Day 92-100: Trujillo Trip

In the past three and a half months that I’ve been in Peru, I’ve only been out of Lima one time; and that was only to research the Biology that the Peruvian jungle has to offer. This week the ARRIBA team had to opportunity to travel eight hours north of Lima to Trujillo in order to see other kinds of ministries that are taking place within this South American country. We were able to observe the joining of five local churches to offer free medical care to the community. We had the chance to get to know the jovenes from several of those churches. However, most of our time was spent making new friends at El Seminario Boutista del Peru.

     Pastor Jim sent the eight of us off on our own for the first times since arriving in Peru 92 days before. For our first full day in Trujillo, we got together with five local churches to provide a free medical clinic for the town surrounding a new church plant. We spent the day telling the patients about the Gospel while they were waiting their turn to see the doctor or dentist. The goal for the day was primarily to evangelize to the community. However, the churches combined their talents in order to provide for the community’s physical health while informing them of their spiritual need as well. Because we weren’t really confident in our Spanish to explain the gospel to the patients, the ARRIBA students did other odd jobs. I was deemed secretary of the witnessing outreach process. Sounds important right?! All I did was keep track of the tracts that we were handing out and hang onto the cards filled out by each of the patients. We also blew up a “bastante” amount of balloons to hand out to the kids throughout the day. A few of the ARRIBA students were able to help out with some children’s bible stories throughout the afternoon. All in all it was a great day to see how a  “Compaña Medica” is organized Peru. The next day at church two ladies who had heard about the church from the clinic visited the morning service. It was awesome to see the work of the Spirit through the medium of medicine.

     Over the next few days we were able to visit a number of other churches throughout the area. Each church we visited was overseen by either an American missionary or by a national pastor who had graduated from the Baptist Seminary of Peru. We went to a “jovenes” or youth group meeting on Saturday night. The church had a youth/college group of about 30 students. All of the ARRIBA kids were in shock at this. The churches we work in have anywhere from 2-20 kids. However, none of us had been to a Peruvian church with that many jovenes. The next day we went to a different church to see a different ministry. This church was also bigger than any of the churches we are working in. It even had an orchestra of trumpets, flutes, violins, clarinets, etc. The members of the churches in the area are invited to participate in the music classes at the Seminary. We also were able to visit the new church plant of a local church. We loaded up 60-70 plastic chairs in some pickup trucks, packed up the portable keyboard, and headed up the mountain to the new church plant. One of our last days in Trujillo we were also able to participate in a huge reunion of all the churches in the Trujillo area. Over 500 church members attended the reunion. The ARRIBA students, along with the Senior seminary students, were in charge of cooking many different Peruvian dishes for the many people in attendance. We cried over hundreds of onions, got hand cramps from squeezing 700 lemons, and burned out hands from the spicy seeds of the “Aji” pepper. It was fun to be able to get know the seminary students while serving the local churches.

     Along with helping with the medical clinic and cooking for the reunion of churches, we were also able to spend most of our time with the seminary students. We were welcomed to the seminary campus with open arms and were immediately thrown into the campus life of a Peruvian Bible College. We were able to participate in the fun little traditions of the Seminary. Although they were very culturally different, we had fun learning and observing the traditions of typical Christian College students in Peru. We spent the week imitating the seminaristas(seminary students). We woke up with them, ate meals, went to classes, had dorm devotions, etc. All in all, we had a great time meeting college students, and becoming aware of the other missionary ministries throughout Peru.

     Some of the ARRIBA students will be able to return to Trujillo in January to work at the summer camp there. They’ll be able to be counselors along side some of the seminary students that we were able to get to know this week. All in all a successful trip!