That the elder was willing to meet with him seemed a good sign, though it didn’t surprise Dagan. He’d found the Q’ero to be some of the most welcoming and accommodating people he’d ever met, more than living up to what he’d learned about them in his two months of training at Global Gospel Missions. Dagan felt joy and relief that God had led him here, to such a loving people, for his first assignment as a missionary spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ. He even felt a surge of confidence as he rounded the final switchback on the rocky path and the few scattered wood-and-mud huts came into view. The bulk of the Q’ero resided in the lower village, but up here the elders gathered in conference while the young men tended crops in rocky terraced fields with llamas. In winter, this village would be empty, serving only as a refuge for any traveling Q’ero trapped by snowstorms at the higher elevation.

Two young Q’ero waved to him from where they stood beside one of six structures surrounding a dirt courtyard. He smiled at the boy and girl and stopped to take several slow, deep breaths before waving back. When the heaviness in his head cleared, he said a short prayer for God to fill him with the Holy Spirit and guide his words as he shared the Good News with these people. Immediately peace came upon him, but there was something else, just out of reach. Not dread but . . . something.

You have done good work for the Kingdom of God. You have a pure heart.

The words were at once his but also not. He shook the strange feeling off and continued his trek to share the message with the two men inside the long hut, the only one with curls of smoke coming up out of the rectangular chimney.

“Hello, my friends!” he said in Quechua to the children, one of the few phrases he’d mastered in the ancient language, before adding, “How is the work up here today?” in Spanish.

Most Q’ero were bilingual, with children learning Spanish from a very young age. “How is the work,” he’d learned, was a common greeting equivalent to “How are you” in English, and he liked using it.

“Hallo to you, Dagan,” the older boy, perhaps ten or eleven, said in English, beaming with pride that he’d mastered the phrase, though he’d substituted a j sound for the y in you and softened the first vowel of Dagan’s name.

“Hello,” he said back, smiling.