From Sunup to Sundown

What does a day in the life of our Royal Servants team look like? Some days certainly differ, but for the most part we have a similar routine each day. Allow me to peel back the curtain on what our daily schedule looked like over a few days last week.

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Mon-Tue - July 8-9, 2024

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7am - Wake Up Call!

If you can believe it, our team is up and out of their beds, fully dressed and having done their toiletries, joining the senior staff in the courtyard by 7.20 each morning. At this point we just hang out together while breakfast is prepared. I usually play music and take requests (Liam has been really appreciating that I’ll play Forrest Frank songs like Good Day). Some team members banter, while others sit wide eyed struggling to wake up (but I won’t name names!)

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7.45 am - Breakfast

The first meal of each day here in Arequipa is always the same: the hotel provides a roll (with strawberry jam if you like) and a “tortilla” which in Peru is more of an omelet dish with veggies like carrots or broccoli cooked into the eggs. Breakfast is a bit of a light meal in Peru so we supplement by also providing oatmeal. This is also when I gather our senior and summer staff together to discuss the upcoming day’s events and check in on how they are doing physically and emotionally.

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8.20am - Corporate Memorization

We place a big emphasis on Scripture memorization and by the end of the summer the students will have over 20 Bible passages memorized along with our Join the Story gospel tract and a couple other key phrases. We’ve found that by providing time for our students to recite this all together, it helps immensely in retaining it long term. So each morning Kara (one of our senior staff) leads the team in a recitation of all of their memory work.

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9am - Depart for Ministry

We took a 45-60 minute bus ride out to the northwest “suburbs” of Arequipa, to a region called Ciudad de Dios. There is a relatively young (3 years or so) church plant out there, which we were able to help with a variety of work projects. Our team helped clean out and organize storage closets, wash chairs, paint rooms, weed paths, and sort through donations. We did most of this while belting out classic Disney songs! All of these tasks added up would have taken their small congregation weeks to accomplish but for us to come in and knock out a huge portion of their to-do list in two days was a huge blessing.

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12.30pm - Lunch Break

We broke for lunch each day far earlier than Peruvians would have (lunch is their feast meal and usually doesn’t start until 2). We broke out our pack lunches and sat in a circle on the concrete courtyard enjoying our modest meal (sandwiches and fruit). Both days we got an unexpected surprise in the cultural cuisine category. On Monday, we were treated to arroz con leche and mazamorra morada (a sort of rice pudding combined with a sweet purple pudding). This was delicious and one of my personal favorite foods I’ve tried thus far. On Tuesday, one of the local women and congregants brought us a basket of cooked potatoes to share that had just been harvested from the mountains of Cusco days before. Dipped into a fresh and homemade sauce that I don’t even know how to describe, these potatoes were greatly appreciated. Upon completion of our lunch, we jumped back into work projects before the bus picked us up at 3pm.

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4pm - Pre-Dinner

On Monday, the team took this time to shower and get cleaned up after a long day of work. With all we have to accomplish, showers aren’t a daily necessity but I do usually prioritize them every other day. We still want to smell good for our ministry partners! On Tuesday, we used this time to worship together (Noah played his guitar and led us through about a half dozen hymns) and then we debriefed the last several days of ministry. Debriefing is our opportunity for everyone to share, both the encouraging and the discouraging ministry experiences, so that we can take part in each other’s joy or lament.

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6pm - Dinner

What is there to say? After a full work day, nothing is better than kicking back and enjoying dinner together as a team. Monday was shepherd’s pie and Tuesday saw us enjoying breakfast burritos. Another staple of our dinners, at about the midway point, is that I will interrupt all conversation and read out “Peanut Butter Praises”. I have an old, cleaned out PB jar which sits on a table in our courtyard all day and the team is encouraged to write praises of others. We then commence our nightly ritual just after getting seconds on dinner of publicly encouraging one another. Some on our team wish to remain “anonymous” and so choose to write under pseudonyms such as The Peruvian Pigeon or Resident Racoon.

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7pm - Quiet Time and Small Groups

Since leaving Training Camp our team has been working each day through a gospel, an epistle, and a proverb. So these days our team was in John 9-10, Galatians 4-5, and Proverbs 8-9. Spending time in the Bible is an integral component in the Christian life and so we don’t go a single day during the summer without providing time for it. We want to help our students establish this habit so that they can take it home with them. Then we followed this up by breaking up into what we call Hearts groups. This is where our team has a chance to talk through and ask questions of their Bible reading in a small group setting.

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9pm - The Waning Hours

At this point, it was just a little early for bed and we hadn’t had a lot of down time to just hang out so on Monday night I instituted Mandatory Fun. Our team snickered a bit at this moniker as I had them all sit and prepare to play basic youth group sort of games. We started with a secret name game and ended with “poison dart frog”. By the end of our time, I was being asked for nightly Mandatory Fun times. Can’t quite do that every night but I’ll try another couple of times. On Tuesday I had the team get ready for bed first, and then gather in the courtyard for a bedtime story. One of my favorite jobs as a father is reading my kids bedtime stories, and so to do that for this team was also a joy. We read the classic book Junie B. Jones is a Party Animal before turning in for the night.

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10pm - Before bed each night our team huddles together to recite our team verse: “Psalm 119:133 - Keep steady my steps according to your promise and let no iniquity get dominion over me.” We then close in prayer. Sometimes we go popcorn style where everyone can pray out praises, petitions or thanksgiving, if they feel compelled, but most nights I call on students to pray. Just like daily quiet times, we are trying to help our team establish the daily habit of prayer. Afterwards, we dismiss the team to their rooms for 20-30 minutes before the good night song is sung signaling the end of the day.

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Wednesday - July 10, 2024

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7-9am was the same schedule as the previous two days. From 9am-2pm our team had their quiet times, hearts groups, a bit of O-Time to explore Arequipa, lunch, and showers. The main change to our schedule was afternoon/evening ministry.

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3-7pm - We returned to Ciudad de Dios for an evening of ministry in the park. Our team handed out flyers to kids and families the day before encouraging them to join us. We really weren’t sure what to expect as this area seemed pretty uninhabited during the day but by program-start kids were flooding in - we had a lot of fun with this event! We had students engaged with Peruvians in soccer, volleyball, and American football while our amazing face painters Ivy, Airlie, and Bergen were flooded with kids begging for butterflies and unicorns. We closed the event with a performance from our puppets and drama teams. (Stay tuned for a glimpse at that!)

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7-9pm - This was a great night of relational ministry and helping connect locals to their nearby church, Iglesia Biblica Cristiana. After the park event, we returned to the church for supper. We ate our chips and hot dogs around a small campfire, enjoyed s’mores for dessert, and sang corporate and acoustic worship to our Father. This was a satisfying conclusion to our three-day stint in Ciudad de Dios.

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Jack Becker

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