Dear Friends,
Tonight March 14, 2002, we spent some time with an old friend of ours. He shared his testimony with us and the Discovery Team that Phileena and I are helping lead here in Lima, Peru. I'd like to share part of his testimony with you.
He just wanted to feel loved. He must have said it a half dozen times in the short time we spent listening to his story this evening. He just wanted to feel love.
Two years ago I spent Christmas with his family. It was his mother, 2 of his sisters, and himself. His name is Luis but on the streets they call him “Loco Menudo.”
He's one of 8 children that his mother had with 3 different lovers. He never knew his own father and was abused by one of his stepfathers. Terribly abused. Burned with scalding water, thrown down a staircase, beaten, and hurt in unspeakable ways.
2 years ago at Christmas he was the oldest male to be found in his home, only 16 then. His mother, his sisters, and Luis live in an abandoned building. Their electricity is stolen, bootlegged from a power line outside the condemned structure they call home. There wasn't much to celebrate Christmas with that year, but their love and their generous hearts were the greatest gift I could have asked for.
Tonight as Luis took some time to tell us his story his love and generous heart came out again. After suffering abuse at home he left for the streets when he was only 6 years old.
By the time he was 11 he was a full-fledged street kid. “Bad things happened to us all the time, older people raped us, police shot at us … things I can't describe.” “I smoked glue because I needed to forget the pain.”
He got caught stealing and was sent to a detention center where they promised to reform him. Their version of the rehabilitation process included brutal police abuse and torture. “I even saw police rape young girls and some of those girls got pregnant.”
His first night in the center they made him take all his clothes off and march completely naked in front of all the other children. Then they “baptized” him with beatings. First they beat his hands with their clubs, then the bottom of his feet, finally they punched him repeatedly in the face until their shift was over … and then the next shift began. With his head down and with great pain in his face he told us, “the police even allowed rape.”
When his mother came to visit her 11 year old boy at the jail the police told her he was sick. She left the center heartbroken. The truth was that he had been tortured so much they were trying to hide him from his own mother.
He left “rehab” worse than when he went in. Back to the streets. Drugs, violence, crime, and sexual abuse waited for him. He ate from the trash and slept on the pavement.
“I just wanted to feel loved.” He prayed to God, “If you want to help me, please take my life … take me away.” He reflected, “I didn't know why I was born if all I was going to do was suffer.”
He had dreams. Many, many dreams that kept coming. Dreams that revealed God's love for him. In his dreams he saw gringos coming to the streets to tell him about God's love. He told his friends of these dreams but they all laughed at him, “We steal from the gringos, they are afraid of us … they'll never want to come to the streets.” But several years after the dreams Luis saw those gringos.
“Their love was coming at me and I tried to resist. I made fun of them. But God was loving me through them. They didn't care what clothes we wore, how dirty we were, or what we did. They accepted us. They loved us. We couldn't believe it.” That loved compelled Luis to give his life to the Lord. It was a long process with many ups and downs, but today Luis is off drugs and off the streets.
“Every kid is beautiful and that beauty needs to be discovered.” God has helped Luis discover the beauty within his own heart, the beauty that comes with God's grace.
Menudo still has dreams. He believes others will come off drugs and off the streets. He knows God will send more gringos to share His love with the children. He knows that God will even use Menudo to share about His Kingdom.
“If you want to help us, don't come and go” he said. “Stay with us. Tell us that you love us and show us that love. Get close to us and don't let us down. If you go, you can't help us.”
Given the chance to suffer the horror and misery of his childhood again, Luis said he would gladly relive the pain if only to be able to once again discover God's love for him.
That spartan, quiet Christmas 2 years ago in his home never had more meaning than it did tonight. Much like the stable in which Christ was born, Luis' home was more than enough and Luis' family gave more than needed to remind me that the birth of Christ happens anew every day in our hearts.
Much like the unlikeliness of a carpenter Messiah, Menudo in his disguise as a former child of the streets pointed us to heaven this evening and showed us the mystery and beauty of grace.
He's just a little boy. He never wanted any of the horrible things that happened to him. But tonight he stands as a man of God, a prince in God's Kingdom.
May his suffering have not been in vain, and his testimony remind us all of the miracle of Grace.
Don't forget Menudo.
Peace,
Chris