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These are some adorable kids living in poverty so extreme it’s almost impossible to imagine
Saturday: We spent the day at Pachacamac Village—one of the many shanty towns outside Lima that house millions of people. Words cannot adequately describe what we saw. It’s like the type of stuff you see in National Geographic pictures, but you really cannot fathom it until you walk the dusty streets of the village yourself. The houses are put together with all kinds of random materials—packing crates (you can tell which country they came from by the writing on the side of the “house”), odds and ends of boards, and other stuff of which you can’t even guess the origin. Many have no running water or electricity, the floors are just dirt, and we were told there are places where it is even worse.
A mom with her three kids—most of the people in this village are originally from the mountains of Peru
At the first location we had about fifty kids. We taught them a Children’s Institute song, Dena played her violin (most of them had no idea what a violin was), and Daniel gave a Gospel presentation with balloons. The kids absolutely loved the balloons. “Globos, por favor!” (balloons, please) was a phrase we heard over and over. We also helped pass out food and took time to just play with the kids. At the second location we had 200–250 children. They seemed to materialize out of nowhere. We again taught a lesson, then made balloon creations and played with the kids.
What an awesome experience! The needs are enough to make you cry, but the privilege of being God’s hands of love to those children, even just for a day, is also enough to bring tears to your eyes just for the joy of being a part of God’s work there.
These kids were thrilled with a few pieces of bread, some candy, and something to drink
Sunday: We participated in two church services and one youth group meeting today. Jacob gave the message in both church services and Christina, Lizzie, Philip, and Elizabeth shared testimonies. Our song in Spanish definitely still needs more work, but the rest of the morning went well. This evening we visited the seminar facility, got some details worked out there, then went to get some ice cream. While we were enjoying ice cream, our bus broke down. We ended up sitting around for a long time, but had fun as a team.
Please pray for the upcoming seminar. The pastors are sensing a lot of spiritual warfare and resistance in working out the final details for everything. The Children’s Institute starts tomorrow night and promises to be quite the adventure.
Dena and her violin were quite the attraction!
A glimpse of the buildings of Pachacamac—can you imagine raising a family in a house like this?
The kids loved to have their pictures taken—considering the language barrier, digital cameras were one of our best communication tools
Our first group of about 50 kids
