This week Mike Thate and I are in Lima, Peru as part of a vision trip with Food for the Hungry. DG International Outreach has partnered with FH over the past couple of years in several ways. We have given them resources for their candidate school and staff in the field. Also, you may have seen a past blog post about an FH famine relief project in Myanmar that Desiring God supported.

On this trip we are continuing to strengthen our partnership with our friends at Food for the Hungry. We are spending time meeting with Peruvian church leaders in some of the poorer communities of Lima in an effort to gain understanding of the nature of holistic ministry and the part that DGIO can play in bringing some relief to the theological famine.

Here’s an update from Mike on our first day:

Today was a full day of cultural orientation, spent mainly between the Peruvian Museo de la Nacion and the Franciscan Monastery and Museum in Lima, Peru. The entire seventh floor of the Museo is dedicated to the terrorist activities from 1980 – 2000. According to the video shown at the head of the tour, the seeds of violence began in the lecture halls of Maoist communist philosophers, notably Abimael Gúzman who lectured at San Cristóbal of Huamanga University. The twenty years of bloodshed stole the lives of some 70,000 people.

While walking through the Museo, one couldn’t help but feel the massive implications of failed utopias. The promise of a “better tomorrow” has repeatedly proven to be a noose around the necks of the recipients of these “promises.” When the future is the all-consuming goal the present becomes malleable to whatever whims are currently in power. The power of the gospel is the now-and-to-come nature of the kingdom and the continuity between this earth and the earth that will be reborn at the Lord’s return (Revelation 21). The groans of this earth are heard and will be redeemed (Romans 8) instead of simply scrapped or “cleansed.”