Negritos-Bajo, Peru. I’m pretty sure if you google map, nothing will show up. Negritos-bajo (or Negritos-low in English) is a small mountain village about two hours outside of Cajamarca, Peru. When I say two hours I use that loosely… think one our of paved road, an hour of gravel (read: mostly giant pot holes with gravel lightly covering the surface), and a least a mile hike down the side of a mountain. When I say village, I also use that term lightly. It’s mostly just a church with a number of surrounding houses within hiking distance.
Actually it’s just a church. A church with one room and a dirt floor but the most beautiful mountain view I have ever experienced and the most generous people I have ever had contact with.
This place could not have been more different than the comfort I was used to just a week or two prior. My family and friends were always a text away. My truck was there to take me to get anything I wanted. I had a steady job to pay for any food I wanted to go and buy for myself.
Yes, it is beautiful.
But it’s also really hard. So I sat on that mountain, and I grieved what I had lost whilst trying to keep a brave open face. I am a world racer after all. I should be thankful. This is what I wanted. I should be praying more, saying more doing more. And I should be happy about it.
And if you know me that means you know that will work for about five minutes. You also know that if you add physical ailment to that, I am a goner. It was about a day into our four days in Negritos-lo before I started getting sick and it turned out to be a five-day stint in the hospital.
On that mountain, feeling homesick, physically sick, alone, afraid, tired, confused but surrounded by scenic beauty, overwhelmed is one word that does not stretch far enough. Still in all the vast amount of research for this trip, I didn’t plan my outlets for expression very well.
It was then that my squad leader, John, pointed out the piano. There was an electric piano in this little church with a dirt floor and one outlet. Isn’t that crazy? Isn’t crazy how God provides?
The next day I was sitting outside taking in the sun and spending some time out with the Lord and he gave me some divine words.
In all my time of feeling sorry for myself, of being sick, of trying to fit a definition of what I though I should be, I had forgotten the most important thing. Just going on this trip was the right thing because it was the first step on God’s path for me. It was the first step towards him and everything after that is just love.
Frankly, I will never be enough. BUT THAT’S THE POINT. Jesus died for me so every time I build up that wall between me and God, it will be destroyed. He died so that I could rebuild that wall and it could be destroyed again and again and again.
I would love to tell you that I spent the rest of the week playing my sorrows out on that keyboard and radically changed the musical experience of the people of Negritos-lo. But that’s not what happened. Truth be told, I got a lot more broken (both spiritually and physically) the next couple of days. But God provided through that too.
