About 50 missions volunteers scatter around a hotel lobby high in the mountains of Canta, Peru. As they prepare to jump in trucks and ride into villages, Boots Holder is where he likes to be — out of the way, flipping pancakes in the kitchen.
On this day, volunteers from First Baptist Church, Pickens, S.C., and Crow Hill Bible Church, Bailey, Colo., finish breakfast before heading out to distribute Bibles at a local school. Members of a soccer team plan to board a bus later in the morning to compete in games and share their faith. Meanwhile Holder scrubs plates and silverware, making sure everyone leaves on a full stomach.
Holder is the strategy coordinator for REAP (Rapid Entry Advance Plan) North Peru. He has lived in Lima for three years with his wife, Katie, and their three children. The rest of his team is comprised of a journeyman and two other missionary couples. They recruit, train and provide resources for volunteers from both Peru and the United States. After that, they let the volunteers go to work in the mountains and jungles of the area.
Working in an area half the size of California, Holder said he needs all of the help he can get. Whether volunteers work with a medical team or help distribute Bibles, the REAP North Peru team finds a place for willing volunteers to plug into God’s work.
“A lot of people might be afraid to use volunteers,” Holder said. “But if someone has a gift, we want to let them use it. We’ve had people come in here and cut hair.”
Holder and his team rent an entire hotel — kitchen and all — to run the operation. His team helps with logistics and transportation, and they buy groceries and prepare meals for volunteers.
Volunteers distribute hundreds of Bibles and school supplies, teach English, perform dramas and share the gospel whenever and however possible. Before the week ends, dozens of villagers accept Christ as their Savior.
Volunteers come in with the gospel and then rely on the villagers to start their own church, Holder said. This empowers the locals to control their own plans rather than develop a dependency on outsiders to do the work.
“If you’re the type of person who has to be in control of everything, then this probably isn’t for you,” he said.
With the goal of starting a church in every village in northern Peru, Holder said more Southern Baptist churches are needed to join the effort.
In the past two years, the effort has attracted more than 500 volunteers from the United States and has allowed thousands of Peruvians to hear the gospel. But thousands more still need Christ in their lives.
After most of the First, Pickens, team heads home, Jim Gilstrap is the sole volunteer who remains. Since May, Gilstrap, a retired schoolteacher, has been Holder’s “point man” on the work in the Canta region. Without him, Holder said, he’d be in trouble.
With some churches sending in volunteers for months at a time, the work requires an ongoing dedication and flexibility.
“Nothing happens fast,” Gilstrap said one evening, while waiting for a group of summer missionaries to wrap up their work and head to another part of the mountain. “As long as you can accept that nothing is on time, and it is constant chaos, then it is OK.”
Lisa Hiott, another member of the Pickens team, traveled to Peru with her 11-year-old daughter, Salley. They took suitcases full of Bibles and a full itinerary.
Hiott admitted few things on the itinerary went as planned. But by the end of the week, all of the Bibles were gone and old friendships with the locals were rekindled.
“You prepare,” she said. “But you never do exactly what you think you are going to do.”
The salvation of many souls is well worth the effort to drag in piles of luggage and flip dozens of pancakes, Holder said. He’s seen too many lives transformed by the gospel to switch the outreach plan at this point.
“(Peruvian) people would have tears in their eyes,” he said. “They couldn’t believe someone would walk in here to bring them a Bible.”
(IMB)
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