(That blog title though, so much rhyming!)
So Peru. I totally dropped the ball on blogging about Peru, but wanted to take some time to do that now because it was an incredible month and I want to share all that God did while we were in Trujillo.
So the month of August we were in Trujillo, a beach town but also a desert. It was a pretty spread out city so we took buses or taxi’s pretty much everywhere. We quickly got accustomed to cramming 7ish people in a tiny taxi, or 28 people in a 15 passenger van. We had lots of laughs and numb legs as a result of these adventures.
This past month was all-squad month, meaning our entire F Squad of 45 people lived together and did ministry together. We split up for ministry some, but for the majority of the time we did things together. It was so much fun to get to know the people on my squad on a deeper level this month, to build relationships with people, serve together, and just have fun as a squad.
Our ministry contact Joel and his wife Maria were awesome and such a joy to get to know. They are in charge of Savage Ministries and we stayed at their compound. We had a room for the guys, two girls rooms with bunk beds and the “married couples housing.” I had 14 roommates this month. It was a party. We had a kitchen and different teams were in charge of cooking for the squad each week. We all had jobs, dishes, cleaning bathrooms, sweeping out the bed rooms and the chapel etc.
I will never again complain about having to share a bathroom with just my brothers, this month we had one shower for the entire squad. It went better than expected, probably because the showers were cold so no one ever had to fight for hot water. However, the shower was located in the girls’ bathroom so whenever a guy showered we would switch bathrooms until he was out, this is where some of my most embarrassing stories from the month happened.
Ministry in Peru switched from week to week. Different teams were in charge of different church services each week which we had on Sunday, Wednesday and Saturday nights. So that included someone preaching, sometimes doing worship and sometimes doing a skit or a game, if it was the youth group. I ended up preaching at one of the services which was so crazy! I shared some of my story and talked about the hope and purpose we have in Christ.
The first week we did VBS in the afternoon, Fearless Laughter and Rak Chazak were in charge of doing crafts with the kids, we had twenty minutes with each group of children so the crafts were usually fairly simple but still fun. I enjoyed getting to be with kids and it was really fun to see the same kids each afternoon and get to build relationships with them.
Some girls worked with the school at the compound each morning while some of us painted. I was part of the group who painted the school. It was really fun, we had dance parties and just got to talk as we painted. We played soccer with some of the local kids, passed pamphlets out around town and learned super intense hip-hop type dances and skits to preform at high schools and churches. We learned moves to kids’ songs and preformed them at “the valley church” a more rural area where we hosted a kids’ event.
My favorite ministry that we did was during the last week in Peru, we went to prison! In Peru the things provided in prison are some rice and beans and the walls, meaning if you want anything else (clothes, toilet paper etc.) your loved ones have to buy it and bring it to you. People stand in line for hours with items in order to have them searched so they can get the items inside the prison. The first day we went out to the prison we preformed our dances, skits and shared the gospel with the people outside the prison. We handed out pamphlets and we prayed for people who wanted prayer.
A few days later, the ladies of F Squad had the incredible opportunity to go inside the walls of the woman’s prison. We had to give them our passports, were only allowed one camera within the group and had a friendly little pat down, a little too friendly if you ask me. The women had no uniforms on, which shocked most of us. Another thing that shocked me that there were kids inside the prison. Apparently if you are pregnant when you go to jail you can have your child and keep them with you until they are five years old, then they have to be sent away. So there were about 10 kids there as well.
We preformed our two hip hop dances, a really fun skit and some girls shared the gospel. Then my favorite part of the morning was when we had the chance to pray for the ladies. We all spread out and the ladies could come and ask for prayer. I prayed for a few different ladies, but one lady in particular, Maria, really stuck with me. She immediately told me that she had a tumor and as I prayed for her she wept and then refused to stop hugging me after I finished praying. A few minutes later when the women went back inside she kept turning back around to wave goodbye. It was an incredible opportunity and I am so blessed that the Lord gives us chances to share the hope of Christ in what could be called a hopeless place.
So that is a little glimpse of our lives in Peru last month, it was a wonderful month full of new friendships, growing closer as a squad, incredible ministry opportunities, growing in my relationship in Christ and working on areas of life that I can improve in.
We are now in Latacunga, Ecuador and my team is working at an orphanage, expect a blog post about it soon because the Lord is already doing so much in my life while working here and it is only day three of ministry! I love you all so much, thank you so much for personally investing in me financially and prayerfully so I can be here, you have NO IDEA how much it means to me!
