Each barrio family at the dump-site specializes in a certain commodity: one collects plastic, another selects only paper, and a third is strictly into cellophane. Picking through a fresh truckload of trash is a time-consuming process. At the end of the day a family can collect a sizeable heap. Then all, from the seniors down to the little children, expertly balance ridiculously huge loads of trash on their rounded backs for the kilometer-long walk back home. Home is found within huge lots (about the area of four double-door garages) used for each family’s specialized recycling operation. Each lot is enclosed with an old six-foot high junk fence made from scraps of wood, cardboard, and metal, which keeps other people out and your junk from blowing away.

This is the only living that these people know. They work at the junk pile day after day in the unrelenting heat, dressed in dirty scraps of clothing amid the swirling sand. It reminds one of the Hebrew slaves making bricks for the Pharaoh. Now, as then, the work goes on until they literally drop and die.

Like those Hebrew slaves, a couple dozen people have just learned about a route to the Promised Land! By the power of the Holy Spirit, two of our Peruvian pastors are now proclaiming the gospel among these hard-working families! How did our pastors find this harvest of lost, precious sheep at a trash heap?

Our story begins with a woman named Graciela. She is a single-parent mother in her mid-thirties who teaches at a very nice elementary school in Lima. At one time, Graciela was dating a member from the congregation in Año Nuevo when Missionary Schultz got to know her. She eventually became a member of the church.

Now, Graciela loves to dance the many native dances of Peru. She attended the prestigious Folkloric Dance Institute in downtown Lima and became a State-certified dance instructor. At her elementary school she teaches several dance courses to the children.

Four years ago, Graciela came to the missionary with a proposal. Our Seminary building in Lima includes a huge, enclosed, patio-type area with cement floor. It is used to hold the synod-wide church services a few times each year. Graciela's proposal was simple: she and her three dance professor friends would offer evening dance classes to elementary education students from the neighboring colleges and Institutes. Missionary Schultz could give a devotion and simple Bible lesson before the class started and a vicar could work with any of the dance students who showed an interest in the gospel message. The only cost to the mission would be to pay for the three dance professors' transportation to the Seminary building, as they had little income. Later, the ELS mission team approved this proposal.

At first, a dozen elementary education students signed up. All the students were very attentive during the opening devotions. It was a novel mission activity: a gringo pastor with a Bible message opening a free evening dance class behind a Seminary.

Graciela's two-hour dance classes were incredible, full of high-volume energy. On the eight-foot wall around the patio, one of our vicars had painted an enormous portrait of a smiling Jesus. Just how much our Savior was smiling and blessing our little enterprise was yet to be revealed.

One member of that class asked Graciela to give dance courses to elementary education students at a Teacher Institute located on the north end of Lima. Once again, our Lutheran mission sponsored the program by paying the bus fare (less than $30 a month) for Graciela and her teachers. Antonia was one of the dance students at the Teacher Institute who lived in the area near the city trash site. One day she invited Graciela to visit her family in the barrio, named Valle Sagrada, or "Sacred Valley." Graciela’s visit eventually led to Vicar Jorge and Pastor Abraham offering Bible classes in the barrio. A number of adults began attending regularly.

Later, one of the new members offered to expand the shack on his junkyard that Jorge and Abraham used for services and Bible classes. The Bible classes resulted in the parents' desire to baptize their children. The families of the children asked to use the chapel in Lima. Right on time, an old rickety bus from the barrio let off sixty excited family members, some of whom had never been to Lima before. Each one was wearing clean, hand-sewn outfits and dresses, much different from the rags they wore on the trash pile.

On that day, three smiling adults and fifteen precious children were baptized in the name of the triune God by Vicar Jorge. These youngsters from a barrio where no one had ever come before to start a church were now children of the eternal King, Jesus. After the service Missionary Schultz assured the people that the pastors would continue to come to their barrio, for they feared that the visits would stop with the baptisms. He told them, "We are family! We are brothers and sisters in the Lord. We're just getting started with you!!"

The celebration continued outdoors on the patio with cookies and Inca cola. Then Graciela and her dance professor friends presented a short dance recital under the giant portrait of a smiling Jesus. Graciela was so emotional she could barely get through her introductory speech. How could she not think back to that first evening dance class so many years ago at this very place? Who would have imagined how Jesus was guiding it all, knowing how that first dance class would lead to rescuing many lost souls in a remote, dusty barrio.

The people of Valle Sagrada watched with delight as their children were invited to join the professors on the dance floor. The children began to dance around under the giant painting of Jesus on the wall. It was the perfect image of our Savior with His children.

"Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work in us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever, Amen" (Ephesians 3:20).

Terry Schultz is an ELS missionary living in Lima, Peru.