Thanks For all of Your Support!

I know this is a bit late, but this was the letter that I sent out to everyone who supported me during my summer in Peru! - 

Pricilla and I

There and back.  Trujillo, Peru 2011.  Thank you for all of your prayers and support that made it possible for me to have a life-changing experience this summer in Peru.  I wouldn’t have traded the time I spent in Trujillo for anything. 

This summer was full of so many exciting, stretching and growing experiences where God opened my eyes to the world around me and broadened my perspective of His love.  This summer I saw the love of Our Father, God through the beauty of the Peruvian people and their hearts for their own community. 

As an intern, my main ministry this summer was to lead short-term teams that came down from the USA.  During the weeks that we had teams we would do construction in the morning at the Children’s Home (Albergue) where 72 children from the community will soon live and be fully cared for.  We made cement for footers, a driveway and walls for what will one day be a building where the children can learn skills such as cooking, playing music and building.  We made bricks by hand, which contributed to the 300,000 that they’ll need in the end to build a wall around Inca Link’s entire property.  We did a lot of other jobs such as bending rebar, digging lots of trenches, and leveling things over and over and over again.  It was amazing to see the progress throughout the summer and to remind myself and my teams that although it might not look like much right now, 72 children will one day be running around the property that we we’re pouring our love and time into.

Each afternoon we would either have a double construction day, or we would go to Inca Link’s other ministry sites.   One of which was the Trujillo Dump.  At the dump there are hundreds of people and families that dig through the garbage day and night to find things of value like bottles, plastics and glass, food for their animals and themselves, and clothes.  On Saturdays we have an adult and children’s program that is run by the Peruvian ladies from America Sur Alliance.  Their goal is to reach the people in the Dump with the Word of God.  People meet in a shack to hear about the Gospel.  Inca Link is now partnering with the Alliance churches in Trujillo to raise $30,000 to build a building in the dump to better reach these forgotten people.

Aymar Clarita Cruz Luna

Another ministry that Inca Link has started in the last several years is their Daycare in the Victor Raul Garbage Dump Community.  The Guarderia (Daycare) was built by short-term mission teams and now has around 80 kids in attendance who are able to attend because they are being sponsored each month.  We took our teams to the Daycare to do a VBS and to love on the kids.  On my days off, I would spend my time there with these kids.  I absolutely loved the kids in the Daycare and they became so close to my heart throughout the summer.  During the summer I got to know a little, three-year-old girl named Aymar.  She wasn’t sponsored, so she was never allowed in the building.  By the end of the summer God put on my heart to sponsor this little girl so that she too could learn about the love that Jesus has for her, have fresh drinking water, food, and the opportunity to be clean like the rest of the children. The love I have for those kids in the dump and in Peru is so huge, and I would love to give them the world, but we have a God who is able to provide in ways that I will never be able to provide for those kids, a God who is able to touch their lives and mold them into beautiful people who long for Him and yearn for His movement in their own lives.  These people have a hunger and thirst that I can never quench or provide for.  But in this world I am an instrument of the living God, “I am only a pencil in the hands of God, it is He who writes the story.” This summer God chose me to be his hands and his feet in Peru.  To be a leader for the teams that came down from the States so that they too might see how God is moving in Peru.  He chose me to be the hands to pick up all those precious, little children in the Daycare and hug and kiss them as if they were my own, to let them know that they are loved.  To let them know that they are known and not forgotten.  I so wish that I could always be there for those kids, but God called me for the summer to love. I learned that I can stand and let the light of Christ shine through me as I humble myself to be his hands and feet and serve as He served us.  I can point people in the direction of our Heavenly Father who provides for all of our needs and their needs and who can give them everything that I will never be able to give.  God has blessed me, He’s blessed us, for His Glory! He’s blessed us so that the nations will know Him and see His glory! 

There’s so much more that I wish I could write.  God did so many beautiful things this summer.  Psalm 113 was often on my heart.  I lived in the middle of the desert and was able to see God bring restoration to broken people.  These people may be poor physically, but they don’t even consider themselves poor because they are so rich in Spirit.  They would often say that they are content because they have the Lord Jesus Christ, and that is all they need.  These people get it. 

“Let the name of the Lord be praised, both now and forevermore.  From the rising of the sun to the place where it sets, the name of the Lord is to be praised.  The Lord is exalted over all the nations, his glory above the heavens.  Who is like the Lord our God, the One who sits enthroned on high, who stoops down to look on the heavens and earth? He raises the poor from the dust and lifts the needy from the ash heap; he seats them with princes, with the princes of their people.”  -Psalm 113:2-8