April 2011 Huancayo, Peru
for the presidential elections (April 10) and many of the
Building Trust where
there is no trust
HUANCAYO – Trust is a hard thing sometimes. The Bible
tells us in Proverbs 3.5 to trust in the Lord with all our
heart and to not lean on our own understanding. That´s
great spiritual counsel to lead us from simply saying we
follow God to actually following God. Another phrase I
recently was “Trust everyone, but cut the cards
anyway.” This allusion to playing cards says in a
roundabout way that we really can´t trust anyone.
That´s the way things are here in Peru. There is not
much trust between people.
There are reasons for this lack of trust. For example, the
country was stuck in the middle of a horribly bloody civil
war less than a generation ago. It really didn´t “end”
until about the year 2000, and there are places in the
country where the terrorist cells are still active. There
were many years when nobody had any idea who they
could trust and who would turn them in. Another
common theme behind the lack of trust is government
corruption. I don´t know the details, but those two
words often come up together in conversation. It´s time
Volume 4, Issue 4
candidates are running on anti-corruption platforms.
This trust thing is bugging me lately. Maybe it´s my
North American mindset. A lawyer here told me that
there is something in the courts that says “innocent until
proven otherwise” (like our “innocent until proven
guilty”), but while that may the case in the courts, it
seems to not be very true on the streets. We are told
often (especially by those who call themselves
Christians) not to trust anyone. We are working hard to
work against this trend.
Recently we made the decision to postpone loaning
books until some of the very late books came back. Our
hope was that some peer pressure would help get some
of them back. It´s worked to a point. At the very least
it´s brought some awareness to the fact that some are
not being responsible. “Some” is key here. Of the 1,100
plus people registered to check out books from the
library, a little over a 100 have not returned their books.
That´s about 10%. More than 90% are very responsible.
But a number of adults (most of whom we´ve never met
before) see the list of names of the 10% and shake their
heads. Then they come in and say, “You can´t trust the
kids here. They are not good. They will rob you blind. If
I were you, I wouldn´t loan any books to any of them.”
They choose to ignore the 90%. They don´t see them
because they aren´t there when the kids are. They don´t
see the kids who come running around the corner after
school to see if we are loaning books again yet. They
don´t see the disappointed looks on their faces when we
have to tell them, “Not yet. Can you talk to your
friends?” Their hearts don´t break like ours do.
There is a Peruvian proverb that says “Los justos pagen
por los pecados de los injustos” (“the just pay for the
sins of the unjust”). There is a tendency among a
number of adults whom we meet to let that be the case.
We aren´t willing to do that though. That is not right.
That is not what we believe Jesus wants us to do. We
believe Jesus wants us to do all that we can to show his
love. Teaching trust is one way we can do this.
When kids come into the library, we want to instill in
them some morals and values including responsibility,
respect, love, telling the truth, and trust. “To start with,
we want to trust you,” we tell them. “Can we trust
you?” we ask.
“Sí,” they say. Granted some are lying when they say it,
but most are not (at least in our experience). We
started loaning books. Most are coming back without
any problem. Some we have to search for. Some,
unfortunately, we doubt we will ever see again. That´s
too bad. But most of them we will. In the process we
are building relationships with other people. Through
those relationships we are able to share more fully and
consistently the love of Christ.
We´re going to start loaning books again the week.
Please pray that we do the right thing.
Open Circle Peru is published monthly by the McEuen
Family, Missionaries to Peru with The Mission
Society. They may be reached by email at
opencircleperu@gmail.com. Their webpage is found
at http://opencircleperu.weebly.com. You can send
them mail at Jirón San José 230; Urb. San Carlos;
Huancayo, Perú.
Relationship Specialists:
“Not that kind of missionary”
MIRAFLORES – One evening while they were in Lima,
Ayliś and Ash went to eat vegetarian food at a local
restaurant. While waiting for their food to come, a
young lady in her 20s came in and sat at the next table.
When she ordered, they quickly noted by her Spanish
that she was just visiting. Talking with her, they
learned she was from Portland, Oregon, and that this
was her latest of many visits to Peru. She asked where
they lived, and upon learning they live in Huancayo,
asked, “How does one go about moving to another
country? I really want to move here.”
“We are missionaries,” said Ash, “and that helps us to
get our visas to be here…” After the word
missionaries, the young lady tuned out the
conversation. She knew about missionaries. People
who come in and destroy a culture to impose the
North American way of life. She knew about
missionaries who at all costs would not listen to the
local people and who were know-it-alls. During dinner,
Ayliś asked Ash a lot of questions about faith and
culture and things. Ash did his best to answer the
questions in a way that the young lady at the next
table would hear. When she left, he gave her their
web page address and said, “Next time you are in Peru
and want to visit Huancayo, look us up. We´d be glad
to show you around.” The young lady said, “Thank
you” and started to leave. “By the way,” Ash said to
her, “We aren´t ´that kind of missionary.´ We believe
God has been here for thousands of years. We
introduce people to God and teach them, but
ultimately it is their decision. We don´t want to rob
them of their culture. That´s not our choice. It´s
theirs.” The young lady was a bit startled. “Wow,” she
finally said. “That´s cool.”
That is really what it´s about to be a missionary with
The Mission Society. We are cross-cultural witnesses.
We share the love of God from one cultural context to
another. More than that though, we are relationship
specialists. We take a lot of time to get to know
people. To understand them. To try to know who they
are. We don´t judge. We share God´s love, and let
God´s love change them.
Team from Alabama helps
library, builds relationships
HUANCAYO – A team of four women and two men from
Covenant United Methodist Church in Dothan, Alabama,
recently worked at the Leer es Crecer Library and visited
two schools (La Virgin de Fatima and La Virgin de
Carmen) to share about the importance of reading and
the love of God. “Their visit helped to open a lot of new
doors in the community,” says the director of the Leer
es Crecer library in Libertadores, Luis C. Future work in
and with the schools is being prayerfully considered.
One tremendous blessing the team brought with them
was about 600 pounds of books. Many of them are in
English which will be a great help to the Acts 2.4 English Calendar for March 2011
classes that support the libraries and serve as a way of
sharing the good news of Jesus Christ. Monday through Friday – Work at library and teach
English classes.
Visit to the national Library March 31 – Go to Lima to meet visitors from Ball
Ground, GA.
April 3 – Share the message at the evening service at the
LIMA, PERÚ – On March 22, Ayliś and Ash visited La
Methodist Church in Huancayo.
biblioteca Nacional de Peru (The Peruvian National
April 10 – Pray for the elections of Peru. There are a lot
Library). It was both frustrating and exciting (at least for
of candidates. Some good. Some not.
Ash). The frustration came in when they discovered the
April 16 – Lead workshop for the student from Andino
main building was heavily guarded and that they could
Methodist School
not even enter the six story concrete building that
April 18 – Share message at Chapel at Andino School
covered an entire city block. Telling them who they
April 22 – Lead Good Friday Service at Methodist Church
were didn´t get them very far either. “Can we just take
in Huancayo.
a look around inside to see how it is organized?” we
asked “No,” the guard said. “This is just offices.”
Offices for whom is not clear. They did get the phone FINANCIAL SITUATION ON
number of the library annex (in another part of Lima).
The woman who answered the phone was very friendly THE ROAD TO CRITICAL
and agreed to meet them at the door when they got to
the other building. Once inside, two women gave them HUANCAYO – Our financial situation is a bit better, but
a tour of the children´s library sections and the study we still need some help. If ten to 15 other people or
section. They talked about classification systems and groups decide to make the commitment to partner
how to work with the public. with us financially every month, we will be fine. Please
prayerfully consider doing this. If you already are
What is encouraging (and, quite frankly, a bit sad) is the
partnering with us, thank you. It means a lot to us and
fact that the children´s section of the national library is
to the people in the Mantaro Valley of Peru. Please
not that much bigger than the Leer es Crecer library in
prayerfully consider sharing the possibility of
Huancayo. Ash left there with a newly focused goal. partnering with us with some of your friends. To send
“The children of the Mantaro Valley and Huancayo
gifts, please go online to www.themissionsociety.org/
deserve at least as much as the children of Lima. I want
people/mceuen or use the form at the end of this
our library to be at least as good as theirs. Not for our newsletter
glory, but for the glory of God,” he said.
 What´s up with the Family
Audra has been a very good hostess. This month a group of young men and women who are serving with World Race
missions (eleven months through eleven countries) were in the area working with Kuyay Talpuy schools. On their last
weekend in the area, they came to town to get cleaned up and relax a few days. Audra suggested a dinner for them
and (with the help of Kia and Ayliś) prepared pulled pork (southern style), coleslaw, vegetarian lasagna, homemade
salsa, southern sweet tea and carrot cake. (Others added fruit salad, green salad and quinoa casserole). They were
very thankful for real North American food.

Kia, Ayliś and Todd helped out with the team from Dothan, Alabama, translating and helping show them around the
area. “We love the team,” said Kia. “And we love working with them when they are here.” Soraya was also a big
help. Her winning and charismatic personality quickly won the team and helped them feel at home.

Ash spent four hours with youth from Methodist Churches from both the sierra (mountains) and the selva (jungle)
talking about the greatest commandment: love God and love your neighbor. In his free time he is loving the Kindle he
got for his birthday, and is trying to teach himself how to paint with watercolors.

DEAR ASH, AUDRA, KIA, AYLIŚ, TODD, AND SORAYA,

Through careful and earnest prayer, I have come to the following decision:

 I/we will pray for you. Please send me/us your prayer letter.
 Please update me by e-mail ____________________________________________________________________________________________________
 As God provides, I/we will partner with you by giving $ __________ per month / quarter /year
 I would like to give a one-time gift of $ __________. Please contact us again next year.
 I would like to be your liaison with my church or organization.
 I would like to organize an annual support raising event (e.g., sale, dinner, carwash, golf tournament, 5K run, etc)

Your name ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Address______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

City_____________________________________________________ State________________ Zip _____________________________________

Phone (______) ___________________________ Church ______________________________________________________________________

Please return this form (with your first gift, if applicable) to:
The Mission Society Designate gifts: “McEuen Support 5/323”
PO Box 922637
Norcross, GA 30010-2637

Photos from the front: A young girl in a nearby village; friends from Ball Ground UMC chatting by Skype with us during a benefit concert; at the
airport with the team from Alabama; Todd being Shawn from Psych; Kia with one of her best friends, Lucia; Ayliś and Soraya.