The Shower

Cold showers. I remember talking to my good friend Christie about her trip to Ecuador a couple of years ago:

Christie: “Cold showers, strange stomach bacteria, smelly farts, being dirty… yup, that’s Ecuador alright.”
Me: “Strange stomach bacteria, okay. Smelly farts, used to it. Being dirty, I can deal with that. But cold showers? I’m not sure I could handle that.”

I think I’ve had at least 7 cold showers in the last three weeks. Maybe more. It’s hard to remember cause it’s not exactly a favorable experience. Not horrible, but not favorable either. You stand in a cold, cement room, feel the freezing water, and try to get out of there as soon as possible without contracting hypothermia. They’re just another slight “inconvenience” of being here. Yet considering the opposite circumstance of remaining dirty, it’s what you’ve gotta do sometimes here in Perú.

I’m so impressed by the boys of Ica and Kawai who only ever have cold showers at those sites, and I’m pretty sure have to bathe on a daily basis (as opposed to dirty old American gringa me).

It’s better though than where they were before. I’ve been reading Southern Cross, the book by Paul Clark – Director of Unión Biblica Perú, aka my superboss. I can only make it through a chapter at a time, because I always end up bawling at the end of each one. This book paints a picture of Unión Biblica here in Perú – specifically our mission with las Piranhas, the street boys. It’s quickly becoming my favorite book after the Word – I highly recommend it.

Knowing these boys personally is something else entirely. They’re my friends, my brothers, my “causas” and “baterias,” as they say here. I’ve been learning so much about love since being here, and I’m not quite sure I’ve really loved anything in my life. Not the way Jesus does, anyway. I love with self-intent, with a mirror in front of my face. I’m beginning to believe God’s using this time to break me of that.

You’d be surprised how easy it is to think of yourself first when there are 40 boys and a new group of 20 people to divide attention to each week. Easy, but empty. And yet, these boys are amazing. Literally amazing. I mean, they’re still boys – fighting, joking, sarcasm-ing, playing, wrestling. After 1.5 months here, I truly believe this is the international language of boys. But these boys are something different from all of that, too. They’re loving, caring, absolutely 100% sharing in clothes, items, food – everything. They don’t understand possessiveness the way we do it because they’ve never had a whole lot in the first place. Whatever they have, the often freely give it away. It definitely strikes a chord in my American consumerist heart. And then… it makes me wonder about how they came to be that way. What’s behind the mask of joy, boyhood, and a humble disposition? What kind of pain could they still be holding onto – as their possession? They have a phrase for the one possession these boys knew before coming to these homes - “mi verdad” – my truth.

It’s a rare and special thing when one of the boys shares “mi verdad” for the first time. In fact, this is a lot of the work of the Union Biblica house parent – to love them and help them cope with the psychological, physical, and emotional issues they carry from the truth of their life before. Some were abused by their parents or passed around between family members, treated like more of a problem than a person. Some come from an extremely impoverished lifestyle or were abandoned. Some were left to fend for themselves at young ages, because their mother, a victim herself, couldn’t afford to care for them anymore and figured they were strong enough to make it on their own. Once on the street, some resolved to stealing, gangs, prostitution – just to eat or get by.

These are my friends. These are the boys I have come to love and care for so deeply. Their pasts are dirty and hard to forget. They’ve been abused by the police – some beaten with bats, or tortured beyond what you could ever imagine in juvenile prisons. They were often ignored by society, or worse, totally abused and treated like the scum of the earth. My friend Paul Clark said he took photos of the boys from one of the centers into a photo developing shop once.  The man in the shop asked, “Who are all these boys in your pictures?”

Paul said, “It’s a boys’ camp for street boys. I work for Scripture Union, and we care for them there.”

Man: “You know what I would do to solve that problem?... A bullet through each of their heads.”

It’s hard to fathom, but true. 

They say there’s a place in Lima where the fire never goes out. It’s a furnace on the edge of the dump where they cast the lifeless bodies of abandoned street boys. Ones who died young from disease on the street. Who were poisoned and killed by policemen or in gang violence. When there’s no one to claim them, no family to their name, there’s no one to give them a proper farewell from this world. And so, into the flames they’re cast. 

A couple of weeks ago, sitting at the kitchen table at Ica, I started to imagine my friends as the lifeless ones being cast into the fire. The mere thought strained every muscle in my body. Tears splashed the page I’d been writing on in my journal as their faces ran through my mind. It sickens me. I can’t even begin to fathom it. These are my friends – the boys who I’ve come to love so much. And it very well could have been them in there.

The last time I was at Kusi, a week or so ago, my friend Eloy shared his testimony with us for the first time. Being one of the older boys, it’s kind of surprising that he doesn’t often share it – especially because Eloy is super outgoing and charismatic. Regardless, he kept his past mostly a secret. After our time of sharing, I can understand why. I won’t go into too many details, but he has a past filled with hardship, mistakes, violence, things he longed to run away from. We started talking about Jesus and how, even if we feel like Jesus still remembers our past and that we’re not truly forgiven – he doesn’t. We’ve been totally washed clean by His blood.

“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has gone, the new has come.” – 2 Corinthians 5:17