A respite in Lima

Okay, so I'm in Lima now with a little more time to write and let you know just what the heck I'm doing in Peru. Most of you probably remember the terrible earthquakes that Peru suffered in August of last year. Those quakes struck the very area where I've been working through nearly-annual trips since 2001. The epicenter of the quakes was in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of the Department of Ica (equivalent to a state in the U.S.). The departmental capital city of Ica, together with the cities of Pisco and Chincha, suffered widespread destruction and a loss of life that topped 500.

Soon after the earthquakes occurred, many people who had accompanied me in mission trips in past years started sending e-mails to see what could be done. The first matter, of course, was to join with our brothers and sisters in the Methodist Church of Peru through prayer for their healing and recovery. And the second task was to begin sending down assistance for relief supplies, which many people did. But the third task was to start a conversation about how we could physically travel down to Peru to help out with recovery efforts. The original hope was to go in January, so that we could be there as soon after the earthquakes as possible. When airfare costs made that time frame impossible, we rescheduled for May. The group that formed promised to be interesting in its makeup: a number of young pastors with previous Peru mission experience, current seminary students with a heart for mission, and a couple of spouses with past experiences in Peru as well (including mine!). There was no rhyme or reason to the group's roster, which included pastors from North Dakota, Arkansas, Tennessee, and Alabama, and seminary students from Georgia, North Carolina, and Tennessee. It was simply those who responded to the call to go, help as they could, and join with the Peruvian church in witness and mission. We set our dates for May 1-9, and I also accepted an offer from my alma mater, Hendrix College, to lead a subsequent mission team of Hendrix students that would follow this first trip from May 11-21.

The interesting wrinkle for this group was that all of the people who signed up - whether they had been to Peru before or not - expressed an interest in learning how to lead short term mission trips. Some of these folks are already serving in ministry positions, while others are in school. But they all discerned a call to connect with Peru through learning to lead trips themselves at some point in the future. So my partner in leading this trip, Danny Redding-Rhodes (who directs the Cal Turner Fellowship Program at Vanderbilt Divinity School and is soon to be commissioned in the Arkansas Conference), and I together began to envision the trip as both an outreach to the earthquake damaged areas and a 'Leadership Development' experience where we could help our team members work through the nuts & bolts of mission logistics, purpose, and theological undergirding.

The long story short is that the trip has been great. We did not do nearly the amount of actual manual labor that we thought we would do. The Methodist churches themselves did not suffer much earthquake damage, and it has been long enough since the quakes that the acute needs have long since been taken care of (although signs of the quakes are everywhere, in the form of piles of rubble on sidwalks and streets). But what we did do, under the direction of Pastor Pedro Uchuya, the district superintendent of the Ica District, was engage heavily in forming relationships, bearing witness, strengthening the sense of connection in the district, and joining in worship with the churches around the city of Chincha Alta. The trip ended up being heavy in the education area, which was great for the aforementioned Leadership Development component we were aiming to emphasize. We had the opportunity to visit a great diversity of churches and communities, and then afterward to talk about what we saw, what it showed us about the Peruvian church's ministries, and how we could connect with those efforts through future trips. This was great for helping my team members think through their own calling to mission, and it was also clearly what Pedro thought was most important for us to be about while we were in Chincha.

In Ephesians 4:11-12, Paul writes about the gifts God has given so that the saints can be equipped for ministry. I think there is something to be said about both the development of the spiritual gifts of leaders and the way those gifts can be used for forming the discipleship of the whole church. The great folks on my team have all been gifted by God for the work of ministry, and it was a blessing to be with them so that they themselves might be better equipped to form disciples in mission in the future. I give thanks to God for that.

I want to write more about the specifics of some of what we saw and did, but I'll save that for another post. My team has returned to the U.S. now, and I am in Lima for a couple of days waiting for the mission team from Hendrix College to arrive. For me, it is a chance to relax and catch up on sleep before the second half of my own time here begins. That's important, since the group from Hendrix will be focused much more on manual labor. I have access to the Internet at the hotel where I'm staying in Lima, so maybe I can write more before I head back down south.