First friend, Peru

I saw myself as a missionary failure rather than a missionary in training.
Looking back, I see the Lord using my time in Peru to shape me.
For now. It was just a bad day.

I was lonely. I had gotten into another fight with the missionary I had come to help. I had not been much help so far and that unhelpful status never really changed. We were different.
I knew no one else in the country.

The target people group for the organization was the Quechua. They lived in villages scattered throughout the Andes mountains. They also lived at the edge of town near a stream used as a garbage dump a few blocks away.

“God”, I prayed. “I’m so lonely. I’ve been told that the Quechua people are shy and don’t make friends easily but I really need a friend right now. I’m going to step outside my door and walk in the direction of the stream, believing that you will give me one friend.”

As I walked along the stream, people averted their eyes. The hot sun beat down on me. “Are you lost?”, a young woman asked. I looked up to see a Quechua woman with three small children hanging on her. “No…I…” That was another problem. I couldn’t remember much college Spanish, She motioned to her home surrounded by a mud wall. “I live here”, she said. “Visit me sometime.”

The next time I came, she allowed me into her yard, but not into the house. We sat on the dry sparse grass and the Spanish slowly came back A few visits later I was in her poorly lit one room home. She had become a Christian last year she said.

I kept coming. I gave her a haircut. I helped the kids with homework in the dim light with pencil stubs. I hand washed clothing with her. One day as I was hanging laundry up on her clothesline the neighborhood dog jumped over the wall, raced across her yard, and bit my leg. As her son chased the dog away with a stick she started stuffing leaves into her mouth. She quickly spat those chewed leaves onto my leg. Strangely the swelling came down.

One day, I found my friend very ill, laying in her bed and not able to eat. “What is cancer?”, she asked “I think I must have that.” She spoke of dying and letting her children become servants in someone’s house. At the time I was horrified, but I see now that she was trying to provide for them in her own way.

I took her to the local doctor, the one who treats the poor for a few cents. He advised her to go to the hospital for some tests. Something was not right with her digestion.

I would be going to a village for a few days with the missionary during the time that the hospital tests were scheduled. I feared she may not go if I didn’t go with her.
I had met one of her neighbors, a very smiling active lady. When we returned from the doctor, I asked her neighbor to take her to the hospital while I was gone. The neighbor reassured me that she would.

When I came back, I learned that she had passed out in the hospital and had been admitted. I remember visiting her there. I remember wondering how to cover the cost of hospitalization. I remember finding out that her whole neighborhood had come together to put on a fundraising barbecue and had raised enough for the hospitalization and the emergency surgery she needed.

She did not have cancer.
Her intestines were twisted and needed to be untangled. The operation was successful and she completely recovered.

When I left Peru her young son wrote me a note. It said, “you were the first friend we ever had.”

God answered my prayer in just the right way. I needed a friend and so did they.