Greetings Friends and Family,

First of all, let me apologize for not having written any newsletters until now. It’s hard to believe sometimes, but in less than a month, I will have completed half of my year of service as a PC(USA) Young Adult Volunteer in Peru. I will strive to do a much better job of communicating during the second half of the year.

For those of you who don’t know, I am currently serving in Comas, a district of northeastern Lima. I work with two churches of the Iglesia Evangelica Peruana (Evangelical Church of Peru) that are part of an organization called Fraternidad de Cristiana Vida (Christian Life Brotherhood), a partner of the PC(USA). In one of the churches, Santa Isabel Church, I preach occasionally, lead Bible studies and help teach Sunday school. With the other church, Kilometer 13 Church, I help out with a program called Compassion International, which is dedicated to liberating children and families from poverty.

A few weeks ago, I went with Daniela, one of the tutors from the Compassion program, to visit the family of Melany and Piero, two siblings who are about 9 and 11 years old and who attend the program. Their house is high in the hills that form the outskirts of many of Lima’s neighborhoods. While in the United States, the “suburbs” of cities are generally home to affluent neighborhoods, in large South American cities the opposite is generally true. Many of the most impoverished areas are squatter settlements on the city outskirts.

When we arrived at their house, we were greeted by Melany, her father Hugo, and three of her six siblings. Meanwhile Piero and the other two siblings were accompanying their mother, who’s eight months pregnant, to the store. When we approached the house, I initially thought we were only seeing some sort of storage room that was apart from the house—the building just seemed too small for the whole family to live there. But I would soon see I was wrong.

The whole group of us sat down outside the tiny house on a couple of small wooden chairs and makeshift stools that were actually just empty paint buckets turned upside down. We were shaded by an improvised awning made out of a small piece of nylon fabric tied between the house and a couple of small trees. Daniela immediately asked Hugo if we could peek inside the house at the end of the meeting so I could see where and how the family lives. As a privileged North American, Daniela knew it was important for me to see the conditions that are reality for the kids with whom I work every week. Hugo said yes, and with that Daniela opened our gathering with a prayer and began our meeting. The main purpose of the visit was for Daniela to make sure that the kids were living in a healthy environment, which she did mainly by asking questions about Hugo’s work, what the kids eat, and whether or not the house has running water. Daniela also picked up copies of Melany and Piero’s school report cards for Compassion’s records. The grades for both of them were mostly A’s with just a few B’s. Hugo also told us that the family’s stove was broken, and for the past week they had been eating leftover food from a restaurant operated by friends of the family. One of the parts of Compassion’s program is providing a healthy main meal for the kids who attend three days a week. Hugo said that the food has been a blessing for the family.

Finally, we closed the meeting with prayer, and I peeked inside the house. The whole house was one room, about 20 feet long and 14 feet wide. It consisted of a sink, a small stove (the one that didn’t work), a dresser/cabinet and two double beds pushed next to each other. On top of the beds were stacks of most of the family’s various possessions. Hugo explained that these things stay on the floor at night, when the family sleeps on the beds (yes, all nine of them), and then they move them back on top of the beds in the morning so there’s more room to move around. The walls were made mostly of cardboard and plywood. The house did have a sink with running water, but no bathroom. The family shares the bathroom of the house next door, where the kids’ grandparents and cousins live. I can’t remember how long Hugo said his family had been living there, but it was more than a year. At no point did Hugo or any of the kids seem ashamed or try and make me feel sorry for them. They were just showing me what their lives are like, knowing that it all spoke for itself.

As Daniela and I began walking back down to the church, she assured me that the case of Melany and Piero was rather extreme, even among the children that attend the Compassion program. However, judging from the appearances of the other houses nearby, I could tell that this family’s situation probably wasn’t terribly uncommon in this particular neighborhood; but at least this family has the church to help them out. I was a bit overwhelmed. Words don’t really express the power of what I saw. It is these types of experiences, coming face-to-face with this extreme poverty on a huge scale, that make me feel helpless. I know I’m not expected to “fix” all of the world’s problems by taking a year to serve churches in Peru. Moreover, I know that not all of us are called to do things that seem as “courageous” and “noble” as serving as a Young Adult Volunteer. I don’t tell this story to try and make anyone back in the States feel “guilty” about their lifestyle; I simply do it to share what I’m seeing and experiencing here in Peru so that we all might be able to understand God and the world in new, different ways.  

God’s Peace be with you,

Alex Cornell

PS: Learn more about what I’m doing on my blog. Email me at Alex Cornell if you have any questions.