Tour Guide for Christ?

I just finished reading Velvet Elvis: Repainting the Christian Faith by Rob Bell.  Now I know some people don´t like Rob Bell a whole lot because of his latest book Love Wins.  I can´t comment on that one because I haven´t read it… yet.  I want to.  I want to see what he says.  I don know that I loved Velvet Elvis.  I loved a lot of the things he said.  Partly because he articulated a lot of the things I´ve said for years when teaching and leading in the church.  Things like we need to be the people that God created us to be and that we need to be a people of action, that Jesus identified with the people of his time and culture and was like them, how God gave us a life to live and we are supposed to live it in abundance, and so on.  Okay, I know that isn´t completely radical (or is it?), but it is good to know I am not alone in my thinking about God.  One thing he did say in the book that really caught my attention was about missions.  

Missions is less about the transportation of God from one place to another and more about the identification of a God who is already there.  It is almost as if being a good missionary means having really good eyesight.  Or maybe it means teaching people to use their eyes to see things that have always been there; they just didn´t realize it.  You see God where others don´t.  And then you point them out.  (pg. 87-88)

That is exactly right.  That is what we are about as cross cultural witnesses to Peru (we don´t use the term missionaries very much because of all the connotations of the word).  We know that God has already been at work for thousands of years in Peru.  Some people heard God.  Other´s didn´t.  As imperfect as the world is, God is still here… and there… and over there… and even over there…  We needed to learn about the culture and history, the language, the traditions, the ways of doing things in Peru before we could even begin to think we would start contemplating what God is wanting to do in and through us.  Now that we´ve learned a lot (and there is a lot more to learn) we can start to see where God is already there and start pointing out where that is to those we encounter.    

It´s not that we are all that special or intelligent or even observant.  It´s just that we are looking for God as outsiders looking in.  You see, God is at work in our own cultures, too.  We probably don´t see it because we are so close to it.  There are too many trees to see the forest, so to say.  A lot of times we need people from the outside to help us to see where God already is.  In our families, too.  Our relationships.  Our friendships.  Our disputes.  

And when we see God, we can be amazed again at the hidden presence that has always been there in front of our eyes.  

 

Why here?

We´ve been on furlough (what an ironic word that is for what we are doing) for about two months now. We´ve traveled and talked and traveled and ate and traveled and ate and talked and traveled for more than 4000 miles so far. It´s been a good journey. The talking part is almost over, but we have another long trip ahead of us as we head north and west to see our extended family.

As we travel around though, one thing keeps coming to mind: why here? I mean, what is it about this certain place (wherever it is on the road) into home. One of our friends grew up in west Texas. I´ve never been there, but I think I can imagine it (I grew up in eastern Montana, after all). He often says they wonder just what it was a hundred or so years ago when the first wagon trains rolled across the great plains that made them stop to think, “Oh yeah. This looks like a good place to stop!” I wonder that sometimes when there is nothing around, too.

Then there´s the places that where maybe good places to be at first, but time has changed things. We were in a community that is the hometown of a new national star. We often drive by the high school she went to. Cresting the hill we look down onto a long strip of strip after strip of strip malls. It´s not pretty. It´s not nice to look at. Just what is it then that makes her look at this and say, “Yes! I´m home!”

There are places we drive through and I think it would be great to stop and get to know the place. Other places induce me to press the accelerator so it falls even more quickly into the rear view mirror.

Maybe it´s just because we´ve been traveling for so much lately. Maybe I´m just tired. Maybe I´m missing home.

Why here? Honestly, I don´t know. I´m just curious.

Be blessed wherever you are…

July Newsletter posted

New articles from Peru, and the ministry of the McEuen family. Trips to the jungle, swimming lessons, local ministries, interns, and more!

Names

Shakespeare said that a rose by any other name would smell as sweet. I suppose he´s right, but there is something important about names. They give us identity. They make us who we are. I´m fortunate here in Peru, because my name (Ash) is also a word in Quechua. Actually it´s more an expression or a sound. It´s what is said when things are going great or going bad. They shake their hand and say something like, “Ash, vida!” (which means, “Ah, this is the life)`or they shake their head and say, “Ash, lluvia” (meaning something like, “Dang, it´s raining again) or they make a move in chess without noticing their opponents piece ready to strike and say, “Ash!” (which means something like “Man, that was a stupid move”). My name and the Quechua word makes a connection. People laugh with me when I say my name is Quechua. They understand. It gives me an identity.

Here in Peru, it is interesting. A lot of times we don´t know peoples names. Or, if we know them, we don´t use them. There is a love of titles. There seems to be a need for distance as well. We are still trying to sort through this.

At church, I am rarely referred to by name. I am always called “Pastor”. Sometimes I get called “Hermano” (brother), but that is rare. There have been times when people called me Hermano and then quickly corrected themselves, saying, “Oh, excuse me. I mean, pastor.”

A store opened near the house. Actually, right next to the house, in our neighbor´s house. We greet one another as we pass by. One day I stopped in and said, “We say hi to each other, but I don´t know your name.” She told me hers and I told her mine. Cool, I though, We´ll be getting to know our neighbors better. Things really haven´t changed, though. Every time I greet them, I don´t think they´ve ever said my name. I´m still vecino (neighbor) to them. “Hola, Vecino,” they say.

Sometimes people call me Joven (young man). I tell them, I´m not very young, but I´ll try to answer their questions. (I don´t mind that one very much).

Other times people say, papito, which is a Quechua word for mister. Sometimes (though rarely) it is Señor. A lot of times we get “Gringo” (which means white person), but I get that more when I´m with the rest of the family (they are a lot more blonde than I am).

By my students I´m called either “Profe” (short for professor) or “Teacher” (in English with a strong accent). I told one that he could call me Ash or Profe or whatever. He laughed nervously and said, “I think I´ll call you profe.”

I get called a lot of things. Thankfully, it´s usually good (or at least neutral). Rarely, though, am I called Ash.

I wonder how I smell? Is it still as sweet?

Meeting at the school

After hearing about a teacher forbidding her students use our library, Kia and I went to the school this morning to speak with the director or subdirector about who we are and our goals. When we got there, the guard at the gate let us in and told us where the office is. Entering the office, we spoke with the secretary who smiled and showed us in to the subdirector´s office. (I need to pause for a second and say that it isn´t always easy to get into the director´s offices. They are very guarded and their time is important. Often parents are not even allowed to enter in to the school while the kids are there.)

In the office, the subdirector said, “So, you´re the ones with the library.”

“Yes, ma´am,” we said, and then we proceeded to tell here what we are about.

“I know about the library,” she said, “and I think it´s a great thing.” She was surprised to hear a teacher was forbidding her students to come to the library and said she would talk with all the teachers to be sure to remind their students to return the books they have checked out. “In fact,” she continued, “I´ve read one of your Chronicles of Narnia books. It was really good. A person who works for me checked it out and let me read it.”

Happy with the meeting and her support, we went over to the high school (the one with 5000 boys in it). Again the guard let us in and we went right into the director´s office. He was pleased with what he heard and said, “Can you help us with our library here at the school, because it really stinks. Also can you get us about 5000 of the flyers you have. We want to give them to our students.”

“We can, sir,” we said, “But frankly that´s a bit scary. You see, our library is pretty small and we already have about 200 kids signed in.”

It´s in God´s hands. The flyers are being printed.

This school has historically been the school for the leaders of the community. It is more than 150 years old and has a long history of success. Unfortunately, the years of terrorism (from about 1980 – 2000) damaged that reputation. Perhaps the library will help get the leaders back… I know we´ve some hints of great leadership already among the kids that come to the library.

No! You can’t use the library!

Okay, I just had to write about this. Every evening at about 5.30 we start to batten down the hatches in the libary. We do that because we know the local big school (the one with 5000 students) lets out their afternoon session and they come running. Literally. Tonight we had about 35 or 40 kids in the library returning books and checking out others. In the middle of all that, a mom with her daughter came up to me and said, “You need to talk to the teachers at the primary school.”

“Okay,” I said, “Why?”

“Because my son is afraid to come here. His teacher has forbidden the children to come to the library.”

“What!” I said. “Why?”

“I don´t know why. I think y´all are doing a great thing, but his teacher has said that anyone who sees anyone in the class in here has to report them to the teacher. He´s scared to come in because he´s afraid he´ll get in trouble.”

I can´t imagine a teacher forbidding his or her students from going to a library. I´m going to try to go to the school tomorrow.

We have 180 students now signed in and borrowing books. They are proving our trust in them to be a good thing. One even came up to us today and asked if his friend has returned a book (he hasn´t and it is way overdue). “Okay,” he said, “I´m going to talk to him and tell him he´s got to get it back.”

A visit to the library by the library

A few months ago, Audra and I went to the municipal library in Huancayo. It is a library in that it does have books (about 27,000 of them) and people can use the books. But the books are mostly for young people who have graduated from high school and don´t know enough to pass the tests to get into college. They can get a libary card (paying about S/. 5, bringing three passport sized photos, their national identification card and at least three months of utility bills), look at at a list of titles and authors, write it down on a piece of paper, pass the paper through a hole in the wall, sit at a table and wait for the book to come to them. They cannot take it home. They cannot see the shelves where the books are kept. Heaven forbid if they actually walked among the books themselves and browsed a bit for what they wanted. There is to be no talking. Just studying. Libraries, after all, are just for learning. You cannot enjoy yourself there. (At least, that´s what the local logic and tradition says).

Back to a few months ago: Audra and I went to visit them and tell them what we were up to. They were intrigued and for a while sent two librarians to work with us in local schools one day a week. After the break, the director didn´t see any results from the efforts (although he never did leave his office to come out to the schools himself to see what was happening), stopped the program. Two weeks ago, we stopped in and told our library friend that our library for kids was finally open. “I´ll drop in for a visit someday,” she said with a smile.

She visited yesterday along with the other woman who came to the schools with us. I had an English class, but Audra talked with them. After they left, she told me that they were impressed and pleased. She said we could fill a newsletter with quotes from them. Among other things they said we are the only library in the valley that loans books to people to take to their homes (right now we have 138 people signed up).

“How do you verify their address?” they asked.

“We don´t, and we can´t, really,” said Audra. “It´s a matter of trust. Right now the kids are brining the books back because they want to read more. They know they can´t check out a book unless they´ve already brought one back.”

“And if they steal one?”

“At most, they´ll only be able to take one because we have a record of who has what book,” said Audra. “But we don´t see that happening very often at all. Also the kids are good at monitoring one another.”

Teachers are telling their students to come to us to read. Schools are sending classes so we can have story time with them. Parents are coming in because one of their kids has used the library, and they want the rest of the family to be able to as well.

One of the last things our library friends told us is that they have been wanting to do something like this for the past ten years, but had always been told it would never work. That still brings a lump to my throat. A community where people are not allowed to have books in their homes if they can´t afford to buy the books for themselves (which is almost everybody in the community)? That´s wrong. It´s injust. I don´t think at all that it is what Jesus would want.

Tinyari — Our Wednesday Trip

Todd and I headed up to Tinyari (pronounced more or less like tin JAW dee). We carry books up there every Wednesday and have a great relationship with the kids and staff in the school (there are about 50 students and four teachers). We were going to be a bit late, so we sent the books up with a teammate who also goes up on Wednesdays. We got there before he did, so we went into the school to apologize for the delay. When we entered the courtyard, the teachers had their children reading the few books they had. They were in small reading groups of four or five students, reading the stories out loud. They didn´t do that before (as far as I know).

When the books arrived, we put them on the table and the kids came running. I was sitting and watching the kids read when a woman came and sat down next to me. She asked about Audra and the kids and we chatted a bit. Then she said, “I want to tell you about something special that has happened in my life.”

“Great,” I said.

“Since you´ve come here,” she said (her “you” refers to the whole team of missionaries here), “I´ve really seen God in different ways. I live in the same house with my daughter, my sister, and my brother and his wife. Before my sister-in-law and I didn´t get along. Since y´all have been coming here, it´s changed. We share things. We talk more. It´s the power of God! God is great!”

“Yeah,” I said, “Everything is possible.”

“It certainly is. God is amazing,” she said.

She´s starting to give some bibles out to members of the community. “This is not just a book,” she tells them. “I´m not going to give it to you unless you promise to put in to practice what you read.”

It´s just a library…

It´s just a library. That´s what I tell myself. But something else is happening. I´m not sure what.

This afternoon a dad we´d never met before came in with his daughter. She was about seven years old and we´d never met her either. “I´ll be back at 5.45 to pick her up,” he said. He left. She stayed. At 5.45 he picked her up. It was fine, but I´m still trying to figure out the trust he put in us strangers. It´s not like libraries like this are common. We are the only thing like this in the city.

About the time he picked her up, one of our regular boys came running in from school. Smiling his sweet smile, he said—out of breath—, “I invited some friends and I wanted to be here first.” I thought five or six friends. He´d invited twenty and they all came. Apparently he wasn´t the only one to invite friends. Within about five minutes the place was packed. We had probably 50 kids come in, and the space is rather small. Three of our regular boys jumped in and started helping out. They weren´t experts, but it helped a lot. It was too many people, really. It feels as though the snowball has started rolling and we´ve got to do something before tomorrow so that it doesn´t get out of control.

It´s a library! It wasn´t a run on the bank. A famous soccer player wasn´t visiting. It wasn´t a day after Thanksgiving sale. It is a library. All we have are books, a few games, and our love for the kids and the future of Peru.

What do I make of this? There is a hunger… a desire… for this kind of thing. We are the only thing like this in the city. It´s new. It´s different. I know that some of this is just cultural. They want a piece of the pie, so to speak. But there is also something deeper that I can´t quite put my finger on. We are trusting them and they are coming through. So far. I pray that continues.

After a week in the library

Words cannot express the excitement we have now that the very first children´s library has opened in the Mantaro Valley of Peru. The library is called Leer es Crecer (“Reading is Growing” or “To read is to grow”) and is on a fairly busy corner near the house. We chose this place because there are three large schools nearby (not to mention a number of smaller private schools) whose students walk by on their way to and from class. One of the schools has 5000 students alone who have a reputation for being troublemakers.

As I write this, I am sitting at the library. On the table in front of me there are five boys. Two are playing chess. Two are playing checkers. One is giving advice. Three other boys are in the corner of the room reading books. They all just came from school and came right in. They did it yesterday, too. And the day before. And the day before that. They feel comfortable here. As they were leaving last night, I asked them how far they lived from here. “A long way,” they said. I believe it. One told me he rides the combi for forty minutes to get home. But he´s here every day before heading to the bus. Sometimes twice (once before school and once after).

Many of the kids who come are nervous at first. They haven´t seen anything like this. But they come in. Look around. One came in and looked. Then he said, “You mean, I can just pick any book?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Pick a book and read.”

A lot of times they come back later. They tell their friends. They bring their friends. They talk to their teachers about it. They bring their parents.

Yesterday, a man walked by, looking in the door as people generally do. Then he backed up and looked again. “Interesting,” he said. “Have you ever considered going out to the communities outside the city?”

“Yes,” I told him. “In fact we have a mobile library we carry to some schools in a backpack.”

“I´m one of the town leaders in such-a-such town,” he continued. “Let´s talk about coming out there next year.” He´s going to call (and I really think he will).

We´ve already been interviewed twice on TV. Two different channels. One might even get some national coverage. It´s amazing. It´s frightening. I´m sure glad that God is in control!

This morning we had two school classes stop in. They didn´t call first. They just showed up. Thirty kids excited about books. Someone told their teachers about us, because we´d never seen them before.

We don´t hide the fact that we are missionaries. We tell people that we are offing all this free of charge because of the love that Christ has for us. It is free and available to all of us. The library is helping us to build relationships with all sorts of people. Young and old.

The boys that are here (there´s about 25 of them now). Many of them came in carrying boards with lights and circuits on them. It was their homework. They just asked me if they could keep them here overnight and pick them up tomorrow before class starts (they start at 12.45). I said sure. They trust us. It´s pretty cool. And it´s only been a week.