Love Does (Days: Saturday, Sunday, and Monday)

Where to even begin? I just arrived home from what was probably the most amazing trip I have ever been on. One week in Peru was marked by God's capability to immediately answer prayers and to set heaven on the hearts of men. (If you haven't actually heard me talk about it yet, I spent my spring break on a mission trip with 100 high school seniors in Peru.)
 If you will note, this post has the extra label of "days: Saturday, Sunday, and Monday" because I could not decide if the best way to talk about this would be to walk through the day by day impact we had on Peru, or the person by person impact on me, so I chose both.
On Saturday, April 4, 2015, we arrived at the church to leave for Peru, even from the first day, everyone was incredibly excited to be going to share this love that we have been shown. After a long flight and a drive, we finally made it to the convent where we were staying at about 3:00 am sunday morning. Then, with a few short hours of sleep for the night, I was awoken by an army of birds creating a tremendous noise that echoed around the marble complex. There was no better way to have woken up that morning, and I even recorded the morning song of the birds later in the week to use as my alarm. We spent Easter Sunday morning on a mountain/cliffside having a time of worship and preparation for the week, and of course taking pictures. We then headed to Santa Clara where we gathered some people with loud pop music and some incredible boy band type dancing, and shared the gospel using both a wordless skit (The Everything Skit, if you haven't seen it, please look it up, it is a wonderful representation of the gospel that transcends language barriers.) and the giving of testimonies and our college minister, Thomas, speaking. If you have never seen or experienced spiritual warfare, in my experience it is unmistakable on trips like this because it is so specific, I would go into my ideas about the difference between spiritual warfare in different places, but this is already going to be a really long post. Satan tried to do everything he could to stop the gospel from begin shared that day, but the Lord overcame and His love was shown. Everything was fine until we moved to the sharing part of the afternoon, and all of the sudden, speakers didn't work the way they were supposed to, it began to rain, and it felt like everything that could go wrong did. But, to me, when these things happen and the gospel still gets shared, it is really exciting, because Satan would not waste his time keeping the gospel from people who aren't going to do something with it. All that to say, on Sunday afternoon, as I sat there praying for people to be focused on the message being shared and not the dogs barking, or the rain starting, or the static on the speakers, God was working in someone's heart through the message shared. And He worked the whole week answering prayers with just the right timing.
On monday, we started out going to a hospital to speak and share with people in the waiting areas (I don't say "waiting rooms", because they weren't rooms, it was just a space outside where there were chairs and some shade). As it always does on the first day of a trip like this, things started out a little bit awkward, you have to remember to stop every few words to let the translator translate, and all the while, you are trying to remember and piece together all of the things you have been preparing the past few months. The funny thing about Peru is that the people at the very least don't mind speaking with you, and many of them really want to talk to you and get to know your life. So, we walked around the hospital asking people what they needed prayer for and talking to them about the awesome love and peace and healing that is found in Christ. The very first group of people that we spoke to was a family waiting to hear the news about the treatment of this man's (Juan) newborn child's Jaundice. If you don't know, Jaundice is simply the discoloring of a newborn's skin that is pretty common in babies, and is very easily treatable... in the United States. However, this Peruvian family was legitimately worrying about if this child would make it or have brain damage (that is possible with untreated Jaundice). We explained to them that God is the ultimate healer and comforter, and that He knows exactly what He wants for this new baby. We shared some comforting verses and prayed over them and the baby. We then spent the small remainder of the time just walking around from place to place sharing with people and praying over them. As we went to get back onto the bus to go to our vacation Bible school church, my friend Davis was explaining to me how he had been talking to a woman who had asked him why if she was a Christian and a good person, why would he be sick? He was in the middle of explaining when she was called back to be seen by a doctor. We sat down on the bus and all of the sudden, there was a commotion up front and there was the woman he had been talking to, and she had just received some news about a mental health issue that she did not think she had. So, we all filed off of the bus and put our hands on her shoulders and prayed over her health. Though we were then rushed off because we needed to get to our next stop, we got the chance to pray over her and offer her some encouragement. We probably won't get to see what happens to that woman now, based on how we saw God work the rest of the week, I know that our prayers were heard and answered by the Healer of all infirmities.
That afternoon we spent time with some kids in a place called Hiuycan, just showing them love and starting relationships to build on throughout the week.