The sleep of a labouring man is sweet. Ecclesiastes 5:12
At 2:45 a.m. I heard it - an alarm going off in another
room. We lay in bed, waiting for it to
stop, but its owner did not respond. After
about ten minutes, it finally stopped. Now
we were fully awake, on about three hours of sleep. Five minutes later our alarm sounded.
At 3:45 a.m., we climbed into the back row of the
12-passenger van. The pastor’s family climbed in after us. Four-year-old
Abigail slept through the transfer from her bed to the van. Junior, the pastor’s only son, drove to the
first stop where we picked up a mother and her seven-year-old son. They joined us in the back row. After several more stops, the van was stuffed
with twelve adults, two children, and miscellaneous bags at people’s feet. Another car, also filled with passengers,
started to follow us. At the gas
station, Junior filled the van’s tank as well as a five-gallon jerry can. One of the men climbed to the roof to tie the
jerry can up there with some other luggage.
Now it was 4:45 a.m., and we were finally on our way out of the city.
The van sped up when it arrived at the highway. I settled into my seat, leaning against
Charlie, hoping for some more sleep.
After about five minutes on the open highway, we turned off and started
the ascent up the mountain on a gravel road.
Twists, turns, and bumps in the
road kept sleep away, but eventually I dozed a little.
A couple hours later, at the entrance to a tunnel through
part of the mountain, we stopped to wait for the other vehicle that had fallen
behind.
“Can we get out?” I asked.
Charlie’s knees were bumping up against the seat in front of us, and my
legs were longing for a stretch.
They let
us all out, and the men made a beeline for the bushes.
“If you need it,” I was told, “the tunnel up
ahead will provide privacy.”
Around us, the sun continued to rise, casting shadows on the
mountains, slowly reaching into the valleys.
Misti, the volcano that guards Arequipa, was showing off his beauty, and
the passengers’ cell phone cameras were capturing the scene.
Before too long, the other car caught up with us, and we
reloaded into the vehicle.
“Is it possible for Charlie to sit somewhere else?” I
asked. His legs were really too long for
the back row. This time they let Charlie
and me sit up in the row behind the driver. The change in seating turned out to be a
greater blessing than I realized at the time.
A couple hours later, Charlie asked them to stop. The twists and turns of the mountain roads
had finally caught up with him, and he was sick to his stomach. Junior quickly stopped and yanked open
Charlie’s door. He got out just in
time. Sonia, the pastor’s wife, prepared
some tea with hot water from a thermos and gave it to him. It helped settle his stomach, and we were
once again on our way. On and on we
traveled, bumping and turning.
Eventually I dozed again.
By 8:30 my stomach was growling, and I wondered if there
would be a stop for breakfast. But we
kept going. On and on we rode, winding
our way up to the 16,000-foot mountain pass, high above the tree line.
“Look!” someone shouted pointing to one of the volcanoes in
the distance. Volcano Ubinas had just
burped. A cloud formed above and grew
larger and larger as steam and ash rose into the sky.
Bumping over the gravel and feeling my stomach lurch, we
continued in a descent over the other side of this mountain pass.
Trees, birds, and insects reappeared.
Mile after mile of terraced farming hugged
the sides of the mountains.
Our van
hugged the mountain, avoiding getting to close to the side where it dropped off
into deep canyons.
I kept thinking we must soon be arriving at our final
destination. After almost six hours of
travel, we rounded a bend. A crowd of
people stood on the side of the road with large bags of goods. They were members of the church in that town. Junior stopped to greet them and began to talk
to them about how to get them to our ultimate destination.
“Junior,” Sonia called out to her son. “Why don’t some of us get out and they can
ride? They have been waiting a long time
for you. Some of us can wait here for
you to get back.”
I welcomed the idea of putting my feet on the ground to
allow my stomach to settle. We got
out. They got in. After they left, the eight of us started walking down the
road at a leisurely pace along the river gorge.
I stopped frequently to take pictures of the blue skies, desert hills,
and the green valley below us where the grey river sparkled in the sunlight. After about an hour of walking, we saw the
van approach. Junior turned around and
picked us up, and we drove on for another half hour to the village of
Cadagua.
“Breakfast is waiting,” we were told when we arrived. It was now 1:00 p.m.
We followed our hosts to the back of the house. A corrugated metal roof and a small tarp provided
shade. There people sat on benches,
boxes, and a few chairs. Steaming plates
of noodles and a red sauce with mystery meat came out of the kitchen. Since we were surrounded by guinea pig cages,
it was no surprise when we later discovered that most of the meat in the sauce
was guinea pig. I should have known when
I discovered the small head in the sauce.
I did not eat much. My stomach
was still turning after all the hairpin turns, so one of the young men in our
group finished my plate for me.
Evidently, both Charlie and I looked a little green. One of the women from the Arequipa church
came over.
“Would you like a cup of tea and some soda crackers?” she
asked kindly.
That sounded like just the right thing for our upset
stomachs.
We leaned back into the wooden
bench and waited while she found cups and prepared us some tea.
As we sat quietly drinking our tea, the women
One man stood next to a table
and sawed his way through the bones of an animal, adding the chunks of meat to
the pots as well. Children played, swinging from the rafters of the corrugated
awning and teasing the guinea pigs.
swirled around us, cutting up vegetables, and adding them to the large pots on
the fire.
“It’s time to start the program,” Junior called to everyone.
We joined him in front of the house. There to one side of this town’s Main Street
sat a truck-tire tub overflowing with
water. Junior began the service, leading
the group in singing with his guitar. “He
decidido seguir a Cristo.” (I have
decided to follow Jesus.) Our voices
filled the mountain air. A few people
emerged from neighboring houses to join us to see what was going on.
After singing several songs, Pastor Daniel Araujo stepped
forward. Carefully, he explained what
baptism was and why this teenage girl had decided to be baptized.
“Please share with
this group why you have decided to obey the Lord in baptism today,” he
instructed her. Joy flowed from her
while she reverently shared her faith in Jesus Christ. Then she stepped into the frigid water, sat
down in the tub, and was baptized in its confined space. When she arose shivering, we sang again.
When the baptism service ended, Junior once again shouted
out instructions. “If everyone would head to the community center, we will be
showing a Christian movie,” he announced.
He drove the van over to the community center and began to
set up the computer projection system for the movie. Men hung a white sheet on one wall of the
community building. People rearranged
chairs to face the “screen”. Soon we
were all watching “Facing the Giants” in Spanish. I went to see if I could find a place to sleep
in the van, but someone else had already thought of that idea, and I was afraid
to wake them by opening a door. So Charlie
and I sat against the back wall, and I dozed for a while, my head on his lap.
By the time the movie was over, the huge pots of stew we had
seen over at the house had been carried to the community center kitchen. We dragged our chairs from one side of the
center to where tables had been set up on the other side.
Apparently we were the honored guests because our table was
served first. Charlie and I insisted on
sharing a bowl since we knew we were both still too queasy to each much. Several varieties of potatoes, huge pieces of squash,
sweet carrots, and alpaca meat were served us.
Delicious.
The conversation in the room lulled as people began to enjoy
their food. An alpaca feast is a rare
and welcome event, and the whole community had been invited. When the last plate of food had been served,
those of us who had received food first were done. Women went into the kitchen to wash up metal plates. Men washed down wooden table tops, folded
their metal bases and stored them in the corner. They quickly stacked the blue and white plastic
chairs in another corner. When the work
was done, the last event of the day was announced – a church service. Everyone moved back to the other side of the
room to enjoy that event together.
Singing and testimonies were shared as the various churches represented
took turns to give testimony to God’s blessings in their lives. This gathering
of believers represented people from five of the surrounding villages as well
as those of us who had come from Arequipa.
In addition, many of the people from town had come for the feast and to
see what else was happening. Charlie was
invited to preach, and our nephew, Jeremy, translated for him.
When it was all over, it was 9:00 at night, and I was
anxious to go home, but there were still people who needed to go home before we
could leave. Junior loaded the people from the nearby villages in the van and left. Charlie stretched out on the floor to get some sleep before the long
arduous journey home.
“I can’t drive,” Junior said, when he returned almost two
hours later. “I’m dead on my feet.” Roberts, one of the men from the church, took
over and we left.
Away from the city and few lights, the full moon shone
almost as day. Stars seemed close enough
to reach out and touch. This time the
bumps, twists, and turns did not keep me awake, but they did for Charlie. He was sick to his stomach the whole way
home, and trying to sleep only made it worse.
When we finally got home, it was 5:00 a.m. I crawled into bed, grateful to be able to stretch out and glad that the
ground under me was solid. I cannot
remember the last time that I have been so glad to get to bed. If I felt that way, I am sure that Charlie felt the relief even more than I. How grateful I am that God gives us the gift of sleep.
location in Peru, it was a reminder to me that this is a reality for many people in the world.
