We have officially moved on from Peru. After 24 hour bus ride 4 hours stuck at the border, we arrived last night to La Paz, Bolivia. My team and I will stay here for a couple days then take a bus to the amazon basin in Trinidad, Bolivia. We will be staying on a medical missions boat that travels up and down the amazon basin providing medical care to the tribes and people that may not have a way to get into town to receive medical care. Way cool right! Unfortunately the boat won’t be making rounds while we are aboard, so we will be doing maintenance on the boat as well as children’s ministry in a nearby town. We are super excited to live on a boat for a month and see what the amazon basin is like, we are anticipating being in the jungle area so communication will be slim to none for the month.
Leaving Peru was so hard for me. Not just the country but the people that we got to know as family over the last month. Tim, Holly and their family, the children at the orphanage that stole my heart, Ella, Andrew, and last but maybe not least Alex!
Going into the month of December we were all really nervous as to what our month would look like with it being Christmas and none of us having been away from family for Christmas! But our host family (Tim, Holly and the Fam) welcomed us in with open arms they immediately made us feel right at home! There was a Christmas tree and Christmas decor set up for us, a wood burning stove…. it just felt like home the minute we walked in!
we had a couple days of rest and getting our feet under us before we started ministry at the orphanage.
When I found out that our ministry was an orphanage I was a little uneasy about it. I love kids but working with them all day everyday just sounded very challenging for me. A little about the Josephine House, it’s the only orphanage in Cusco that takes new borns, and is one of the few if not only orphanage in Cusco! The majority of the kids their are 2 and under. Their are 3 kids that are over the age of 2. Holly’s parents started the orphanage in 2008 they were the directors of the Josephine House till recently they handed it over but remain on the board.
Our first day at the orphanage the tias (ladies that care for the kids on a daily) handed me a baby to feed which I was like ok this is right up my ally I can sit and chill play with the tiny human and it will be good! My teammates were with the older kids and i didn’t wanna be in all that high energy stuff! (I’m old you know!) After feeding we took the kiddos outside to play on the playground. I put my little human in a swing and was just swinging him and a teammate was standing next to me swinging with a little boy and just couldn’t get him to laugh or show any emotion at all. Which if you know me I saw that as a challenge I was bound and determined to get this kid to laugh. My teammate was called to go do something else so I started pushing him. (we will call him J, for their safety we can’t say names or show their faces in pics) I worked so hard got nothing…. so I took him out of the swing and started playing ball with him and got a tiny bit of a smile. And that day was the beginning of J stealing my heart! We connected in a way that I never have with a child before. When I would come in the house he would walk up to me and hold his arms up for me to pick him up and just have the biggest smile! He was mine for a month and I will forever be his! Leaving him was so unbelievably hard, I never expected to connect to a kid the way I did with J! In those days he needed my love and attention and I needed his sweet little self to open me up to looking at working with children in a whole different way! Funny how God does things like that…. that guy knows me way to well! ?? (Low key if I could move to Peru and marry a Peruvian he would be my son! Fun fact…. healthy kids in orphanage in Peru can only be adopted out to Peruvian families)
Our days looked like waking up doing our God time ( you know that’s the best way to start a day) then heading over to the orphanage around 9am. When we got there you could be doing anything from helping in the kitchen, cleaning, or helping with the kids! The tias do a fantastic job with the kids but there are only 3 of them to help out with 14 kids so we focused a lot of helping the kids catch up on developmental things and just showing them affection and attention. So we did anything from helping some start walking, talking, sitting up, and learning the basics. It was so sweet to get to be apart of seeing the kids “first” we taught one to roll over for the first time, to finally start pulling up to start walking, hearing first words were some of the sweetest moments we got to be apart of. Toward the end of our time we were approached with the opportunity to help a local couple and close friends of Tim and Holly (Ella and Wilson) fix up their home which was the old orphanage that Ella grew up in. Later found out that it was the orphanage that a friend of mine in the states family use to run and that she grew up in with her family. They have since moved the orphanage to the jungle. Also found out Ella was adopted by my friend and her parents! Such a small amazing world. So we spent time their taking protective tape off the windows, re taping to prep for painting, spackeling, sanding and finally painting! Finding out I was helping a friends sister made that project even more special to me! It was a sweet way to spend the last few days in Peru!
The month in Peru was so special to me! From being apart of Tim and Holly’s family to meeting family of friends back in the states! My American life and my World Race life collided and will forever hold such a special place in my heart! It’s not goodbye it’s def see you later!!!
