A Reason to Give Thanks

Happy Thanksgiving to all of you who live in the States! Right now I am here in my room at the boys' home in Ica, and I am definitely spending some time giving thanks! While Thanksgiving is not an official holiday down here in Peru, we certainly have reason to give thanks here in Ica. The Lord has really blessed us here today, and I just wanted to share what He is doing.

A couple of weeks ago a girl from Pennsylvania named Brittney had the opportunity to come and visit our boys' home in Ica. She has been living in Ica for the past few months working as a volunteer for the church where Augusto and Nancy (the house parents) attend, and the church's youth group had a big event here that Brittany was a part of. She really didn't know anything about our program for abandoned boys, and because she was so busy with the event that the church was holding on our property, she really didn't have the chance to get to know us very well. But that didn't stop the Lord from touching her heart.

Now fast forward a couple of weeks to this past Sunday. Augusto, Nancy, and I saw Brittany at church. She had just arrived from Lima because she had gone to pick up some of her family and friends who were here to visit. She told us that she was really impacted when she saw and heard about our program for abandoned boys, and she wanted to do something to bless them. She talked with her family, and they decided that they were going to buy Christmas gifts for each of the boys. We were all excited at the idea, so they asked us to come to the pastor's house where they were staying around 5:00pm last night to help organize the gifts. We had no idea what we were in for!

Augusto and I arrived last night at exactly 5:00pm...Peruvian time! For those of you who aren't acquainted with Latin American time, that means that we arrived at the pastor's house just after 6:00pm :-) Personally I was expecting something small for each boy (perhaps a Hot Wheels car or a frisbee). And something small would have been a huge blessing, but they decided that they wanted to buy a nice toy or game for each kid at the home. We walked into the living room, and were blown away by what Brittany and her family had done for us! There were action figures, and firetrucks that had lights and sounds. There were board games and soccer balls. Apart from all of that, Brittany's 5 year-old brother also sent a number of his personal toys with the family to give to the boys because he wanted to donate in some way as well. The other huge blessing was that Brittany's mom brought an entire suitcase full of clothes that no longer fit the little brother. The clothes are just the right size for our two smallest boys here at the home. One is five years old, and the other is six years old, but they are both the size of a kid who is 4 years old. Augusto was sharing with me that when clothes donations are made to the homes, very rarely does anything come that fits these two smallest boys.

All of the presents!

This morning Brittany and her family came to the home with all of the gifts wrapped and ready for Christmas. They played American football with the boys, we went for a swim in the pool, and then they presented the gifts. What a huge blessing for the boys here. I was at the point of tears when I saw all of the presents and the joy on the boys' faces. Really, we all know that Christmas is not all about material gifts or possessions, but to be able to hand one of these kids a present on Christmas morning is doing so much more than just giving him a new toy to play with. When he is given that gift, the message is that yes, his life does matter, and yes, he really is loved by us--and more importantly, by Christ.

 Wrapped and ready to go

The boys with their presents!

"Enter His gates with thanksgiving and His courts with praise; give thanks to Him, and praise His name." Psalm 100:4

A Song/Story from the Boys in Ica...

Below are the translated lyrics of one of the songs that some of the boys here in Ica have written to record onto the CD that they are making. The song is reggaton (the Latin American version of rap). Make sure to read all of the way to the end of the song. What a testimony to what God is doing in their lives!

This is my story. This is my reality.

Often times I am tormented in my dark loneliness.

Although I want to remember my family, it is too late

To recover my past happiness.

I was happy as a baby, but that didn’t last for long.

It turned into a dream—not a reality.

As I got older,

Everything began to change.

Day after day my parents argued.

The would fight, and they would shout.

But I never understood,

The cause of all the problems in my house.

Years have passed since then, and I am not a little kid anymore.

Now I am a boy with regret and anger.

I have passed through 1000 problems with my family,

And into the streets I went.

Gangs and evildoers look for me, they pursue me,

And they want to finish me.

But I continue to survive in this city.

I run many risks.

I don’t know what will become of me.

I have bad friends, and they tempt me to rob.

I lose control of my hands; I can’t stop them.

Daily I have to flee from my sad reality.

I can’t accept it; I can’t understand it.

Help me Lord—this could be the end of me.

Only You can work miracles. That is why I believe in you.

Sadly this is my life. I don’t know how to change it.

My only refuge is drugs and alcohol.

I take refuge in these things to forget,

The problems that I carry on my heart.

Standing on a street corner all alone,

People look at me and wonder why I even exist.

And they judge me without knowing the true reality.

Lord, You exist. Please remember me.

I didn’t realize that there was another unexplainable love.

I was lacking it; I needed it; I searched for it.

I had never found it, but I know that You will give it to me Lord.

Lord, Your love will fill the emptiness that my heart has had for so long.

They talked to me; they told me about how Your love exists.

My Father, I ask you to give me new life.

I thought that this life was only full of sadness,

But now Your love has grown in me.

For this reason, Lord, I give thanks only to You

Because in spite of all my errors, you took care of me.

Translation

Things are coming along well here in Ica. I am really enjoying getting to know the boys and the house parents. They are also coming along with all of their music rehearsals. Yesterday Nancy, the house mother told me that she loves the song "Amazing Grace" and she wants the kids to learn it for the CD. I have the privilege of teaching 15 boys all of which are under 12 years old and speak no English four verses of the song. Below is my solution: Spanish phonetics... Can you make it out? :-)

A – me – sin Gres, jau swit da saund

Dat sevd a retch layk mi.

Ay uans uas lost bat nau aym faund,

Uas blaynd bat nau ay si

Tuas Gres dat tot may jart tu fir,

End  Gres may firs ri – livd

Jau pre – shous did dat Gres apir

Di our ay ferst bilivd

Thru men – y den – llirs, toilds, end sneers

Ay jav al – redi com;

Tiz Gres dat brot mi sef das far

End Gres wil lid mi jom.

Wen wiv ben der ten thou – send yirs

Brayt shayning as da sun,

Wiv no les des tu sing Gods pres

Dan wen wi ferst bigan.

What's Next?

Well work team season is over, and the summer season is about to start here in Peru. So what comes next now that I have no international teams to work with? I am glad you asked! After talking with Billy Clark, my supervisor here in Peru, we decided that my next area of ministry would be down in Ica (about 4 hours south of the city of Lima in the middle of the desert). In Ica Scripture Union operates another home for abandoned children, and I am excited to go and work with Augusto and Nancy, the two house parents at Ica.

 In the desert just outside the city of Ica

Looking toward Ica from the desert

I am excited to go to Ica for a number of reasons. First off, I have spent less time in Ica than I have at any of the other boys' homes. I am really excited to build new relationships and to get to know the children and the staff. Second of all, these next two months are particularly exciting down in Ica. Read this report below that Scripture Union sent out a couple of months ago to find out why:

In May a group of volunteers from Telefonica, the Peruvian Telephone Company, asked Girasoles Ica to submit a socially relevant project to their first ever “Contest of Original Social Projects”.

Interestingly, Augusto, house parent to the boys already had an idea in mind; having the boys use recycled materials as instruments. The concept was eagerly accepted and once the telephone company signed on to help fund the project, Augusto and the boys began “band practice”. Old plastic buckets, tins, metal pipes, bottles, cardboard and wooden boxes would do just fine!

All 40 boys participated in the project led by Augusto – even down to the youngest, Sanchez, who is only 5 years old. The group successfully won the Ica area contest and went on to place among the top nine contestants nationwide, which qualified them for further funding and grants.

Thanks to the boys success and unprecedented corporate support, Girasoles Ica will now have a music teacher who will help them record “Pampachay” (Quechua for “overcoming difficulty”) a full length CD of their creative music! A first lot of 1000 CDs will be sold at S/10 each and the proceeds will be used to improve the boys’ educational experience in Ica.

I am excited to help out however I can with this big project that the boys in Ica have taken on. Below is a picture of the CD cover that they are producing during this month. It depicts a person out in a field with a large city in the background. It represents the lives of the boys in Ica--the difficulty that they have overcome is life out on the streets of the cities. 

Hillsong United in Lima!

Tuesday night I had an opportunity to go to a Hillsong United concert. They are a Christian praise and worship band from Australia, and many churches across the world (including Peru) sing their songs on Sunday mornings. I went with some friends from Scripture Union and some friends from my church here in Lima. The band speaks English, but they have translated many of their songs into Spanish. At the concert everyone including the band switched back and forth between the two languages. It was such a blessing to be able to sing praises to God in English again! When we sang in Spanish it was great to join the other 20,000 people at the concert in one voice praising our God! Below are a few pictures from the concert. You can see all of the pictures on my Flickr page if you click here.

Singing Take it All / Tomalo

With Jimmy and Jusephi at the Concert

Praising together!

The Crowd

 Joel Houston

Medical Clinic at Kusi

Well my last work team was quite different than all of the other work teams that I have hosted this year. Most teams that come to Peru with Scripture Union come to help with building construction and sometimes to run a type of vacation Bible school for the boys at the different homes. My last group, however, was focused on medicine. Scripture Union's site called Kusi is located about 9 hours north of the city by bus, and the scope of the site goes far beyond just the ministry to abandoned children. On our property we also have a camp site, a primary school, and municipal building for offices and conferences, and a few apartments that are near completion to be rented out as part of our income generating projects. There are also plans to build a chapel, a shoe shop, a small artisan factory/shop, a bakery, and perhaps a hostel as well. The next big project at Kusi, though, is a medical post for the local community. That is where the medical team comes into the picture.

Before beginning the project, Scripture Union needed some sort of data to assess the needs of the local community. We wouldn't want to build a medical post if there really was no need. Monday through Friday of last week we held a free clinic at Kusi for anyone who wanted to come. When all was said and done, we attended to around 700 different patients during the week. In addition to the medical clinic, the group had also worked to develop a survey that we could conduct to assess the needs of the community.

I am obviously not a doctor, and for those of you who know me, you know that I really do not have a stomach for anything that has to do with blood and needles. I worked for the week mostly as a translator. Sometimes I translated between doctors and patients, and at other times I translated the survey to patients while they were waiting in line to be seen.

Two parts of the week really stand out to me. Firstly, as I was taking in the surveys I was really reminded of the needs of people in rural areas of Peru such as this. Virtually no house had a real bathroom. Most people in the area only studied through primary school, and many people even less than that. A fair amount of people couldn't even sign their own names to give consent to their participation in the survey. Instead, that would color all over their index fingers with a ball point pen so that they could finger print instead of sign. The people mostly work in the fields of the wealthy land owners, and that work is seasonal at best. Most men averaged about three work days per week earning between 15 and 25 soles per day (that is somewhere between $5 to $8 for the entire day's work). Virtually all of the families living in these communities qualify for the state funded medical insurance, but almost none of them are insured. They are not educated, and some didn't seem to have even heard of any type of medical insurance. Even if they are insured, receiving medical care means walking down to the nearest hospital. In many cases the walk is more than an hour long for a person who is in good health.

The second part of the week that really stood out to me happened on the very last day of our clinic in Kusi. I was translating for a doctor, and our next patient was a 26 year old girl. As we began to ask her why she had come to the clinic she was obviously a little bit uncomfortable. As the doctor asked some more questions, the girl just burst into tears. When she was 7 years old she had been raped by a neighbor, and then the same thing happened again about one year ago. She had some significant medical problems that came as a result of her story, but the deepest scar was the emotional one. Neither myself, nor the doctor attending to this girl was well qualified to give her the counseling that she needed, but as soon as Rosa (the house mother for the boys at Kusi) heard about the situation, she dropped everything to come and sit and talk with this girl. I really believe that God used Rosa on that day. She herself was still recovering from a very large operation, and she wasn't supposed to leave the house or do any type of work. But she insisted on talking with this girl. They talked for a good half an hour. They opened the Bible together, and Rosa invited the girl to come to church with them. I am so thankful that someone was there to talk to this girl and share all of God's promises even in the midst of some really deep pain.

My understanding is that this type of abuse and domestic violence is far too common in the mountain communities in Peru. In fact, the youngest girl to ever become a mother comes from a place not too far from Kusi. She was about eight years old. There is so much need in the area that it can be overwhelming at times. I would ask that you remember these people in your prayers, and that you pray for Scripture Union's work there in Kusi as well. Pray that God would grant wisdom as we begin to move forward with the medical clinic. Pray for the future patients of our clinic--that we would be able to minister to them both physically and spiritually. We live in a world with so much need. I am thankful to be able to rest in the fact that we serve a good God who is bigger than all of the needs!

Work Team Season is Officially Over

Wow...it is hard to believe that I have been busy working with foreign work teams down here for six straight months. As I look back over the last half of a year I really cannot say that I have any regrets. It is such a joy to share this ministry with so many people from all over the world. This year I have had team members from the United States, Scotland, England, Canada, South Africa, Germany, France, and Peru. My teams' ages ranged anywhere between the 9 year old girl who came to Peru with her dad and the 72 year old lady who hiked the Inca Trail with us. I have hosted high school groups, college groups, church groups, business groups, medical groups, and other groups that were a mixture of a little bit of everything.

Sometimes people ask me if I enjoy working with so many different groups. When my mom saw how much work it was for me to host my family down here, she asked me if all of the groups were such work loads. I told my mom that every group was different, but no group came without its challenges. The truth is that if I didn't enjoy what I do, and if I didn't have a passion to see God work through this ministry, then I would definitely be burnt out by now. On the contrary, though, I DO enjoy this work. What a blessing to share my passions with people who are experiencing this type of ministry for the first time! It is a privilege to be able to get others excited about the same things that excite me. I love seeing people begin to fall in love with Scripture Union's work here in Peru--with God's work here in Peru!

I apologize once more for not keeping a more up to date blog over the past couple of months, but when I am with teams, my time on the internet is limited. Now that the season is over, I hope to have a little bit more time to catch up on communicating with you all. I have a lot to talk about...my last group was a medical team, and we were able to touch many lives during that week. Now that work team season is over I will soon be heading down to Ica for a couple of months to work with the boys' home there. Beyond that, I will also be working with Scripture Union's campsite programs in the summer (winter for all of you up in North America). I also have some other random, funny, and exciting stories to share. I don't want to bore you with a never-ending, 20 page blog post, so I will break it up into a few smaller posts. Keep me accountable, and check back to make sure I follow up on those stories.

I really want to continue to be faithful about praying for those who are praying for and supporting me in this ministry. Please feel free to let me know if you have any specific requests.

Also, be sure to check out my newly posted pictures from my family's visit to Peru and from the Inca Trail.