Adios

The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you; the Lord turn his face toward you and give you peace. (Numbers 6:24-26)

Dear mission partners,

Thank you for your outpouring of prayers and financial generosity that made my participation in this unique mission to the Anglican Mission Church of St.. Mary Magdalene in Juliaca, Peru, possible.  

Mission Church of St. Mary Magdalene

I don't know what, if any, good I've done in Juliaca, except that we are leaving the mission church and its property in better shape than we found it. Your generosity not only got me here but also helped to supply the mission church with hundreds of gallons of paint that we put on the walls, inside and out; tiles for the courtyard that were placed by a local artisan; and masonry repairs, also by a local artisan.

Whether or not I changed anything, I was changed, most especially by meeting Padre Luis. He is a young priest whom Paul might have had in mind when he wrote to the Corinthians about Timothy, saying: 

Padre Luis

My beloved and faithful child in the Lord, [whom I sent] to remind you of my ways in Christ, as I teach them everywhere in every church. ... he is doing the work of the Lord, as I am.

And Navi, his mother, who served the team from the mission kitchen and kept our morale up with her patience and good humor when she tried to teach even the most basic phrases of survival Spanish. She is embodied in Proverbs 31:

Navi

She opens her hand to the poor and reaches out her hands to the needy. … She opens her mouth with wisdom, and the teaching of kindness is on her tongue. 

 I'll be on the big silver bird headed for Lima in some number of hours — time is flexible in Peru — then turn right and seven or eight hours later I'll back in the home of the free because of the brave.

And I don't know if I'll be back to Peru. There's a lot of moving parts on that one. 

Blessings,

Bob