This August, members of the Monticello Seventh-day Adventist Church in Arizona and Hillsborough Adventist Church in North Carolina teamed up for a service project in Southern Peru. Maranatha Volunteers International organized the trip, and Monticello’s volunteer pastor, Roy Robinson, rallied his members and relatives in Hillsborough to the cause. The 13-member volunteer group laid the block walls of a new church structure for the La Voz de la Esperanza Adventist congregation. These worshippers were stuck meeting in a small shack that leaked when it rained because they didn’t have the means to build a permanent structure on their own.
“We ate our lunch in the previous structure that they had, which is right next to the building being built, [and] experienced a couple thunderstorms and got wet,” recalled Robinson. “It produced some empathy and some desire to improve their lives and worship service as far as a church.”
The volunteer team was inspired by local worshippers’ perseverance, and applied the same grit to long days of manual labor. “It was frustrating at times,” admitted Robinson about laying block. “I don’t think anyone in our group was really familiar with it.” Maranatha’s in-country construction crew members remedied volunteers’ lack of expertise with thorough guidance. “They were very patient, and we got acquainted with them and appreciated them very much,” said Robinson.
La Voz de la Esperanza church members were eager to pitch in as well. “It seemed like a loving church and a committed church,” remarked Robinson. “We had several church members come out and help us with the construction.”
The project gave Robinson and fellow volunteers a perspective shift that followed them home. “When you go on a mission trip, you go back with a broader visualization that the World Church is much larger than your local church,” he explained. “It creates a desire to share the gospel and provide. We’re all part of the same family, so we should be interested in each other and aware of each other … There’s a wide open opportunity where we can really make an impact if we choose to think more globally.”
From 2004-2006, more than 3,000 Maranatha volunteers landed in Peru, constructing nearly 100 churches and schools. In 2019, Maranatha returned at the request of the Seventh-day Adventist Church in South America. After a brief pause in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, Maranatha’s in-country crews and volunteer groups have resumed work in Peru.