"Our goal is straightforward -- to share the gospel of Jesus Christ right on the Inca Trail," said Melchor Ferreyra, president of the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Peru.
“Our goal is straightforward—to share the gospel of Jesus Christ right on the Inca Trail,” said Melchor Ferreyra, president of the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Peru.
Adventists in Peru announced plans for 2006 to conduct an innovative initiative, fitting with the local environment, during a recent visit of Pastor Jan Paulsen, world president of the Seventh-day Adventist Church.
Looking over the ruins of Machu Picchu, the ancient religious center of the Inca civilization, Paulsen commented: “It’s an amazing place. They built this almost inaccessible city, driven by religious commitment and fervor, [with] a trail, which we know today as the Inca Trail, that spans hundreds of miles, and people would come and find their way to this city.”
Referring to the ancient religious center of the Incas, and the church’s plans to bring the Caravan of Hope to this region, Paulsen noted, “Religion has a capacity to release unknown energy to do exceptional things. The Caravan of Hope will follow the Inca trail and will also be driven by a strong religious conviction and fervor, mainly to share the gospel of Jesus Christ with the people that they encounter on the way.”
“The Lord is wonderful in sustaining His people and He will also see to it that this Caravan of Hope on the Inca Trail will be a mighty testimony to Jesus Christ.”
Ferreyra, who was joined by Leonel Lozano, president of the Adventist Church in Ecuador, in announcing the initiative in Machu Picchu, said that no other venue was more fitting for such a “creative approach to our Christian witness” than the ancient Inca Trail with its starting point in Cuzco.
In Peru, it will be a “two-week-long adventure in evangelism, beginning on June 15 in the Southwestern city of Cuzco, continuing to Puno, Juliaca, Arequipa, Lima, Trujillo in the North of Peru, and finishing on June 21 in Chiclayo, [which] is [in] the North of our country. But this is just the first half of the Caravan of Hope. It will continue in Ecuador,” Ferreyra announced.
The Ecuador portion of the “moving outreach event” will be June 22 to 25, and the program will feature Peruvian evangelist, Alejandro Bullón.
In preparation for the events and activities connected with the Caravan of Hope, church members and pastors of the local congregation in the region are already active with evangelism and community activities in small groups.
“This is not a one-time activity. It involves the believers well ahead of the Caravan of Hope, and all working together,” Ferreyra added.
We are already seeing signs of God’s leading in our activities, say local Adventist leaders.
In the last 12 months a small but vibrant congregation was established in Machu Picchu along with a small school. The Adventist Church in Peru was ready to purchase a new building in Machu Picchu, near the central plaza, to house church activities and provide space for a tourist information center, said Don Noble, president of Maranatha Volunteers International, a California-based lay organization involved in constructing churches through a missionary volunteer endeavor.
Just a few days before a team of international visitors had planned to begin work on the building, the seller suddenly reneged on the purchase agreement, returning to church officials the deposit they had given.
During the official visit of Pastor Paulsen with Carlos Valencia Miranda, Cuzco’s mayor, in which the Adventist leader was presented with the ceremonial keys to the city, church officials learned that the regional officials were shifting activities from that section of Machu Picchu to another location where mudslides would not be a problem.
“If we would have invested in this property, we would have lost the entire investment and we would not have been able to accomplish what we had planned to do,” Noble told ANN. “When I first heard this, it just amazed me that God was watching through this whole process.”
While Noble is uncertain as to where a building will be located, he’s confident that the outcome will be positive. Maranatha Volunteers International is completing a major project to build 100 new churches in Peru.