Currently we are in the Miraflores district in Lima, Peru. All of the people in our group arrived safe and sound despite delays everywhere. I came on this trip not knowing anyone at all, no face to put with a name and having absolutly no idea how this program actually ran. Everyone has been so friendly and welcoming, totally embracing people to form a wonderful group.
This is my first time on a mission trip as well as my first time to South America. You know what to expect, you see the photos and vidoes of slums and ghettos where children run free and hopelessness is overflowing. But to actually ride in to the place, to mentally compare your life to what you are seeing is unexplainable. Today we visted Pamplona, a slum in Lima. Riding in an older van we started out from our nice hotel in a nice beach area towards the hills that surround Lima. As we drove closer you can start to distinguish that along the hillside are piles and piles of rubble; bricks, trash, and rocks.
People are everywhere, old ladies seeling homemade sweets from thier front stoops or children chasing stray dogs down winding decaying steps. Here and there you can spot an attempt at bettering their enviorment; a small garden or a vivid green field for futbol. It's a narrow dirt road to the top that weaves through the buildings till you reach a barren top. This was our destination.
Here you can stand to your right you can see a beautiful skyline of sprawling Lima, a vast booming city spreading all the way to the Pacific. On your left the slums hugging the hillside winding around and around in to a pit of poverty. The juxtabosition of the two was almost too much to handle. How could they only be seperated by a hill? How could either be contatined in such a way that they never broach each other?
I stood confused at this precipice. Here I was, first day here, haven't met a single child yet and already my heart and mind are overwhelmed for this city that has such polar opposites that I wonder how they will ever equal out.
We were welcomed in to this area with open hearts, the children cheered when I carried in a box of shoes and sang for us with much joy.
The shoe station was a hectic mess that totally went against all of my OCD tendencies but the all ecompassing feeling was joy, love and humble gratitude that God is so great the He will provide for everyone from those on the right and left side of the hills in Lima because He is a just and loving God.
P.S. The buckner blog is itsmymission4kids.blogspot.com
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