteers here work all hours of the day, with all that they have, without complaining.
I listened to a podcast on the way home from the jungle that explained that worship is not just a song that we sing, but a position in life where you live out of a place where you know that God is God and you are not. In that position everything you do is worship. I thought of the church when I heard that. This church lives worship. Worship extends past the services at each of the six church campuses and flows into the way they serve everyone in their community.
With that, there is genuine and lovely community within the church. The 70 of us got so close those three days serving so hard together. The six ladies that were on my kids team became my sisters in a couple of hours. Even though I barely spoke Spanish, they became my people. There were such sweet friendships within that group of people. Every evening as we packed up for the day, you could feel the community of Camino De Vida. After our last breakfast together, we took pictures and celebrated what the Lord had done those three days in the jungle
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(^This couple was in charge of the carnival station. I don’t think I ever saw them sit down for the whole three days. Their lines were the longest, but their smiles were the biggest. Most genuine people you will ever meet. They are the aroma of Christ.)
This month has been probably my favorite so far on the race. I am so thankful that I got to be a member of this family for these three weeks. I learned so much from each of these people. Made some life long friends, saw Jesus move in the hearts of people everywhere.
In everything I did, I showed you that by this kind of hard work we must help the weak, remembering the words the Lord Jesus himself said: ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive’. –Acts 20:35
