Reflections from Peru

I'm getting ready to get on a plane for home after two weeks in Peru visiting some of our teams in the mountains, the jungle and everything in between. Here are a few takeaways as I reflect on the trip:

I'm Comfortable: My first time overseas was a summer in East Africa 17 years ago. I didn't mind bathing in cold water, sitting in a taxi for 6 hours or eating strange foods. Now, I noticed that I was more easily irritated when I couldn't get e-mails on my BlackBerry, when the shower was lukewarm, when I was eating a bizarre fruit that looked and felt like a sack of frog eggs, as I was counting 57 mosquito bites on my arms sustained while waiting in line to use an ATM.

People Are the Same: Watching CNN several days ago, I observed the stark contrast of Houston's pleasure boats stacked up like firewood in the wake of hurricane Ike and the bodies of Haitians floating in flood waters like so much refuse from the same hurricane in a nation less than 400 miles off the coast of the United States. Life seems cheap in impoverished places like Haiti, and the same is true in more developed countries like Peru. But ultimately, as bearers of God's image, people are very much the same. They love their kids. They are proud of their culture. They want to earn a livable wage and provide for their families. They are afraid of dying. They are in need of God.

Our Missionaries Break Every Stereotype: The Pioneers workers serving in the villages of Peru are some of the most resourceful, intelligent, hard-working people I've met. All of them designed and built their own homes--mostly from local resources like adobe and wood. Incarnational in their approach, they are well-known and liked in the communities they serve and have increasing understanding of the culture and language. They are godly and selfless in their interactions with their neighbors, wrestling daily with the crises that the people face and sharing generously of their resources and time.

Latin America Has Unreached Peoples: This was my fourth visit to Latin America, and while it holds the stereotype of having a high concentration of evangelicals, this is primarily true of the urban centers. The isolated villages of the high Andes, the Amazon jungle and even rural parts of our close neighbor Mexico are home to people groups that have no access to the gospel. I met workers who have given up relatively comfortable lifestyles ministering in Peru's urban areas for the villages where they can live in community with the unreached. It is this approach that will ensure that the gospel invades every corner of Latin America--both through the labors of Western and Latin American believers.