Peruvian Orphanage

So I was pretty much AWFUL at updating this during my DTS in Mexico, but I'm going to try to catch it up to speed now...

During our time in Peru (back in January), we spent a week at an orphanage in the middle of the Andes mountains. Literally we could see a glacier from the dining hall! It was a beautiful view, and the kids were great too. Since most people when they go to an orphanage just want to play with babies, we decided we were going to focus our time on the teens. It turns out that the week we went there was "vacation week", meaning all the orphans that had some kind of family in Lima went to visit them, leaving us the kids that were truly alone in this world (God's timing to truly perfect).

Each day we had a group of about 15 teens and we did a "mini-DTS" for them, meaning we taught them about the things that we had learned about in our classes in Ensenada. I did most of the translating because the other girl that speaks spanish got really sick while we were there and couldn't get out of bed, so that was cool (me translating I mean, not her being bed-ridden). The kids were very quiet at first (Peruvians tend to be much shyer than Mexicans), but around the 3rd day, one of the girls in our group taught on worship, and how sharing your life story (your 'testimony') can be worship to God becaust it shows how he has used you during your life and also how he has given you the strength to overcome hard times. After that we asked the kids to each write their own testimony, which they had never done before. As we helped them recognize God working in their lives, we started to learn the situations that these kids were in before coming to the orphanage.... girls raped by their uncles, boys living on the streets in downtown Lima, one even shared that she had seen her father kill her mother before her very own eyes. Terrible terrible life situations, but Jesus had redeemed them all. God has given us free will, which means we all have the choice to make good or bad decisions, and our decisions will always affect other people as well. But the Bible tells us that God works together ALL things for the good of those who love him, and for these kids, it was being rescued from their life situation before and being put into this orphanage.

Below is a video of a hike we took around the orphanage. We were teaching the kids about how they are each a unique part of God's creation, and we thought it would be cool to let them take us on a hike to experience the rest of God's beautiful creation in that valley.