Scott and Natalie
Jarrell's Medical and Dental Trip ... February 2005
Taking part
in the medical mission was a life changing event for us.
It really opened our eyes to see the simplistic basic
needs of others less fortunate than us. We were
overwhelmed by the sincere graciousness of the patient's
Scott saw in the clinic. The people of Huaycan were
so endearing and welcoming to our team. The trip
helped us to realize what a significant impact a mission
team's effort can make in such an impoverished community.
A definite highlight of the trip was meeting the beautiful
children in this area. They were so full of love
and acceptance- we will never forget them or their
smiling faces. We look forward to taking part
in future medical mission trips and seeing our Peruvian
friends again!
Justine Grace's
Family Trip ... July 2004
My trip to Peru
was a wonderful, life changing experience. When you come to
Peru you see the sad, poor homes and landscape. Then out of
the blue you see cheery faces and a happy attitude. When you
arrive the whole town celebrates your arrival with dances and
skits. Sometimes they pull you in and make you dance with them!
As the festivities
die down you see the town as your new friends. ( Those people
are sooo friendly!!!) It’s amazing at how fast you can
make friends and how eager the kids are to be your friends even
when you don’t speak the language very well. Pretty soon
you have a posse of pals!
The town is amazingly
run down and the water is not good for them. We go there to
try to provide them with better houses and cleaner water. They
don’t ask for anything but they make you want to give
them everything!! I use my birthday party money every year to
buy them library books and school items. In general, these people
live in poverty but are the most generous, kind, caring and
amazing people on the planet!!!!!
Going to
Peru was a great experience, I plan to go every year. I hope
you’ll go soon!!!!!!
Katie's Testimonial
... July 2004
I have been
a member of GBUMC for about 15 years, so obviously I had heard
of the church's involvement in Peru. On Missions Sunday my Junior
year of High School, my dad told me he wanted the two of us
to go on a mission trip before I left for college. We chose
Peru as our mission destination and that's where it all began.
In the months leading
up to our trip I was nervous and I was excited. We began to
have team meetings about a month before our trip. When I walked
into the room the night of our first meeting, I was a little
skeptical. Boy did we have a diverse group! There were couples,
there were singles, there were adults, and there were youth.
How would we all get along and work together coming from such
different walks of life? I was also a little nervous about the
language barrier and about traveling thousands of miles to a
place I knew very little about.
In the coming weeks,
little by little, my worries were eased. From the moment I met
Piero, Magali, and Jessica, I knew we were in good hands.
Then, on Friday,
July 9, 2004, I left Pensacola with my Dad and 15 other people
I barely knew to create what would become one of the best experiences
of my entire life.
I could go into
details forever about the hotel, the food, the people and the
atmosphere of the city of Lima. But I will just leave it by
saying experiencing a whole new culture really added to the
trip.
My expectations
of the actual mission part of the trip were to go and help people
by building houses. Growing up in such a wealthy area and seeing
pictures of the site beforehand, I knew the trip would help
me put things in perspective. My wildest dreams couldn't have
prepared me for the outcome of my trip.
As soon as we left
Pensacola, the group immediately "gelled." Each day
I would work with somebody new and at every meal sit next to
a different person. The trip was a great bonding experience
for my dad and I, but we soon discovered each person in the
group had their own unique gifts and for each task we all fell
into place. Some lead while others followed and in each activity
the roles changed. When I came home, I had 23 new best friends
and that doesn't count the thousands of Peruvian friends I wasn't
allowed to bring home with me...
THE PEOPLE
WERE AMAZING! Even with my Spanish vocabulary of about
20 words, I immediately made friends, met families, and was
welcomed into the Project Hope community with open arms. I was
not expecting that. After all, we were there that week to help
six families by building houses for them, right? Wrong! I couldn't
have been more wrong. Yes, we built houses and made six families
lives a little bit better because they had shelter. But that
wasn't the backbone of my trip. When I think back on it, I don't
reminisce about putting up walls and mixing cement. I think
about getting sand up the side of a mountain by standing in
a line between two people who didn't even speak my language,
but still we managed to laugh, cry, and accomplish an amazing
task. My thoughts are of chasing kids and teaching them English
as they taught me Spanish, of laughing with mothers and holding
their babies, of men with tears in their eyes as they broke
a bottle of champagne over their new house and so many more
memories that are forever etched in my heart.
There are hundreds
of stories to tell. Just ask my friends. Almost a year later,
they're still getting the "Oh, when I was in Peru..."
stories from me. Every person who goes on a trip has their own
stories and their own special moments. I know mine really will
last forever.
My life was forever
changed by experience in Peru. I never expected that I would
take out of the trip everything I did. My Peruvian friends and
I still keep in contact and love to hear about each others lives.
I cannot wait to go back and be with them again.
My experience was
so many things, it was enlightening, it was humbling, it was
touching, it was educational, and it was fun and because of
it, I know I am a better person.
Our Mission
Trip ... July 2003 by Suzie
Cooper as told to John driving across (all of) Texas
“The World
can do almost anything better than the church. You need not
be a Christian to build houses, feed the hungry, or heal the
sick. There is only one thing the World cannot do. It cannot
offer grace.” – Gordon MacDonald
“Because we come, we
give them hope.” – Piero Solimano
At the very beginning of my
first-ever mission trip to Lima, Peru, I learned that Gordon
and Piero were exactly right. It wasn’t really important
that we could not spend our first week completing construction
of the library at the pre-school because the prep work was behind
schedule. Instead, 22 of us--mostly from GBUMC and mostly strangers
before the trip--prayed together, fellowshipped together, almost
mystically bonded together, and then we took the glow that God
had put in our hearts and went out and shared it with the people.
We met the people at the Methodist Church in Lima, the disabled
people at the rehab center in Huaycan, and the kids and moms
at the pre-school in Primero de Mayo. The pre-school moms dressed
up in their colorful traditional clothing and performed a charming
dance to welcome us.
“Dios te bendiga !”
God bless you, “Muchas gracias !” Many thanks, they
cried out or whispered in my ear as their tears of joy mixed
with mine and stung my cheeks. We had done nothing of substance
for them as yet. But we had come oh so far from America to show
them that we cared for them, and they felt that we had come
to share God’s grace with them, and it gave them joy and
hope.
But we did find plenty to keep
us busy during our first week in Peru. We took daily one-and-one-half
hour bus rides with a gradual transition from sophisticated
Lima up to another world of dusty mountains and abject poverty
at our primary service area, Primero de Mayo--a mountainside
of tin-roof houses with no running water rising from a level
plain which has been serving as soccer field and garbage dump.
We joined with the beautiful kids in a general cleanup at the
dump and then had a ceremony for planting trees around the dump,
aided by hundreds of kids, the mayor, and a band. We met with
the mayor and his staff about improving roads and sanitary conditions
as well as next steps for “Project Hope”, our vision
for transforming the former garbage dump into a beautiful parkland.
We had a wonderful afternoon of distributing clothing donated
by GBUMC folks and our neighbors to the kids of Primero de Mayo.
On another day we took special gifts to the kids that we sponsor
through “Food for the Hungry”... I got to meet the
child I’ve sponsored for 4 years, 8-year-old Martin Huacausi
Tanta, and his family... I was so filled with emotion that my
babbling remedial Spanish broke down almost totally, so we relied
mostly on hugs, kisses and mutual tears to communicate our joy
and friendship. And finally, we managed to spend a day and a
half on our scheduled project--hauling bricks, mortar and sand
up the steep, rocky hillside for later use in construction of
the pre-school library.
Best Miracle of Week
One--Giovanna: During the first week we became seriously
concerned that the wheel chairs and other equipment needed for
our week two project with the disabled people would not arrive
in time, and we could get no word on any ship that might have
them aboard. But we went about our business including a visit
one night to Giovanna at her home in Lima. Giovanna had been
in a coma for nearly two years after what was thought to be
a very successful operation to remove a disfiguring growth from
her head. We gathered around and laid hands on Giovanna as
Tho-mas’ (Tom Sharon) prayed for her recovery. We noticed
that her eyes fluttered and tears came from her eyes as we prayed.
Tom said that she squeezed his hand several times. These appeared
to be promising signs, but she did not wake up. The next morning
we got word that our cargo container with the wheel chairs and
other equipment was entering the harbor...on the USS Giovanna!
As the first week drew to a
close, I began to realize that most of my new brothers and sisters
from GBUMC would soon have to leave to go home. I was staying
for another nine days to work with the disabled people needing
wheelchairs and walkers because of my background in physical
fitness and rehabilitation. I felt a profound sense of impending
loss and loneliness. I just did not think that the spirituality
which was the essence of our first week would be replicated
as new folks came in for the second week.
I was right. It was not the
same. But it was wonderful in its own way. A group from the
Pensacola Rotary Club came in and proved to be a dedicated
and expert labor force in the area of wheel chair and walker
fitting for disabled people. They were also nice folks, and
we remaining GBUMCers pitched in with them for what turned
out to be an exciting, exhausting week of 12-hour days at
the Association for the Disabled in Huaycan. Imagine 100 disabled
people gathered that first morning...many children ... many
carried for miles by a parent ... all seeking help. I can
still see Piero and Jessica translating for these 100 and
their family members and also encouraging them when another
day went by that maybe their individual need was not met.
And then at week’s end 220 people had been fitted to
perfection under the supervision of Ron from Rotary with a
wheelchair, walker, or simply a cane. Time after time people
who had never experienced the independence and freedom of
mobility left our work area under their own power, often moving
somewhat too fast, and always smiling broadly. With each successful
fitting an entire family also gained freedom. All were served;
all were joyful and grateful. One elderly blind man said that
he had found Christ because Piero had given him a fold-out
cane.
Best Miracle of Week
Two -- The Shunt Operation: One afternoon the Lima
police ran a sweep to take unlicensed vendors off the streets.
They also confiscated the vendors’ equipment and wares
leaving them with no means of making a living. One victim of
this sweep was a man whose son was hydrocephalic and needed
an operation to place a shunt in his head or he would soon die.
It “so happened” that the man had been stopped by
the police right outside the Catholic church, and when the priest
came out, he saw the man weeping. It also “happened”
that the priest, upon hearing the man’s story, called
a doctor friend of his who donated a $3000 shunt. It also “happened”
that this same man came to the Association for the Disabled
the next day to see if he could get a wheel chair for his son.
It “happened” that the man told Piero his story,
adding that his son could not have the operation because it
cost $180, and the man had no money. It then “happened”
that two folks from GBUMC found that they each had $90 to spare
to pay for the operation. The man was last seen running to the
hospital to make an appointment for the operation. You and I
know that none of this just “happened”. Praise be
to God !
Toward the end
of our “Forty Days of Purpose” Rick Warren will
encourage each of us to “become a world class Christian”
by saving and doing “whatever it takes to participate
in a short-term mission trip overseas as soon as possible.”
I can tell you that my life became far richer when I took this
step. And when I stood on the dirt floor in a small, dark home
in Primero de Mayo and a mother began her prayer of welcome
for us saying , “Father, I don’t deserve this; I
have too much...”, I knew I would return to Peru very
soon.
"It
is one of the most beautiful compensations of this life that no man
can sincerely
try to help another without helping himself." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
