All my life I thought I might be a missionary someday. I visited a friend in Ireland when I was 18. At 19 I met a Kenyan believer who told me about the need in Kenya for women Bible teachers and I prayed a lot about going there. But Peru really won my heart when I traveled there as a college freshman.
A team of us from school visited a missionary family during spring break to spend time with Peruvian believers and to help them with their evangelistic outreach.
Our team leader, Caleb, had a passion for prayer and God used that gift to teach our team how he works through prayer. From our first meeting about the trip until we arrived back at the school afterwards, we bathed every aspect of the trip in prayer.
We took Jesus at his word when he said
If you ask anything in My name, I will do it. (John 14:14) and
If you can believe, all things are possible to him who believes. (Mark 9:23)
At the end of our trip we compiled a long list of answered prayers that blew us away. You can read that list here at my old blog.
Something about the warm Latino culture drew me in. I can still hear the music on the streets late into the night and the horns honking on the streets before the sun was even up. We watched the sun set over the Pacific Ocean on a quiet beach one day and drove up to a mountain village the next. We ate pineapple right out of the field and squeezed too many people into taxis. Ah! I loved it. The people welcomed us warmly and affectionately.
We barely knew any Spanish but learned a lot while there. One girl on our team, Hannah, taught us basic Spanish phrases, and while in Peru, working on the language was one of our team’s priorities, our motto being “Language learning IS communication.”
One evening as we did our evangelistic skits on the street, God brought a handful of Peruvian kiddos to sit with me to listen to the preaching. We sat there for ages, and I slowly and haltingly shared the gospel with them in a language I’d barely studied until a month before. We laughed and talked late into the night. I left a piece of my heart on that dusty street and prayed God would bring me back.
For the next two years I planned and worked toward returning to Peru, practicing Spanish every way I could, teaching English, tutoring Hispanics, praying my heart out for the people of Peru. I learned all I could about the Hispanic culture.
God closed that door eventually, but I learned so much in this period of my life. Someday I hope to take my kids to visit South America to experience the culture and meet the people there. God works in creative ways to open our eyes to the world.