The Parable of Two Sons

Peru and Chile Visit And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ, Phil 1:9-10 I thank you for you for your prayer for me and Rebekah and also I thank God for allowing us a journey to Lima Peru and Santiago Chile. In this journey we wanted to know and understand the work of God and make us useful to serve these missions. We prayed that God may lead us to understand the society, the students and the people as a whole. Also our visit may be an encouragement to Missionary Efrain and his family and sheep and well as to the missionaries in Chile. On Saturday. we arrived at Lima airport 4:40 Am about one hour late in schedule. Custom passed us quickly and missionary Efrain with two of his friend were waiting for us. We shortly exchanged our greeting and got on a station wagon to drive to Sheraton hotel about 5 miles from the air port. Here we prayed. I lived in US, mostly in College park. I had little encounter with other nations and peoples in respect to the mission that God entrusted upon us. I prayed that God may give us understanding of the work of God in Peru and Chile. More exactly I wanted to know what they think and how they live in view of God and his vision for the world. That afternoon we went to see the campus of University of San Marcos, the biggest public university with about 30 thousand students. Richard and Jonathan came and studies the bible with Efrain and Eugenia. Jonathan spoke English very well and asked us many questions. He has been studying with Missionary Efrain for three weeks. He is a friend of Richard, majoring in computer science. We made a visit to Cesar at his work. He was working at a meat shop. He is the only one comes to Sunday Worship service. He had to work on Sunday and come to worship at 5PM. Since I got off the plane, something was working on my body. I have runny nose and aching muscles. From Saturday evening I slept for 12 hours. Longest hours I have been in bed in recent years. I found that it was smog of the city Lima that caused allege symptoms.

It seems that all the students lives the periphery of the city which is about one and half to two hours from the school(more than ten million people in the city of Lima). I hope that that I could make a visit to Jonathan’s home town. But all students were busy for exams and I had to give up such hope. Sunday we were invited to Efrain’s for lunch. His mother-in-law cooked spaghetti noodle with beef in tomato sauce. It was delicious. Juan Carlos came and joined the lunch. At five PM we started worship service. Cesar presided. The title of message was Estar Preparados from Luke 12:32-41. Missionary Efrain delivered the message though I did not understand at all, I could sense the power , compassion and prayer. As I meditate on the word, I come to realize how much I worry over many things of my life and this worry kills the spirit to serve. Even if God gives sheep I was not ready to serve them. Be ready all time for Jesus can come anytime. How can do that? May god give me such spirit and preparation of my life to be ready any time, all time.

After worship service we went out to eat together—Efrain, Eugenia and Juan Carlos(law student), and Cesar(education) They asked me how difficult to be a missionary in the beginning. I mentioned about the difficulties in language, cultures and took me at lease three years to be able to make reasonable communication with students. I asked them what is the most difficult thing in campus life. Juan addressed a difficulties in actual life in society which is totally different or unreal teaching from the class. I sensed the corruption in the society that is far detached from the knowledge in academia. This is the struggle to live right while the world demands assimilation with the corrupted life style of the society. Cesar majors in education and talked about difficulties in teaching and dealing with rebellious children. He works at a meat produce and comes to worship service at five in the afternoon. Missionary Efrain treated them like his own brothers.

City tour was on Sunday morning. There was rich history in many old buildings. They had colonial styles and still looked very good( Spain colonized late 16 century). They be came independent in the middle of 19th century. There was a big catholic church about few hundred years old. Franciscan order of Catholic ran the church in Lima. The church was pretty big and underneath was Catacomb, where about 15000 peoples were buried, many Skeletons of which we saw. They had strong belief that if they were buried in the church they would join in the resurrection. I saw a statue of one of the high ranking bishop holding a skull. It was to demonstrate his courage that overcomes the fear of death. Such practice lasted until late nineteen century. On Monday we made a guided tour to Pachacamac Pachacmac was located about 50 mile north of Lima. In its appearance, it was not a structurally impressive one. Pachacamac was the name of their god. But Sun god was considered to be more powerful then Pachacamac. It was a site of an ancient habitat covering about 100 acres, of which the main structure was the temple site. There were rudimentary structures of old buildings that were made of sand blocks. At the highest point was the temple looking down the Pacific Ocean. Here also they found skeletons of young women sacrificed. In the minds of ancient culture, sin and its demands were strongly felt that they sacrificed their virgins. Since dispersion of people to various parts of the world—as we know from the Genesis study--, they developed their own cultures. The center of the culture was gods and worship to gods. The main theme of worshiping gods was appeasing them with the blood of young virgin. Sin and its redemption are the inescapable demands of life then and now. Desire to live in eternity was also revealed in their burial—mummifying dead man in fetal position. I could see that those issues the same in thousand years ago and now. They buried and mummified their bodies in two different forms—one sitting; in belief that life will come back again to be born as a baby; fetal position while the others buried their bodies in supine position. In the Gold museum, it carried items from three periods of history; from BC 700- 200 to AD400; from AD400 to AD1500; from AD1500 to 1900. Until Spanish invasion, shamanism was the rule of their spirit and then Catholicism came and ruled until recently.

It was difficult to find how the people of Peru think because I can not speak Spanish. But in time how native beliefs is in working? What is Catholicism in the mind of people? are important questions to understand the people of Peru. Peru is one of the poorest nation in Latin America, where modern affluence and civilized thinking are not settled to influence majority of peoples. If there is to be any obstacle to the Gospel, what is it? I thought about Jewish religion and Christianity at the beginning of Church history where Paul defended the Gospel against the Jewish religion. Even now the church catholic remains strong, not in religion but in its presence as the organization which plays as the major vehicle to contain and carry catholic thinking—religious idealism which is much tainted by humanistic, and materialistic understanding of the world.. If the Jewish religion was heavily relied on its outward working of religion, so is true to catholic beliefs —prominent structures of the church, prominent positions in social and political structure of the nations, where they want to establish true reality of faith. Has the Gospel of Jesus been preached? Gospel resides in individual spirit. It has no organized religiosity or structures or systems. In Post Catholicism era of Latin America what is the true influence of the Gospel? Latin America never experienced renaissance—no protestant; no introduction of Gospel faith; total shift from shamanism or Catholicism; until recently in late 20th century.

We got up at 4:30 AM to take a Flight to Chile. Efrain and his two friends again came and gave us ride to the air port. It took about 3 hours and ten minutes to Santiago Chile, arriving at 12:00 noon. There was two hours difference from Lima time(one hour geographical difference and one hour from the adjustment for day light saving) It was early Spring temperature hovering about 60’s. It was surrounded by mountains about 75 miles from the shore. The rain fall is very small and the landscaping was typical of desert like, covered with low lying shrubs—similar to Lima Peru. Missionary Pauline Oh and Joshua Chun were waiting for us in the air port. On the way she explained that the Chile is like an island—Northern part is cut off by a desert, eastern boundary is walled with high mountains that no animals or diseases can come over from Eastern fertile land of south America and the southern part is near to Antarctic cold. Island in a big continent is an interesting geological and biological environment. Her emphasis was that there is no disease common to all other parts of the world and Chile is ideal for good living. We took a rest on that day. On Thursday we visited the center where Missionary Joshua Chun and his wife Hanna were living. It was a one-bed room house about five hundred yards from Catholic University. It was a beautiful campus full of students. They looked very vibrant. Missionary Pauline Oh said that they have 9 sheep; Sargio, Chilesun, Miguel, Maria, Teresa, Natalia, Ramon, Francisco, Daniel, Alfonso. We had a lunch at the cafeteria. It was one of the many campus cafeteria and was packed with students; we scarcely find an empty table. Missionary Joshua Chun bought me French fries, a big junk of beef steak— almost one and half size of a half pound hamburger, and two eggs. It was so much that I could not finish them all. We made tour of the city-central market and cultural stores. The street was much cleaner and orderly than the street of Lima. In the evening Paul Oh led the Bible study on Ephesians 3:1-13, Paul and Pauline Oh, Joshua and Hanna Chun and Rebekah and I. The apartment building was located at the downtown city of Santiago; at his balcony I could overlook at the city many high rise buildings and clean street with many trees. On Friday, Missionary Paul Oh took us to Valparaiso about 70 mile from Santiago, the oldest and second largest city in Chile. The city was located on hills looking down the Pacific Ocean. There were many traces of Spanish colonial period—old buildings. We found interesting tram cars going up hill about sixty degree. There were more than dozen such tram tracts and cars built about 90 year ago and were still working. We paid a quarter to take one of the tram cars to go up high to a residential area where we looked down beautiful scenery of the city and the Pacific Ocean. As far as the parts of Chile we saw, she was more influenced by the Western civilization and modern affluent life style. Time was short and it was already time to return. Next day, Saturday, morning Missionary Paul and Pauline Oh took us to the air port and we headed back to Lima where we top over for 12 hours and then to US. One the way, I prayed that I may be able to make more visits to Lima and Santiago as well as other mission fields in South America. I thank God for letting us to see a glimpse of South America through Lima and Santiago visit. I believe that South America is ready for harvest and the Gospel must be preached. The work of God in Lima and Chile are just hatched and need much prayer and support in many ways. May God give us discernment and conviction to do what is best for us to serve the work of God in Latin America.

Prayer topics of Peru 1. to raise one Abraham and Sarah of faith 2. to self support; and to get permanent residence status 3. Eugenia has back pain. God may heal the pain. 4. thirty one to one studies and 22 Sunday worship attendants 5. Sheep; Cesar, Ricardo, Juan, Jonathan,

Prayer topic of Chile 1. To raise One Abraham and one Sarah 2. To raise 12 disciples 3. Chile become a kingdom of Priests. 4. self support and permanent residence status.—Joshua and Hannah Chun 5. sheep; Sergio, Chilesun, Miguil, Natalia, Maria, Terea, Francisco, Alfonso, Ramon