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.
FINDING LOVE IN LIMA Shaya Lawrence
As I reflect on this last trip to Peru, and on the Advent season I have noticed a common theme this year for me. I realize it is an often talked about theme, however it is one that to me is the most mysterious, most difficult to truly grasp, and one in which will take the rest of my life to seek and still may never comprehend even a little of what it is. The theme is Love. I have always truly struggled with this word/feeling/action contemplating; what does it mean to Love? Can you love if you aren’t sure that you believe it exists here the way God intended it to? Can I learn to love even though I can hardly find the courage everyday to barley love myself? And how does Peru and the coming of the Christ relate to this you may be asking yourself? It was for Love that the God of the universe chose to become like us in the form of an infant in a humble stable, to a young virgin teenage girl to experience the life that we do. That to me is a great incomprehensible love, why does God Love us this much? I often don’t feel that we or maybe just I deserve this sacrifice of the Creator to his creation, however I have tried to love anyway without a real knowledge of how or why and have failed miserably at it most of the time.
So from this Love of the creator, the call of the Christ to love God and to love others, we somehow find ourselves wrestling with what this really means. For me our trips to Peru, and the relationships we have created out of these trips, have shown me more of what this Love is than possibly anything else that I have experienced in my life. It has been this crazy balance of Love given, and love received, which I often don’t experience here in the United States. Our vision in Peru has always been to come along side the people and together figure out how to serve God and others as one community. In the process we have done many different projects, that serve many different needs to the community there in Peru from Vacation bible school, to building a playground, building the church in Pachacutec and upper level in El Shaddai, to our new project with the Moto taxi’s. In the process of assisting with these needs I have come to realize that before my eyes a family has emerged, it is no longer going to Peru for the next project that we go to complete and then leave and come home. There is an excitement, anticipation and longing for the next visit to my Peru family, were once again we come together for a short time and share our lives with one another.
This family has shown me over the years that the possibility for a more whole love does exist and is worth searching for; they are fully present with you in the moments you share with out distraction. They remember everything and every one from the past visits and care so much to get updates on each of the people who have come before. This is amazing to me because when I’m home here in the United States, I’m lucky if I can remember anything about a new person I meet, including their name. It is all too often because I cannot learn to be present with that person with out being distracted by… what do I need to do next? what does this person think of me? Oh I’m hungry, wait what did you just say? These things sound funny but in reality how often are we truly present with one another with out looking at our phones, or doing something else, or wondering what the next thing is on my list that I need to get done? And I can’t help but ask myself, how can I truly love this person if I can’t set aside my schedule for a moment and be fully present with them? The sad thing is that we do this to each other so often, that it doesn’t surprise me that we can often feel so alone in the midst of a room full of people, or even just standing across from a person that you think you’re having a conversation with. In Peru it is almost as if everything that you worried about at home stops, your head and heart are clear, and you are present with the people who have shown you how to love. They see you for who you are and they Love you anyway. This Love that has been shown to me from my Peru family has continuously challenged me to learn how to love others in the same way that I have been loved by them. So as I have reflected these last few years it is evident that they have contributed to our lives, just as much as we have contributed to theirs, and it has been a beautiful cycle of love that can only be real and experienced because of the great mysterious love that God has for us, the God who came himself in human form as a baby to show us what that love should look like.
I still have so much to work out with this word/feeling/action called Love, and I still have many doubts, but I am learning that I must receive Love before I can truly give Love because without love for myself and confidence in the fact that I am God’s beloved then loving others will always be tainted by my insecurities, and the distractions that often come with. As I sit and continue to contemplate the advent season, and Peru I can’t help but be overjoyed by the same excitement, anticipation and longing for the new born King as I do for my family in Peru, and for what He might bring for the next year in my life, in Peru, and for his kingdom.
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