Congress representatives and Peruvian intellectuals and from other countries attended a forum held in the legislative palace in homage of Fernando A. Stahl (1874-1950), considered the father of rural education in Peru.

Congresswoman Graciela Yanarico, organizer of the forum "Genesis of Rural Education in Peru" said she could not help but express her profound gratitude to Stahl. She considers herself to be the fruit of this education and the efforts of a man who opted to leave the comforts of his professional life in the United States of America, to educate Aymara indigenous in the Puno highlands in southern Peru and later indigenous people in the Amazon area.

Stahl, a member of the Seventh-day Adventist Church arrived in Puno at the Peruvian side of the Lake Titicaca with his wife and children in 1911. He began to live alongside the Aymara and Quechua, helping them in the fields and learning their language. In 1921 the Stahl family was forced for health reasons to leave the high altitude of the Andes (3 800 meters). They began to work for the Indians at the headwaters of the Amazon, where they established Metraro Mission. In 1939 they returned to America after 29 years of courageous pioneering mission service.

The history of his missionary service that endeared them to the Aymara Indians is recounted most interestingly in Stahl's book "In the Land of the Incas."

Peruvian Congress president Henry Pease lauded the fact that a forum was held in Parliament to recognize and strengthen rural education in Peru and above all to recall the educational efforts that the Adventist Church developed through Stahl and his children, who lived alongside the people.

"It is an admirable action that we Peruvians must recognize because the only way to change the country, is to join with the poor, the excluded, with those who were left on the margins hundreds of years ago," he said.

The forum brought together key historians including Jose Tamayo Herrera, who spoke about indigenous education in Peru and Charles W. Teel Jr ., director of the Stahl Foundation in the La Sierra University in Riverside, California. The University also hosts "The Stahl Centre for World Service and the Museum of Culture."

Another historian, Merlín Alomia spoke about the history of rural education in Peru. He affirmed that Adventism contributed to the formation of people in the Puno area. When it entered the highlands it had a double effect, he said. First, it broke the bindings of traditional culture and secondly, it prepared people for the new tasks and challenges in modern society.

The event also included the testimony of the Chambi Venero brothers, who are part of the history of rural education in Peru. Evenezer Chambi owns a clinic in Beverly Hills, California and his brother Israel Chambi is a renowned neurologist who also lives in the United States of America.

The head of the family is Pastor Pedro Chambi, who learned to read at age 22. He accompanied Stahl, becoming his guide and translator.

Among the educational institutions of the Seventh-day Adventists in Peru are: the Colegio Adventista de Titicaca (Titicaca Adventist Academy) founded in 1922 in Juliaca, the Universidad Peruana Union (Peruvian Union University) founded in 1919 in Lima with a newly established Juliaca Campus at Juliaca. In memory of the Stahl family, the 1961 established 54-bed Adventist hospital in Iquitos has been named Clinica Adventistas Ana Stahl.

The Peruvian Theologian Samuel Escobar has stated in 1987: "The gospel which came to Latin America with Protestantism came with a liberating force because it brought the force of the biblical message. A dramatic example is found in Peru with Manuel Camacho and Fernando and Ana Stahl."

According to the Roman-Catholic bishop of Puno Jesus Mateo Calderon, "the Stahls were well ahead of their time in defining salvation as that liberating movement which mediates healing to the whole of human experience - the spiritual, the social, the economic, the civil - calling for the whole person to be redeemed by Christ and illuminated by the word of God." [Editors Manuel Quintero (ALC) and Christian B. Schaeffler (APD)]