So there are three of us working with the elderly Peruvians the other day. One of the women hands Margie Knudson a small plastic holder of old Peruvian money. This is money that no longer has value here. Margie is a bit befuddled as to why so she asks, “Why would you give this to me”? The old woman replies, “Because you could have went anywhere in the world but you came here to help us.” No dry eyes after that.
We just spent the weekend at a youth retreat. 23 teens from the barrios. Kids who have never been to anyplace like this because their families have no money. One of the first things that happens is one of the girls passes out playing basketball. I find out she has had nothing to eat all day, it is now 6pm. She comes from a very poor family and sometimes they get nothing to eat because there just isn’t any food.
13 teens come forward on Saturday night and give their lives to Christ. On Sunday 12 are baptized in an old unheated swimming pool. The adobe walls we built here will one day crumble and fall. The paint we put on the walls will one day turn old and peel away. 13 kids will have eternal life with Jesus. If we never come back to Peru, one day we will all meet again.
How do we measure the success of a mission trip? Is it the amount of work we do? The walls we build or the roofs we put on. I don’t know but I can think of 13 reasons why this one was successful.
We are in the wind down phase of the trip. Today we will paint the walls of a church in the city. On Tuesday we will spend our morning touring the houses that our members purchased, cooking a meal for the elderly, and saying good bye to the new friends we have made. This is the hardest part of any mission trip, the goodbyes.
Wednesday we fly early to Lima and tour the city. 1230 AM we head home arriving at Seattle a bit after noon on Thursday. All this depends on the flight getting out of Lima on time. If it’s late we could miss our connection in Atlanta. We will call once we clear customs and know if we will make our connection.
On a side note, crusty old Ron Williams charmed these teenage boys. I don’t what it was about him but he became known as Master Ron and the kids fought to sit by him at meals.
Whenever he entered a room they shouted out “Master Ron” several times. Maybe it’s a sign we should leave him here.
Almost forgot, we finished three houses minus the roof which someone else will finish. Another team will be coming in behind us to start more houses. God is good!
This has been a great team to serve with and this is the last blog update until we return.
Fred
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