The Acacia Community

All this week, we are sharing reflections & pictures from the team that just returned from Lima, Peru.  Their journey was part of an effort our community made to share gifts & hope with a community we’ve worked closely with for seven years.  After raising nearly $7000 between our group and others @ WBCC, we were able to buy Christmas gifts for kids in Lima, Pachacutec, and Iquitos.  We also bought two brand new moto-taxis as sources of income and employment for the church and those they reach-out to.  Finally, we completed funding several smaller infrastructure projects that weren’t yet finished at El Shaddai.

THE MEASURE OF BEAUTY                                Cassie Nason

A dozen smiling Peruvian faces greeted us in the airport terminal in Lima…at 1 a.m.   I was the only member of our group who had not been to Peru before, and therefore hadn’t experienced the midnight greeting from Pastor Elsa and her varied crew of neighborhood kids and family.  It was also these smiling faces that were my last memory of Lima after our three-day whirlwind tour.   And I think there is only one word for these people I met there.   Beautiful.

Before I was able to absorb the beauty of the people I met in Peru, it’s important to relay to you my first impressions.  First of all, Lima hits the senses full force, even at midnight.  I have always been intrigued by the smell of places – different houses, different cities.  And Lima delivers a solid urban too-much-polution, too-little-trash-pick-up punch.  By daylight the sprawling city is a tangle of brick, dust, smog and gray sky.  As we taxied to our various locations to pick out gifts for the kids (one of our primary goals in going), I found myself searching for a view of a breathtaking coastline, glorious mountains, a speck of grass or even a solitary tree.   Anything.  In Colorado we forget how well fed we are on a steady diet of natural beauty.  In Lima I was starving.

Compounding my shock at the utter lack of any organic beauty was the stark poverty of many Peruvians.  There is no disguising the plight the people of Pachacutec, a refugee-camp style “village”, are living in.   There is nothing redeeming in the landscape here.  It is naked need and it is hard not to be overwhelmed.

Fast forward 24 hours and our group, along with Elsa and her goodbye party, are sitting in an airport restaurant eating together and waiting for our flight.  In attendance is Elsa, her daughter Annie, Jonathan, a young man from Elsa’s church who is finding his way out of a difficult past, and Pierro, a seven-year old boy from Elsa’s street who is all but neglected by his drug-dealing parents.   With my utter lack of Spanish I found myself doing a lot of watching this trip.  Facial expressions.  Body language.  And as I sat watching Jonathan and Pierro from over my bowl of soup I was struck by how blinded I had been on this trip.  I watched as Jonathan helped Pierro pick out his favorite flavor of ice cream and then tossle his hair with his hands to tease him.  I watched as the dinner wore on and Pierro, obviously getting sleepy, put his head on Jonathan’s shoulder.  And when they waved us goodbye I saw Pierro take Jonathan’s hand in his.  It was beautiful.  Simple.  I nearly missed it.

Mother Teresa once wrote “ The important thing is not how much we accomplish, but how much love we put into our deeds everyday.  This is our measure of our love for God.”  The profoundness of this thought has never penetrated my heart as much is it did as I left the paradox of Lima. Amid the dirt and desolation of Lima is shimmering beauty.  If we have eyes to see it.