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A South American Experience After
more than a year of planning, a team of 9 young (aged 17-26) people went to
Puente Piedra in Lima for 5 weeks. We went under the organisation Latin Link who
have many years experience of sending people to Latin America for mission. I
(Vron Earp, Prestwich & Radcliffe Methodist Circuit youth worker) worked with the
group to plan the trip and to organise fundraising activities. We decided as a
group that we wanted to do as much fundraising as possible as a team but each
person also contributed individually too. We needed to raise £25,000 which
seemed a huge target in the beginning, but we saw God do amazing things for us
and began to see blessings pouring in. Our circuit was supportive and gave so
very generously. Early on in our fundraising we applied for and received a grant
from the District Advance Fund and from that moment we knew that we were on our
way. We did lots of cake sales, special events such as a salsa event, brass band
night, Caribbean night and much much more. Finally July 26th 2010 arrived and we were off! The church that we were placed in became home to us immediately and we began an amazing experience of Spiritual growth and mission work. The church has a long term vision and we were sent to help them begin three elements of work. First we needed to level the land that they eventually hope to build a new church building on. This involved a lot of hard work digging the land and clearing old furniture, wood bricks etc.
[From left to right (back row first) - Jim, Charlotte, Hannah, Suzanne, Naomi, Katy, Roland, Vron, Bethany] The
next project was to put a new roof on the existing church. This included
painting new roof panels, taking off the old roof (which was just a very old
piece of tarpaulin), painting roof beams, and cutting hundreds of steel rods for
a support structure. Then we helped make a new steel support to display a
brilliant new Church sign for the front entrance.
Although we went to serve and to help the Church in South
America, each of us found that it was us who were learning and being changed by
the experience. We formed wonderful friendships and saw how humble, faithful and
passionate the Peruvian’s are about their life in Christ. Each day the team
studied the book of Nehemiah and Psalms and prayed together and we know that
doing this kept us going especially when we were tired.
The
Church also have other activities that we were involved in and one of them was a
weekly children’s club called ‘Hope Smiles’ for children who live in the
Hills – the poorest areas. We went to collect the children from the hills to
take them to church to sing songs, play games and learn about God. One week a
little girl aged 3 came and asked ‘can we eat today’ and it was just
heartbreaking. The Church do not
have much money but what they do have they give freely and we could easily see
just how needed this work is. Now
we’re home, we continue to fundraise for the church in their continuing vision
for the community. The Peruvian’s vision statement sums up their heart;
‘Transforming lives in the present and for eternity’. Pastor Raul Vargas
explained to me that many Peruvians do not finish (or start in some cases)
education and so their quality of life is poor. The Church aim to help people
gain skills and therefore improving the quality of life, to give people the
opportunity to hear about God and to find salvation. Vron
Earp |
