Eleven team members from Crossgate Church left early Friday morning the 26th of August, excited that the time had finally arrived to depart on one of our new church's first big international trips. We were headed to Cuzco, Peru to be with our missionary hosts, Keith and Ruth Powlison. Having personally known Keith and Ruth for some 20 years, it was exciting for me to make my fourth trip and to see them again after my last trip over 11 years ago.
I want to stop right here and, on behalf of our team, thank everyone at Crossgate for your generosity, for your support, for all the children's clothes donated, and especially for your prayers for making this trip the success that it was. For if it were not for the Lord and you, there were a lot of things that could have and would have gone wrong. For example, we all were carrying bags full of medicines and medical supplies that had an American street value of 40 to 50 thousand dollars plus greenhouse materials. Our prayer was when we got to Lima that the Peruvian Customs officials eyes would be closed and their hearts open and God went before us and answered our prayers. I was the only one stopped and asked to open my bags because of the greenhouse materials. The medicines were never checked even though our bags sounded like baby rattlers from all the pills.
We had seven full and successful days doing several projects and working in many locations. Jackie Brown and Nancy Kern painted rooms at the Josephine House Orphanage. Bob Brown, Leon Kern, and Ruston and Marie Simon did construction at the Medical Clinic, closing it in to protect it from the up coming rainy season. Dean Dobson, Amy Bryan, Audrey Swart, and a dear and very close friend of mine, Dr. Brush Babb, a Vascular Surgeon from Trinity Presbyterian Church in Orangeburg, SC, and I treated over 106 adults and children with our mobile medical clinics to remote Andean villages, some as much as a 5 hour drive away. We also saw patients at two orphanages and at the Medical clinic that the missionaries had started.
God also blessed our supply of medicines, which seemed to multiply like the loaves and fishes. With what we had left we were able to fill the Medical clinic's pharmacy. This was a blessing because they were out of medicines and having to write prescriptions and have the nurse run to a pharmacy to buy the medicine for each patient.
We had some materials delivered to start on the greenhouse. When the welders that the missionary hired started welding the beams to the foundation bases, they blew the electricity in the entire village. So we had to stop and ran out of time before we had to leave.
I praise God for His blessings on this trip and pray that we were, in His eyes, good and faithful servants. The Quechua have a saying when the winds begin to blow in the evening through the high mountain passes and the dust begins to swirl. They call it “la escoba de Dios,” which means “the broom of God.”
