Peru’s varied landscape is home to a diverse number of ethnic groups, some of which are completely isolated from the rest of society in the dense forest of the Amazon. Approximately one third of Peru’s people live in the coastal region along the Pacific Ocean, where the capital city is located, and around half of the population lives in the highlands of the Andes Mountains.
While Peru’s overall economy has been growing in recent years, extreme poverty exists in rural areas. Many children drop out of school to help support their families. Up to one third of Peruvian children between the ages of 6 and 14 work, often performing dangerous mining or construction jobs.
The Quechua people comprise the largest of the ethnic minority groups in Peru. Descendants of the wealthy and renowned Inca people, the Quechua people battle acute poverty and alcoholism.
Christian Aid Mission assists indigenous ministries working in high-altitude Quechua villages. Indigenous missionaries often travel by horseback, donkey, or on foot to deliver desperately needed food, clothing, and school supplies to these villages. They also provide free medical and dental care and share the message of the gospel at multi-day evangelistic events. Collectively, they have planted hundreds of Quechua churches.
One of these ministries has successfully spread the gospel to entire Quechua families through its feeding center, where approximately 100 children receive a daily nutritious meal—often their only meal of the day—and learn God’s Word.
Another ministry is successfully planting churches among the Ashaninka people who live in the Amazon forest and are fearful of outsiders due to past oppression. When this ministry first began working among the Ashaninka, they discovered a disturbing and pervasive practice. Witchdoctors often accused children of bringing bad luck upon entire villages, ordering parents to abuse their own children or expel them from their village to die alone.
Through the ministry’s compassionate care and persistent witness, many Ashaninka people have accepted Christ as savior, and as they’ve grown in God’s Word and been set free from the fear of evil spirits, they have abandoned their old cultural practice of child abuse. Today, the ministry trains Ashaninka believers to reach their own people for Christ.
Sources: Joshua Project, Wikipedia, Etnopedia
