December 1999

Feast of the Immaculate Conception

Dear Friends,

The days have passed quickly since our last group letter. Our family is well and Ndaya (11), Billy (10) and Andrew (7) recently completed their second year in Peruvian elementary school with flying colors. We remember asking friends last year for prayer that the kids might learn Spanish. . . well, those prayers were appreciated but are no longer needed. Now we're just praying they don't lose their English! All three seem to be doing quite well here. And thanks for your continued prayers!

Ruth and Hunter's assignment with MISIUR will end in December. Ruth completed a successful pilot project in women's income generation and taught several hours a week at the Colegio Trener, our kids' elementary school. Hunter's year was filled with new learnings as MISIUR's interim director. Our family will be on "interpretation assignment" in the United States from mid-December until late February (living in Louisville). We will return to Peru in February to continue to work in community development.

Speaking a New Language

We're not economists, so technical terms like "free markets," "external debt," and "structural adjustment" usually leave us puzzled. Yet these terms are spoken and written about daily here. The poorest half of Peru's 28 million people are increasingly speaking out and demonstrating against the International Monetary Fund's policy of drastically reducing government spending (including health and education programs that many view as essential) and opening up the Peruvian economy to the full-range of U.S. imports. The results have been a continuing wave of foreign buyouts of Peruvian businesses that simply can't compete with larger, foreign-run companies. While inflation has been halted, the trend has significantly increased unemployment and lowered real wages. So how does all that economic mumbo-jumbo touch real people's lives?

While riding the local VW mini-bus that plies the route from the MISIUR office through the seedy Gamarra wholesale market district to the El Agustino community, I watched an older woman, her thirty-something daughter and 5-year-old granddaughter board the bus. Earlier that day, the government had announced that bus fares would be allowed to "float" to "fair market prices." When the driver attempted to collect 20 centimos (6 cents) more than the usual fare from both the grandmother and her daughter, you would have thought that someone had slapped her across the face. She bowed her head and was silent for a moment. Then she began to tremble, and I heard a low moan. Suddenly a torrent of cries and curses erupted from deep within her, as she cried out that this was all she could stand. Her daughter tried to calm her, but she was past the breaking point. She took her fist and began to beat the driver. When the bus stopped suddenly (nearly causing an accident), her daughter grabbed her and the 5-year-old and removed them bodily from the bus. The older woman dissolved in a heap beside the road and cried bitterly as the bus pulled away.

Last week, the mother of one of the children participating in MISIUR's program in Zárate attempted suicide. She later said she felt incapable of providing for her children's needs and simply couldn't bear to watch them grow up always hungry. These two examples are exceptional, I know. But the exceptions seem become more common these days.

Recently, Hunter had the opportunity to travel to the poverty-stricken altiplano region of Bolivia to visit some organizations that are struggling to help communities of need gain ground in the battle against hunger.

On that trip, I was reminded again of how our language often betrays our unspoken assumptions—those stubborn places in our hearts that just seem to resist the power of the gospel of Christ. In my everyday conversation and thinking, I often use the term "Third World" (or the more politically correct, "Two-Thirds World"). It helps me out of an extremely painful dilemma: when I see people living in back-breaking poverty, and I know that so many people are living in luxury, my mind simply can't take it in. So I desperately look for a way to relegate that person to a faraway place. When sharing with colleagues about the poverty of the altiplano, I caught myself shaking my head and saying, "You wouldn't believe it. It's just another world." So far away. And then I met José.

José is the youngest of five children and lives with his family in a wind-swept altiplano community two-hours drive from the Bolivian capital of La Paz. I met him and assumed him to be about 7 years old, as he was about the size of my 7-year-old son, Andrew. As we talked, I could tell that José has significant mental retardation, the result, I was told later by a project worker, of chronic infant malnutrition. His family simply could not produce enough surplus potato, cevada (barley), and mutton to provide for his needs. Later in the conversation, I learned that he was, in fact, 10 years old, the age of my other son, Billy. Already his pencil-thin legs were bent by vitamin deficiency; his mind dulled by the lack of nutrients. "There, but for the grace of God, go my children," I thought.

But if God is our Father, I thought, then José is my child—or at least, my brother's child. If I believe that José and his family are, together with me and my loved ones, part of the Body of Christ, then his malnutrition weakens me and all of us. Yet my this is where the mind games begin: my defenses go up and I scramble to find fault with José and his family. They must be lazy. They must have poor spending habits. They must be wasteful. It has to be their fault. Yet, I recently read that the gap separating the rich from the poor has never been greater. Could it be that in this moment of unprecedented abundance in my own country, when so many Americans of my generation are able to live at a much higher life style than our parents' generation did, that the "terms of trade"—the treaties that allow a full range of U.S. goods to flow unchecked into Peru markets while restricting Peruvian exports of cotton, fish and fruit to the United States—have pushed the poor nations over the cliff? And let you and me see our stock portfolios' value mushroom? We're not economists, but these phenomena sure seem to be related. And many Peruvian Christians believe that it is.

So how can we, as members of Christs' Body, maintain our bond with the many other members who are desperately poor? Through prayer and fasting, yes. Through sharing our surplus with those who needs are greater. (II Corinthians 8:14). And through concrete actions to insure the poor are treated with equality and dignity (Corinthians 12:21-26). Perhaps the year 2000 will see an increasing number of American Christians commit themselves to making a difference in the fight against hunger.

With you in Christ,

Hunter and Ruth Farrell