Mission Peru

by Haley Welch, Gregory Drive Alliance Church

Well, to start off I’d just like to say hello from Trujillo, Peru! And also a big thank you to all of you who are following the blog and praying for us. We appreciate your love, support and prayers. This trip has been life-changing and thank you for supporting us along the way. So, I’ll just tell you a little bit about our day today.

We started the day by waking up and having a delicious breakfast of French toast and fresh fruit juice. Then we drove over to the construction site for our final morning of work. It’s so cool to see how much work we’ve done in only a few days of working. We’ve moved a lot of sand, dug some trenches, leveled sand, tied grass and made the cement floor in the dining hall. The work is hard and physically demanding. And honestly, physical labour is not my favourite thing to do, but God has given me strength to keep going despite the difficulties. God is so amazing. Another thing that’s so cool is that we can all work together towards the common goal of serving God. I didn’t know most of the team before this trip, yet we can all work as team to finish the work.

When it was almost lunchtime, we cleaned up our tools and gathered in the dining hall to pray one final time before leaving. Graham explained to us that our extra money (thank you everyone for donating money!) is buying beds, dressers, laundry facilities, and kitchen supplies for the children’s home. It’s so cool to know that we can help both with building and with material necessities. Another thing that we want to do is to buy a bus for the children who will be living there. This bus will provide safe transportation for the kids. All of our churches want to work together to buy this bus. I’m sure you’ll be hearing more about this soon, but please consider donating money for this bus. It’s awesome to know that we’re all a small part of something that feels so big.

After the work site we went to one of the local churches, Por Venir, for lunch. We had…chicken and rice!!(which we eat every single day, but surprisingly I’m not tired of it yet). For the afternoon, my group went to the market to do a little shopping. And for my family who is reading, I did get you gifts. The market was fun, and bartering in Spanish was a challenge for some, but overall I think we did pretty well. Of course, to the Peruvians we probably sounded crazy! From the market we went to the guesthouse and then to dinner at another church, America Sur. And we had…chicken and rice!

When dinner was done the saddest part of the day came. We got to meet the Inca Link Peru Board and they gave us each a gift, and also a gift for each church. We all sang praise to God and then went into our smaller groups for debrief. This was the sad part. It was our last debrief and so we all wrestled with some hard questions about why we came to Peru and what God has taught us here. Please pray for us all as we try to process everything and apply everything to our life.

In conclusion, thank you again. The next two days hold many hours of travelling for us, but we’ll be home soon. Be ready to hear many stories and to see many pictures, and thank you again for all of you support. See you soon!