Happiness and Cheer! Christmas for orphans

I hope every one of you had a Merry Christmas!

Every year La Casa Del Padre does several Christmas outreaches this year we helped with the one to bring Christmas to orphans and very underprivileged children. It took tons of people and together we were able to bless over 1000 children


my hilarious children being all "vanna white" here. and check out Tim's ever present jacket. It's really hot here but he still thinks he needs a jacket every.single.day. ah, children.

It was a long and exhausting day but it was awesome to see the children blessed


I loved that we took our kids too. Logan handed out snacks to the kids, a mini panaton (fruit cake thing-very popular and traditional Christmas treat)  and chocolate milk to each kid. We were in the room where the kids got their toys and they had to get the snack on the way to the toys. Many children were so focused on the toy that they walked right past Logan. All he knew how to say was "Feliz Navidad" so he would chase them down and shove the snack in their face all the while saying "Feliz Navidad" in a somewhat irritated voice. heartwarming, right? lol. O.k. I admit I thought it was ridiculously cute and understood his frustration. I go through it all the time.

This week we are going to Carmella's house to bring her some presents. God put it on some friends hearts to donate money for this project and we are all so excited! Jose and his dad went to her house yesterday to kind of get an idea what needs to be done. First of all *she* did all the wiring for her house and it needs to be fixed. thankfully Jose's dad is great at that kind of stuff and is going to take care of it! Next she doesn't have any fans in her house. Trust me it gets hot here. I am sitting with all the windows open and the fan on in hopes of getting some air circulating. I cannot imagine what it would be like if there were 8 children running around making it hotter in here! So we are going to get her a couple fans to cool off the rooms (Again Jose's dad is handling this because he's awesome) She also needs a rug, and would like a slide for the kids to play on and a shelf in the kids room. Aside from that we plan to put together a basket of food for her and her kids. This is all really phase one of a project that we think we could work on until we leave Lima. If you would like to make a donation into this project send me a message @ jkmission2peru@gmail.com that is also our paypal address. or you can give through the link on the right of the blog.

I will leave you with our Christmas card because I am super proud of it since I made it! (using pic's taken by my friend Jami)

Happy New Year!

Casa Hogar

Today we visited our first orphanage. (we plan to visit some more to get a better picture of what already works before we move forward on anything)
We went intending to take pictures etc...and quickly found out it's illegal to take pictures inside the orphanage :/ So I'm sorry I can't show you what it looked like but I will try to describe it. One side was all living quarters. They have about 8-10 children in each building with 2 mentors. The houses are separated by age and gender. They have 54 children living there right now. (the director said that is way more than normal because they have a second location which was flooded so they had to combine the 2)

The other side is a school. Most of the kids are the orphans, but there are a few students from around the town.
We were able to get a lot of information from the director but I won't bore you with all of it :)
The best part of the trip was when we met the kids. The older kids where in a large assembly but we got to meet the preschool/kindergarten class. (Oh my word I fell in LOVE with 2 of them) When we came to the door they all ran out and hugged us. One little boy named Jonathon melted into my side while all the other children took turns hugging me, Jose, Victor then Jose's Dad. Then there was a sweet bubbly little girl with pigtails named Andreita (here they add "ita" to everything to make it cutesy) She locked eyes with me when we walked past the class and had to climb over the other kids to get to me. I wanted to keep her.
When we were getting ready to leave the class I looked over and Jose's dad had at least 5 little boys hugging him around the neck. It was adorable. I wanted to keep them all. Bring them home and give them lots of hugs and kisses every night. However, kids in private orphanages are not adoptable. :( I guess that's a good thing because we really aren't quite ready to take on 10 more kids. But I cried. No weeping and wailing but a definite ache came over me. I looked at these beautiful little girls and boys who either have no parents, or were abandoned. And they crave love. Little Jonathon, only had one of my arms but he did not move. His teacher had to tell him to come back in to class. I gave him one last tight hug before I let him go. (and I cried)