Peru (MNN) — After making hundreds of balloon animals, painting numerous rooms, performing puppets and dramas multiple times, giving medical checkups and loving on children in state-run orphanages; thirty-one people from West Michigan are on their way back from a short-term mission trip to Lima, Peru. The team was made up of listeners of WaY-fm, a sister station of Mission Network News.
The trip was coordinated by Buckner Orphan Care International and led by Buckner’s Latin America director Leslie Chace. She says it was a great trip and the team was able to really touch the lives of the children they worked with. “They were able to go to six orphanages and serve over five hundred children. It was just amazing, just wonderful. And the government was just very impressed by this team. They just walked in and went to their jobs and just did it with their hearts.”
The team did everything from medical care, painting, fixing sidewalks, putting on games and carnivals, and most importantly, says WaYfm’s Trip Leader, Tom Bos, the team shared the Gospel and lots of love with orphans.
“Part of it is just being able to show the love of Christ to kids who don’t get a whole lot of love and a chance to share that with them. At each of the homes that we were at, one of the people of the team gave their testimony and worked real hard at being able to present it in a way that the people we were talking to could understand.”
They were able to have a twofold impact, says Bos, that went beyond just the kids, “Both on a one to one basis as we were being with these kids and sharing the love of Christ with them, and the other part of being able to share those personal testimonies with the kids, and also with the careworkers. Because they were there, the directors of the different homes were there. And so they get a chance to really hear the message.”
One of the orphan homes visited was for young mothers, girls aged 12-17 years old who had children of their own, due to rape, prostitution and incest. It was a powerful experience for the team, moving many to tears and all to laughter, says Bos, “We cried as we saw them working hard to learn to be mothers when they are merely children themselves. We laughed as we held, hugged, got spit up on and played with these wonderful children. Everyone’s camera was going a mile a minute, but do not think it was all fun and games. We painted two offices and a hallway, saw dozens of babies, mommies and expectant mommies in the medical room and even named a prospective baby boy. With our help the mom decided to call her son, to be born in a week or two, ‘Joshua Daniel’.”
Easy to Read Spanish New Testaments were handed out to each child they ministered to in the orphanages, and the team hopes there will be an eternal impact not just through their investment of love and attention, but through God’s Word in their hands even after the team has gone. Bos says, “Hopefully they’ll be a lasting impression and continued growth in the Word as we were able to leave those behind.”
Pray for the team as they travel home and pray for the many lives they were able to touch for their short visit, that those children will come to know God as Father and Savior.
To read the team’s daily updates that were posted during their trip, go to http://way.fm/connect/missions/blog.
