December 1, 2006
Dear Sisters and Brothers,
We hope this finds you enjoying God’s blessings in the
celebration of Christmas, or as you begin a new year. At the Lima
Recinto of the Universidad Biblica Latinoamericana we are looking
forward to a celebration at the end of our academic year. This
year, for the first time, we have a group of six students who
are receiving degrees. They are the first to move through our
programs as a group, so this is our first “graduating class”!
Each of their journeys are interesting and worthy of the telling.
In this letter I want to share with you the journey of Marisol
Ale Diaz.
Marisol Ale Diaz is one of six students in the first graduating
class of the Lima Recinto of the Latinamerican Biblical University.
In a very real sense, her journey begins with her grandmother,
who was killed by her husband when Marisol’s mother was
still a child. She had been one of the early converts to the evangelical
church in Cajamarca, in the north of Peru. Marisol’s mother
was taken by friends to Lima to save her life. She carried with
her the songs and the teachings of Jesus and the faith in Him
which sustained her in the years to come.
She became a live-in maid in Lima, receiving a roof over her
head and food to eat in exchange for housework. Still in her teens,
she formed a family, and Marisol was born. Marisol was carried
to Sunday school in a local Baptist church. When Marisol was still
a child, her father moved out. Her mother had already been earning
money by traveling to rural areas to sell things from Lima, and
bringing products from the rural areas back to Lima to sell. Now
she began to do this for one or two months at a time. This left
Marisol and her younger sister to care for themselves. The two
girls not only cooked and cleaned, they also managed to graduate
from high school, no small accomplishment in a country where many
girls do not go beyond an elementary education. Marisol then went
to Argentina and studied nursing while she worked caring for critically
ill elderly persons. Back home, a change came to the family, as
Marisol’s father received Jesus into his life in a Pentecostal
church. Marisol’s sister soon followed, and began to write
to Marisol about the wonder of Jesus as living, everyday Savior
and Lord. Marisol began reading the Bible in a new way. She reached
the point where she, too, was ready to accept Jesus, and visited
Peru to pray with her father for this wonder.
When the woman she was caring for in Argentina died, Marisol
returned to Peru. She soon began participating in a local Pentecostal
church along with other families of “internal immigrants”
from other parts of Peru who had moved to Villa El Salvador to
build houses and lives in the desert sands south of Lima. She
was quickly given responsibilities for Christian education in
Sunday school and in new-member classes. The pastor there had
studied at the UBL in Costa Rica, and when Marisol wanted to learn
more, he put her in contact with the newly formed Recinto in Lima.
The road to graduation has seen its share of struggles for Marisol.
She did not come to theological studies with a liberal arts background,
nor even a good high school education. At first, she was being
asked for analytical and writing skills that no one had ever asked
of her. She persevered, and has learned those skills so well that
she is already a published author—in a Costa Rican magazine
with ties to the UBL there. I suppose it shouldn’t have
surprised me that she would be one of two students to “survive”
the first course in Hebrew I taught in Lima. Survival seems to
be something she and her mother learned to do in the school of
hard knocks. Fortunately, Jesus is not absent from that school.
Marisol is helping with my Hebrew classes now. She is looking
for other ways to share what she has learned as a professor. She
brings to that not only a keen mind and the formal learning, but
also a sense of what it takes to “learn how to learn”
at a university level.
Opportunities for women professors in church institutions are
not automatic in Peru. Her own local church, in fact, does not
allow her the privilege of preaching. Still, I get the feeling
that Marisol is not easily discouraged, and as the Lord opens
doors she will be ready to step through them.
May God continue to bless her in her ministry, as well as you
all in yours.
Shalom,
Harry and Debbie Horne
The 2006 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p.
47 |
