Word Made Flesh Peru began in 1998 when Walter and Adriana Forcatto were sent to Lima to establish a community serving among the poor. Through prayer, strategic research and networking contacts, the work of WMFP began to find expression as an incarnational presence and commitment among children and young adults in street contexts in the historic district of Lima. This initial focus area was chosen because of the congruence of factors where structural injustice, generational poverty, and prevailing street culture enslave many to a life on the streets.
WMFP believes that being called together as a community by God means that in community “we find the greatest potential for discipleship, service and growth,” an affirmation which stands as a critique of common reductionist development paradigms that can tend to focus more on statistics than on people’s actual lives and the work God is doing in them. Consequently, WMFP’s first contact with the children and young adults is relational and not simply programmatic. Their theological commitment to lives of service fulfills a fellowship in community, rather than having their fellowship defined by service.
The Forcattos and a small group of new friends began to meet together in homes and at a local church to reflect on this call and started to organize visits to the difficult and dangerous places where these precious young people were spending their time. Naturally, WMFP got to know each other better and to develop real friendships. These friendships led them into a more comprehensive understanding of the lived reality of those trapped in street life, friendships that were the soil from which WMFP’s initial programming activities sprung forth.
By the spring of 1999, the weekly schedule included programming activities for a Monday afternoon sports outreach centered around multiple soccer games and good conversation with the area youth, a Wednesday afternoon park outreach spent playing and talking in a park where many of these youth slept and passed the time, and Tuesday and Friday night outreaches to which WMFP brought food, music, games, and a first aid kit. These programming spaces served to strengthen the bonds of friendship within the community and among the young people we were coming to know. Each afternoon or evening, the team would divide up tasks, one person would be in charge of the game suitcase, another would tend wounds with the first aid kit, while others would simply sit and provide listening ears and words of comfort.
Whenever a critical situation occurred, the issue was brought back to the staff and volunteer round table to decide on a course of action. The commitment to this group of young people forced WMFP to face tough issues, such as how the team could respond when in the year 2000 a friend was diagnosed with advanced AIDS and had no one to support him. He did not have family, and at that time there weren’t any institutional care options available. The team was distraught and helpless as to how to help, so they went to prayer trusting that God would provide. It wasn’t long before God raised up a local Peruvian woman who offered to bring this sick man into her home. His last few weeks of life were spent in a public hospital, regularly visited by family and the WMF community. A former staff member, Howard Young, was present when he went to be with God; Howard described a fresh wind blowing through the room and a peaceful divine presence. From a mere human perspective, this was a young man who grew up on the streets with no love or protection and died a tragic death. But the reality we know is that more than this, this friend was someone who WMFP still cherishes and whose memory is a testimony of love and patience in suffering that continues to speak of God’s faithfulness during life’s most difficult moments.
Near the end of the year 2000, WMFP included numerous staff from North America, and an increasing number of Peruvian volunteers started to come alongside the community through our relationship with local churches. WMFP became a legally registered Peruvian religious association in July of 2001, with a founding board of directors consisting of WMF staff and local Peruvian leaders. This group has accompanied the community through good times and bad, offering sound financial advice, personal support, and participating in programming activities even with their busy work and ministry schedules.
Starting in the spring of 1999 and continuing to the present, Servant Teams, interns and Discovery Teams have been an integral part of the WMFP story. To date the community has been blessed with over 100 participants; some have joined WMF as staff, many who returned to the US have become committed advocates for the poor in their local context, and all whose lives of sacrifice and friendship are cherished and remembered.
In May 2002, the day facility called Casa de Job, which was both a strategic and natural development of the relational commitments as a community, successfully opened. The vision of Casa de Job was to provide a space where young people in Lima’s street contexts could encounter God’s love in Christian community and receive life skills to empower them to leave street life. Casa de Job was open for 3 1/2 years; during that time approximately 160 different youth and children came through their doors, with an average daily attendance of 20. Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday we met together for morning prayers, shared meals, Bible study and worship, educational classes and needs assessment through our life-plan interviews. Among the youth who participated in Casa de Job program, a largely positive response to the structure of the center was noted. A growing number began to take concrete steps away from street life and return to their homes, and WMFP’s commitment to them necessitated a new kind of response. In 2003, Home Visits began, a program that coordinated regular visits to the extended families of the youth. The goal was to assist the larger familial context process the reintegration of one or more of their children who had been living on the streets. This was no small task, yet many dangerous home circumstances have since changed dramatically for the better. God was faithful as broken families were restored and provision and opportunities came to situations of abject poverty.
The breadth and depth of the work kept increasing, from WMFP’s beginnings on the street, to Casa de Job, then reaching out to extended families in the outlaying slums of Lima. In late 2005, a personal growth and development assessment tool consisting of 3 basic levels was created. WMFP still uses this highly functional tool, which helps guide the community’s resource response. A need to own a permanent facility in the city soon arose, large enough for community meetings of up to 100 people with dedicated areas for young children, classrooms for educational/vocational programs, and an administrative area adequate for the growing institutional work in the city. Ideally, this facility would be near major bus routes and close to Lima’s historic district.
Casa de Job closed in January 2006 and began a fund raising campaign in June. By February of 2007, the donations of many people giving sacrificially in support of the community helped to purchase a 5,000 sq. ft. property in walking distance to the historic district and within one block of two major bus routes and the largest children’s hospital in the country. The property consisted of a large house at the front and an ample grassy garden in the back. WMFP has been blessed with a beautiful community center, standing as yet another testimony to God’s faithfulness through the sacrifice of so many people in Peru and around the world.
Today, WMFP is a Peruvian-led internationally staffed community organization serving among the most vulnerable of the poor in Peru and committed to collaborative relationships with local churches, non-profits, businesses and civic groups. Christian hope in God’s justice and the promise of the new creation compels them to work together in solidarity to empower the poor in Peru, that the most vulnerable among us might live with dignity and hope. We pray that the WMFP story would also compel those who hear about this community to go forth and seek to respond to God’s cry on behalf of the poor in their local context.