Peru Trip September 2007

Relief Trip to Peru

A little over a month ago there was a 7.9 earthquake with the epicenter just off the coast of a town called Pisco in Peru. The earthquake caused some serious damage to Pisco and several neighboring areas. Our church teamed up with Compassion International to go to Peru to help in any way we’d be able to. Our team of 9 flew to Lima Peru on the 10^th of September. We stayed the night in Lima and soon found ourselves on a bus making the 4 hour drive south to the town of San Clemente where we would be helping the people. The town of San Clemente is the neighboring town to Pisco; we were going there because many relief teams were already working in Pisco. As we looked around there were some buildings that were badly destroyed, but most of the buildings looked ok. We put on our gloves and masks to not breathe in the dust from the rubble, and got ready to work. When we started to go into some homes to clear out the rubble, it was then that our eyes were opened to the destruction. Although many of the homes looked ok from the outside, upon entering the front door, you see that the roof had fallen in, and their house was full of rubble. We would begin a home by getting all the larger rubble out. So we would make a human chain line, and move the larger bricks out into the street where the government will pick up all the rubble at a later time. Sometimes just handing the bricks down the line was not adventurous enough for some of us, so we would spread out and toss the bricks down the line. God gave us great unity as a team, and there was not even one small injury the whole time as we were tossing adobe bricks at each other clearing out the homes. People really saw the Love of God played out practically as we cleaned out their homes so they would be usable again.

During the week we also got extremely attached to the Peruvian people; especially the children who soaked in the Love of their Savior through us.
As we heard some of their stories about what happened the evening of the earthquake, it broke our hearts. It became very clear, as some of them shared watching people die, that they had gone through a very traumatic emotional event.

One woman shared her story which really helped us get a feel for what that evening must have been like. She shared that she had been close to the ocean when the earthquake hit. All the people that were close to the ocean began to run away from the water, because they thought a tsunami would come. She was running toward the center of town with everyone else when a hotel on the street they were running on came crashing down. She said there were bodies just lying on the street; it was so hard to bear. Then when she got to the center of town, the main Cathedral had also fallen, and there were people inside screaming for help. She said that she normally wouldn’t have had the strength to do this, but she began to help others pull bodies out of the rubble and dig trying to get to the screaming people. She broke down and cried. It was hard yet good for her to re-live that night. We took a moment to look around the town from where we were standing and imagine how terrifying and how moving this event had been for the people here. We also heard a story from one Christian woman how she’d been praying that God would shake up the towns of Pisco and San Clemente so they would turn from their evil ways. God certainly answered this woman’s prayers, maybe more specifically than even she expected. We were privileged to see many people come to the Lord during the week that we were there, and we are praying for many more. God often uses challenging events in our lives to “shake us up” and turn our eyes toward Him. What an honor that God chooses to use us and we get to see Him moving in places around the world. Thank you Jesus for the opportunity that we had to live out your love for the people of Peru.