We arrived in Peru on a hot Saturday afternoon two weeks ago. We had traveled for a long time, were hot, ready for a shower, but thankful to be here safely. Maria picked us up in a friend’s van and explained that Joel, her husband, native to Oklahoma, was not going to be here for the month we are here. Maria grew up here in Peru, is native to the country, but speaks very good English. Her and Joel founded Savage ministries a few years ago and have been married for just a few years. As we drove towards the compound, she told us that it was her 33rd birthday.
We were not prepared for what Peru was about to experience, nor was anyone else in this country. El Nino is a weather pattern that many of you may be familiar with, a warm front that has been affecting the weather in much of western civilization. In Peru, rainfall has happened three times in the last ten years, and since being here, that statistic has been drastically changed. It has rained almost every day and night, which in some places would be a great thing. Not here.
Trujillo is a desert, there is no green vegetation, no rich land for growing grass, no rainforests nearby, and the rain that’s been falling has had nowhere to go. The rivers that are close to the city began to swell, the rains came down and the waterline rose. At first it was just a fear, after the second rainfall, people began to worry.
Then the floods came.
The city was slammed with the first wave, the river breaking and overflowing into streets, in almost ten minutes the whole city was flooded. The water flow collapsed all the bridges crossing the rivers and the water and debris swept through the streets, carrying with it anything buoyant or not tied down. Mudslides began, the septic systems were drained into the roads, and houses began to creak.
Then the second wave hit. Water pipes were swept away, ending people’s water supply. Electricity was cut when telephone poles were felled. Homes were completely washed away. Peru declared itself in a state of emergency, and all schools were closed as a precaution.
My team watched as homes were destroyed, peoplewere stranded in the city (including us, it took us an entire day to finally find a way back to the compound) and Peru quickly became a desperate place. Devestation was everywhere, hundreds of people without homes, without food, without a place to sleep at night.
The floods didn’t stop.
It continued to rain, and everytime it rained, the flood waters would rise. Like the song goes, “The rains came down and the floods came up, and the house on the sand went splat.” Three blocks from where the compound is located is complete destruction. There’s nothing left. It looks like Katrina hit parts of the city. People stand outside in the flood water with their brooms, trying to sweep it away, as though it’ll just disappear.
The thing is, there’s nowhere for it to go. The ground can’t absorb this kind of water, we could only hope that there was a way to channel the water into the ocean.
A few days ago, two girls from my team and I decided to use our free afternoon to go back and visit the beach. A week before that we had spent a day swimming in the clean sand, under a clear sunny sky, before any floods or rains had come. That beach had been beautiful, a wonderful relaxing day, and we wanted to return. When we arrived, we jumped into the water, and after about twenty minutes, went back to the storefront to get some late lunch. An hour later we returned to the waterfront to find that it stunk. We were puzzled, but only for a moment. We looked at the sand and realized that we weren’t just standing on the rocky beach, we were standing on thousands of dead sea urchins and dead starfish. Then we realized that it wasn’t just that – there were thousands of dead fish, and even some dead birds covering the once-rocky beaches.
The ocean had thrown up on Trujillo’s coastline.
We had been swimming in polluted water. Water so polluted that it killed all the animals drinking, swimming-in and eating in it. The ocean had been wrecked.
We were obviously pretty grossed out, and walked about a mile down the beach to where the sand was clear, we jumped in the ocean again just to rinse off, and then headed home. As we were driving, the rains came again.
The next day, the floods returned. This time, people had begun to set up their own barriers to try to keep the water out of their homes. For some, they had success, for at least a few minutes before the waters rose and flowed right over the barriers.
I write about the flooding in detail because when you watch these things on the news, it’s just like a sad movie, something you have an off-button for. Or at least, you can dim the brightness, or turn the volume down.
Here, I have no remote control. I have to fast-forward option, I have no skip option. And here, there is no turning it off.
In a security briefing from my sending organization, I read the following statistics: “The climate phenomenon El Nino has led to one of Peru’s worst rainy seasons in decades. Thus far, the heavy rains have triggered flooding and landslides in at least 20 out of Peru’s 25 regions, resulting in at least 48 fatalities, 144 injuries, 11 missing persons, and more than 56,000 people displaced. The rains have destroyed more than 6,5000 homes and hundreds of schools and health centers. It’s disrupted travel on 5% of national roads. Peru has so far recorded 121 million US Dollars in damage to its infrastructure and agricultural lands.”
This month, I expected to be working in a school. I expected to have off days where I could just go to the mall or the beach and get food from street vendors. I expected to see Peru, to enjoy its history. Instead, I got caught in floods, watched people’s lives be swept into ruin, and got stranded in flood waters. I waded through rivers that were once streets, and I had a seriously bad attitude towards it all.
We lost Wi-Fi, water supply, and hope. I struggled with feeling inadequate, not being able to fix these people’s problems. I struggled with fear, that the floods would come and damage the compound we live in, I was fearful of getting stuck in water deeper than my knees. I was afraid of the polluted water making us sick, and I was mad. Mad at the clouds, mad at the rain, mad at the sky for falling, and kinda mad at God for letting something this terrible happen to thousands of people.
There’s still not much I can do for Trujillo, but there is something. I can pray, I can work, I can help distribute food. Even if all I can do is feed someone for a day, that’s a day they don’t have to worry about being fed. We’ve been working in the school here, even though there’s been no classes since the floods. We’ve been painting classrooms, and they look so great. We’ve been praying for the teachers, for Joel and Maria, for these classrooms, that Jesus would be proclaimed through it all. We’ve been background noise, and I’m realizing that it’s okay. A missionary doesn’t have to be The Hero, they have to be a servant.
I’m still trying to find hope here, it’s hard to watch. I get to leave, these people don’t. I don’t know what these kid’s futures will look like, I don’t know if the beach will be safe for weeks, I don’t know if Peru will get back on it’s feet for years, but I do know that God is here, that God is working, and that people can find Him in the midst of all this.
Please, pray for Peru, for these people and for this school. Pray for Joel and Maria, that he can return to Trujillo safely, that they will be blessed financially and able to continue improving this school. Pray for the teachers here, that they will continue to work hard to educate these kids well while loving them like Jesus does. Pray for the city, that water pipes will be fixed and that these people will have fresh water again.
This wasn’t what I expected, it wasn’t in my plans to watch a city crumble and not be able to do a thing about it. But God can give hope. “For our light and momentary afflictions are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all, so we fix our eyes on not what is seen, but on what is unseen, for what is seen is only temporary, what is unseen is eternal.” 2 Corinthians 4: 17-18
