Ahhh, Peru. Just hearing the name brings up memories of sunburn, vomit, and diarrhea. For such an esteemed country, it sure packed a punch when our team passed through. After crossing the Ecuador-Peru border, our team decided to rest for a few days along the Peruvian coast. We were actually ahead of schedule (for once) and had over a week until we needed to meet up with our contact in Lima. Therefore, we thought a few days of relaxation in the sun were in order. There was a cheap campground that offered accommodation for our team right by the water, and we thought this would be a perfect place to rest. Little did I know, I’d be spending more quality time with the communal toilet than with the waves.
Our little “vacation” started off well. I immediately fell in love with our campsite and felt like I was living my secret dream of being a full-time beach bum. It was perfect. There was a restaurant with wifi for those who wanted a taste of comfort, a grassy area for those who wanted to camp, and hammocks scattered along the beach for those who wanted to fall asleep to the sound of the waves. The water was cool enough to refresh you but warm enough that you could swim for hours. The ebony sky lit up at night with glittering stars, and the rhythm of the ocean hummed me sweet songs of home. This was paradise.
Our first morning at the beach, I went with a few teammates to rent some surfboards and hit the waves. Unlike my surfing bliss in Costa Rica, this time I did nothing but sniff salt and flail around like a drowning rat. My rented board had a hole in it that absorbed water, and it got so heavy that I couldn’t lift it. I finally gave up and dragged the dang thing from the water to shore, pulling on the leash since I couldn’t carry the board under my arm. A local little boy stared at me in horror, and I grimaced as I realized he’d probably had a more successful day in the surf than I had.
The following day, I realized the consequences of a long day in the sun as I felt the blazing singes on my back. I’d scorched it so badly that I am convinced I had second degree burns. The large blisters on my back bubbled in agony, and hundreds of tiny blisters erupted around the bigger ones, creating a landscape of bubbles around my back and shoulders. My skin looked like a carbonated beverage. Frustrated and in pain, I hid away in the shade for most of the day, disappointed that I had to avoid the sun and sand.
Once the sun went down, I laid on the beach talking with a couple friends, and the moment I stood up, I felt like death had just smacked me in the face. I began to shiver despite the warmth, my teeth chattering uncontrollably; and I was overcome by waves of nausea. This mystery illness literally came out of nowhere, and I ran to the bathroom, wondering what was happening to me. I spent the remainder of the night spewing my insides onto the beach, rotating between being too cold and feeling like I was going to sweat to death. The sweet relief of the rising sun woke me around five a.m. I walked over to one of the hammocks to be able to groan in pain without disturbing the girls who had been sleeping around me. I hoped I’d vomited out everything inside of me, but my body had a magical way of producing something out of nothing. The bathroom (which was shared by all the campers at this lovely sight and had no flusher) became my closest acquaintance for the day. I spent hours running back and forth between the beach and the toilet, praying that I would make it in time and that the bathroom would not be occupied by the crazy singing French man or old braless hippie who were also staying at the campsite.
I soon discovered that it is possible for food to both travel up and down your body and exit from different places simultaneously. The pain that accompanied such a discovery was almost unbearable. To make matters worse, flies surrounded the increasingly dirty toilet, hungry for excrement before it had even fully left my body. After hours of enduring such torture, I was completely out of energy and desperately wishing for a bed and a nearby toilet. I honestly hadn’t been this sick since living in Africa six years prior and hope never to be this sick again. But the virus would not relent, and I continued to repeatedly make the run between my sleeping mat and the bathroom.
The next morning, I continued to get sick to my stomach, amazed that there was still anything left inside of me. I was dehydrated, exhausted, and in pain. Our team decided to begin our drive towards Lima, and I traveled in the RV with several other suffering teammates who needed a toilet. Driving along bumpy roads was far from a remedy for this stomach virus, but it needed to be done. After a long day, we stopped at another beach city to camp for the night before continuing the drive. Realizing there was no bathroom where we were about to camp, I prayed for an alternative. Meanwhile, Liz and Natalie asked around town for a cheap place to stay. A random Peruvian family offered their floor for a couple bucks each, and we gladly accepted the offer. Smelly, exhausted, and nauseous, I curled up on the strangers’ floor and attempted to fall asleep. A Latino man stood over me asking questions.
“What’s wrong? Are you sick?” he inquired.
“Yes, I’m sick. I have stomach problems. But mostly I am tired,” I replied, hoping he would take the hint and leave me to sleep.
“Do you have air in your stomach?” he asked in Spanish, but honestly, I wasn’t even sure what that meant in English.
I repeated my previous statement, explaining that my stomach felt sick but that I mostly needed sleep.
He continued to stare at me and ask about the air in my stomach, and I wanted to ask him about the air in his head.
“I’m very tired,” I repeated once more, desperately wanting to go to sleep without this man hovering over me.
He finally snapped out of his trance and disappeared. I closed my eyes, passed out, and slept like a rock until morning.
By the time the sun was up, my stomach was slightly better, but I was now so dehydrated from days of vomit and diarrhea and not being able to eat or drink that I was in a more dangerous state than the first day of the illness. I felt like I was going to faint and could only walk about twenty feet or so before needing to sit down and take a break. Once again, I rode in the RV, taking naps and sucking down Gatorade in the desperate hope of healing quickly. The blisters on my back began to puss and pop, so every time I scratched, liquid leaked from my skin onto my clothing.
We pulled over for the team to get food and I tried to sleep in the RV while I waited for them to eat. Evil flies tortured me, buzzing around me wildly as I squirmed in agony. Lord, help me, I pleaded. I can’t keep doing this. I am in so much pain and just want to lie still without flies maddening me. It seemed like the floor was spinning, and I wasn’t sure whether it would be better to attempt walking away or let the flies to continue to feast on my blistering body. Hours passed by where I flirted with the thought of going home simply to delight in the sweet comfort of a real bed.
By the following day, it seemed like my body was beginning to repair itself; however my hopes were quickly dashed by the worst waves of nausea yet. During the surges of pain, we passed through a revolting city that reeked of rotting fish. The putrid stench forced me to bury my face in my pillow to avoid gagging. Hours later, we finally arrived at our destination city. We’d been told we were driving to Lima, but this was far from it. The dusty and desolate streets they called Paramonga was actually hours from the capital and looked more like a landfill than a city. We pulled up to a small house aside a barren brown field littered with trash. I couldn’t believe people actually lived here but was too tired and sick to really care. I grabbed my bag, set up a sleeping mat on the floor, squished in between five other girls, and slept for ten hours.
I woke up and wanted nothing but to sleep more. I forced myself to get up and attempted to walk around but continued to be slammed with dizzy spells. Lord, when will this end? I pleaded. Where are you? Please meet me soon. Meet me here. I need You so badly.
The rest of the day felt agonizingly long and the night even longer. Thoughts of running home taunted me, and I finally gave up trying to sleep. I went outside and bumped into Breck, who joined me on the roof where we sat and reflected on life for the next two hours or so. I told him how worn out I was and asked if he really thought it was worth it to be on this crazy trip. I felt like I’d turned my back on everyone and everything I loved just to wind up sick and tired in the middle of a garbage dump in Peru.
Breck reminded me that it’s always worth it to be obedient to the Lord even when it doesn’t make sense. He’s the one who chooses the best path for our lives, and we simply have to trust that He is making the right choice. In the end, you never lose for being obedient to the Lord. I knew Breck was right but also knew I needed to hear God Himself speak to me. Nothing was making sense at the moment.
The next morning, I woke up to find that all the girls in my room were gone. They’d all left to visit the local church and left me behind to rest. I had space and a few moments alone. This was crazy. This never happens. Thank you, God, I breathed, overwhelming grateful to temporarily escape my normally claustrophobic living environment. Now I just needed Him to meet me in this place and speak to me.
I grabbed my bible, journal, and book that one of my best friends from home had given me. She’d written a personal note inside the book that I decided to re-read. I had just read Psalm 32:8 the night before and realized that in her note, she referenced the same psalm. It reads, “The Lord says, ‘I will guide you along the best pathway for your life. I will advise you and watch over you.’” Next, I turned to the devotion in the book for the day, February 26th. The whole passage was about trusting in God with my future, and the bible reference was Psalm 32:8. Three times I’d encountered this same verse. I smiled, knowing God was speaking through His word and confirming exactly what this psalm says; He has chosen the best pathway for my life. I rested in the comfort that God has called me to this crazy journey, and even in the darkest hour I must cling to what God has spoken and remember that I am supposed to be here.
After a few days in Paramonga, my physical and emotional strength began to come back, and this strange and barren city actually began to grow on me. My heart for this place softened when a group of teenagers from a local church invited us to go play volleyball with them. A few friends and I hit the court and goofed around with the youth for hours. I loved doing something that required no language skills—just a mutual understanding of the rules, an enjoyment of the warm sunshine, and sweet laughter as we whacked the volleyball in every direction we didn’t want it to go. And as the local teens excitedly begged us to keep playing with them, I remembered that people are people, no matter where you’re from. Everyone wants to have fun. Everyone wants friends. Everyone wants love.
Throughout the next three nights, our team was asked to run an evangelistic outreach in Paramonga and one of the nearby towns. I am always a bit reluctant to organize such events, since they normally feel a bit ostentatious and forced. However, I wanted to honor the local church’s request, and my team agreed to plan a three-night event. The first night, we drove to a nearby town’s main square, and a few of our guys busted out breakdancing moves, sang a few songs, and performed a skit to draw a crowd. Afterwards, David preached, and we prayed for those who needed healing. A man with a black eye who was bleeding from his face came forward and said that he wanted to accept Christ. As my teammates and I prayed for him, he began to shake uncontrollably as his body flung backwards and he dropped to the floor. Honestly, I am still not sure if he was feeling the presence of God or if he was manifesting a demon. Either way, something spiritual was undoubtedly happening. My teammates and I talked to this young man quite a bit, and when we left, I wondered what would become of him. I have to trust that God is beginning to work in him, and He is faithful to finish the work He started.
On the second night of outreach, we had our meeting in the center of Paramonga. Again, we drew a crowd with music and dancing. Dianne shared her powerful testimony, and afterwards we offered to pray for anyone who needed healing in their bodies. A man who had been born deaf came forward. Some of my teammates began to pray for healing, and as they prayed, his left ear opened up. He said that he could hear sound in his left ear for the first time in thirty years. Excited, my teammates continued to pray for full healing. Sure enough, after a few moments, his right ear opened up as well. Some bystanders realized that the power of God had just completely restored this man’s healing, and many hungered for prayer.
I met a woman who had pain in her legs and wanted to be healed. As I prayed for her, the tangible presence of the Holy Spirit fell upon us, and I could feel God moving. After praying, the woman said that a lot of the pain had gone, but she wasn’t fully healed. I prayed for many others, and it seemed the same thing was happening. People were getting partially healed, but not 100%. After quite some time praying, I called it a night and explained that my team would be back in the city square the following evening. If anyone wanted to step out in faith and believe for complete healing, they were welcome to receive more prayer the next night. I had felt God’s presence and was confident that He had more to give these people.
The following evening, my team returned to Paramonga’s town square, planning on a similar program. However, we found out that the local government had already planned a huge citywide event for the evening. There were street vendors, musicians, dancers, and crowds of hundreds of people. We quickly realized we had to throw our program out the window and instead embraced our opportunity to simply hang out with some of the locals in the city. As I was standing with some friends watching a traditional dance performance, I felt a woman’s hand tap me on the shoulder. I turned around to see the woman I had prayed for the previous evening. She wasn’t satisfied with just a partial healing in her legs, and she had sifted through literally hundreds of people in the crowd to find me.
Excitedly, I asked her to walk over to a nearby bench, and I grabbed my friends Taylor and Rose to come pray with me. We laid hands on the woman, and after a few moments, she smiled and said that the pain in her legs had disappeared. Full of faith, she now asked us to pray for her friend so she could experience healing too. We gladly agreed, and God began to heal her friend as well. Others gathered around the bench, realizing what was happening. After a few moments, this little bench in Paramonga became our own rotating seat of healing. A person would come, get healed, then get up and give the seat to someone else who would sit down, get healed, and then get up for someone else. This went on for forty-five minutes or so, person after person receiving healing and the presence of God. One woman said that after we prayed for her, she felt peace in her heart and a physical “air” on her. The next man we prayed for said the exact same thing. We explained that the “air” was the Holy Spirit; God was physically manifesting His presence and breathing His air over His children as He healed them.
I found it amazing that even though our plan to run an outreach event was squashed by the city’s fiesta, God created a way to shower His presence and love upon many of the people in Paramonga. Though hundreds of people crowded the streets, the determination and faith of that one woman brought us together and eventually attracted many more people. Despite my recent feelings of frustration, illness, and weakness, God chose to use my feeble hands for healing that night. He chose to use the person who felt the weakest to invite His strength to invade Paramonga. And as He poured out His strength, people were healed, touched, and loved.
So there you have it…in one of the ugliest, dustiest, brownest places I’ve seen among the entire journey, I experienced one of the most beautiful evenings thus far. In a matter of weeks, I went from puking and peeling to laying hands on people who were miraculously healed by God’s love. How truly ironic, how strangely wonderful, how mysteriously beautiful was my time in Peru.
