A profound thing occurred the other day on the way back to Puno. After walking the Cross over the 13,215 Lloco Lloco Pass in Bolivia, receiving many honks and witnessing to a parked truck driver, we stood in line to exit Bolivia for almost two hours. I just stood there with the Cross, and the team gave out a mess of Gospel tracts. At the immigration desk, a Bolivian police officer was curious about the folded cross, so I unfolded it and showed him the very important question inscribed thereon. I asked him if he was ready for God’s judgment, explaining that Christ is the only escape. I spoke in Spanish of my walk across America carrying a similar cross and further explained that I didn’t do such things for religion, as some sort of religious ritual, or to somehow earn merit with God. “It’s a testimony,” I affirmed, of eternal salvation that does not come by religion, the Pope, the Virgin Mary, good works, or other things. It is by Christ alone. He listened and took a tract. Now, can you imagine what would have happened if I had tried to do the same thing with an immigrations officer at the Miami airport coming back into my country? No, that’s not the profound thing. Indulge me to keep going.
Waiting for 2 hours in the Immigration Line for Exiting and Entering Bolivia
Back in 2010, I had the great privilege of hitchhiking and preaching the Gospel all over Bolivia and into a sliver of Peru with a good brother from Switzerland who lived in Santa Cruz, Bolivia at the time. How I met this brother and friend of many years way up in the Yukon Territory is a profound thing all its own. It was right around my birthday and late afternoon when we crossed the footbridge into Peru at Desaguadero, giving out tracts and stopping to preach on a street corner. It was my first visit to Peru. That night and the next day, we slowly made our way up the southwest shore of Lake Titicaca, stopping to preach in the smalls towns of Zepita and Copani and then on up to Yunguyo where we crossed again into Bolivia and caught the night bus back to La Paz. It was indeed a short stint in Peru, but there are images from those two days that have never left my mind. One is walking into Peru with my big old blue trekking backpack while wearing an expression on my face that translated, “What the heck am I doing here?” Brother Bruno even caught that expression in a photo as seen below. I have a very clear memory of the very first thing I ever did in Peru: I gave out Gospel tracts to some locals standing on that bridge. Never in a million years would I have imagined way back then that I would walk across that same bridge 16 years later, this time with a group of young people, including a son of my own (Josiah was born in March of 2010, shortly after I returned from my time with Brother Bruno) and that the first thing we would do after walking back into Peru is tract the locals hanging out on that bridge. Sheer profundity!
Back in 2010, I visited Peru for the first time when I walked across the Bolivian border at Desaguadero.
And yet, it gets more profound. There is another image permanently ingrained in my mind from a lakeside village in Peru. It’s of me kneeling beside a broken elderly grandmother outside a blue building in a central plaza, offering her a pair of socks in the name of Jesus and some Gospel material. I then prayed over this poor soul, and Brother Bruno and I continued on our way. Like the bridge in Desaguadero, that moment was also captured in a photo posted below. For whatever reason, I never forgot that woman or her face.
Sixteen years may have passed, but I never forgot this encounter with a Peruvian grandmother in a faraway place.
As Team Yeshua traveled back to Puno the other day by way of that same route Bruno and I hitchhiked back in 2010, I was adamant to find that blue building and that same plaza. I couldn’t remember which village, but we stopped in Copani to investigate. As soon as our driver Ronaldo pulled into the village plazita, I knew it was the place. That old blue building is long gone, but it was indeed the spot, and there was a festival of sorts taking place. Elderly Peruvian women sat side-by-side all the way across a wide platform of stairs leading up to newer Catholic church presumably where that old blue building once stood. I set Team Yeshua loose to carpet bomb the place with Gospel tracts. I took out the cross and walked into the middle of the plaza, stopping to preach to a few groups of folks gathered to drink and celebrate. And then happened a very profound thing: I turned to see my son of 16 years doing for a whole row of Peruvian grandmothers exactly what I had stopped to do in that same spot all those years ago for that one Peruvian grandmother. Never could I have foreseen such a thing at a true uttermost corner of the earth.
My 16-year-old son witnesses to a whole row of Peruvian grandmothers in the same spot I witnessed to that one Peruvian grandmother right before he was born.
While basking in the sheer profundity of the moment, a very official looking man walked up to me with his aide. He was the local alcalde, the elected mayor; and he was curious as to why a group of gringos was visiting his town and about my “Estás Preparado?” cross. I explained to him that I had visited his town once before, many years ago, had even spent the night there; and that we had come back to relive some old memories. He was fascinated by that. They don’t see gringos in Copani much, especially not groups of gringos, or gringos who came once and decided to come back. The alcalde was adamant that he get a photo with me and my cross and took a Gospel tract.
Standing with the elected mayor of Copani 16 years after I first visited his obscure town at an uttermost corner of the earth.
Elsewhere in Copani, on a side street just outside the place, Jesufa, another elderly Peruvian grandmother, received a copy of the Scriptures from the hands of a member of Team Yeshua.
SHEER PROFUNDITY!
My friends, it’s a great privilege to take Gospel to an uttermost corner of the earth. It’s an even greater privilege to be able to go back to that same uttermost corner many years later and watch the next generation do the same. Glory to God, glory to the Living God!
