Compassion For All: Peru Day 7

Day seven started with an early departure from Chosica to drive to Lima. Now, there are two different types of buses that you can find in Peru. There are the "I'm a public transportation bus, so why bother about shocks" buses, and there are the "I'm a big nice bus, so I do whatever I want to on the road" buses. This was one of the latter, which made for a nice quick trip to Lima. We pulled over right after entering Lima city limits to pick up two Compassion International employees, Betsy and Sal (I think), who would be taking us on a tour of one of their projects.

If you don't know anything about Compassion, here is the 60 second version. People around the world donate monthly to sponsor children living in poverty around the world. You receive a picture of the child you are sponsoring, information about his family and school, and all sorts of other information. The coolest part is the letters. You write letters back and forth with your sponsored child, developing a relationship with them. Compassion has a long history of helping people out of poverty to develop good job skills and while glorifying Christ in all they do. Essentially, there are about 200 different Compassion projects in Peru, with about 40-50 of them in Lima. This one sponsored about 200 children.

We drove to a slum that was about five minutes from downtown Lima, where our "I'm a big nice bus" made quite a scene. The houses were crammed into the hillside with a yellow staircase winding up the mountain. We followed our guides into the Compassion office for that project. I always thought that the offices would be typical American style office buildings, but this building was a simple styled building that fit in with the rest of the houses around it, with a few small rooms in the back that housed the records for that particular project. A few of the older children were there at the office. They were learning how to be chefs, so they were cooking some food for us to try later.

After a quick tour of the office, we headed up to the school building. There were about 50 kids there either in class or just hanging around to welcome us. There were about four different classrooms for different ages, a large common area in the middle of the structure, and a kitchen that was built into the side of the mountain where the three cooks were making a delicious lunch of rice, beans, and beef heart. All of the kids were excited to see us and were very welcoming, but I thought there was a clear distinction between these kids and those at the orphanage. The kids at the orphanage were very needy, jumping on you and holding hands, spending as much time as possible with you. These kids were kind, but you could tell they were not nearly as needy. It was an encouraging picture of what the support of a family and of sponsors can do to the psyche of a child.

While we were still touring around a little, the boy that Jim and Betty sponsor, Dylan, came in the center along with his mother. They had met Dylan before, but this was actually the project where he lived. You could tell it was a pretty emotional experience. Laura had to look away some to avoid welling up with tears. It makes me hope that one day we will be able to meet Cristian, the boy that we sponsor in Ecuador.

While they visited at the school, the rest of the group went on home visits, taking baskets of food to some homes, talking with some sponsored children and their families, and getting a look at the life of a Compassion sponsored child. The first house was pretty dismal looking. There were about five or so chickens scrounging around outside, looking for food among the rocks and dust. It was only one room with six people living there. Both parents were out working, so we spoke with the oldest daughter who was 13. She was left in charge of her brothers and sisters while her parents worked during the day. The second house we went to was in a little better shape, with an open area snuggled up the mountainside and a room that acted as the bedroom and kitchen. There was a young girl living here with her mother and grandmother. When we began asking the girl about her sponsor, she grabbed a small book that looked like a scrapbook and began to show us the letters and pictures that her sponsor had sent her. It really was a precious sight. She knew their names and that they lived in California and seemed to cherish everything they had ever sent her. Stephen had a camera with him and started recording some of the conversation. He asked her if there was anything she wanted to say to her sponsors. After a long pause, she replied, "I want them to pray for me and know that I am praying for them. I also want them to know that I love them." Laura had to leave the room at that point so as not to cry. We all gathered around the family and prayed for them. At this point Laura and I were both crying, thinking of the blessing that this family in California had been to this little girl all the way in Lima.

We headed for one more home study in Dylan's house. He actually lives right underneath the school in a two roomed house. There was a TV playing the World Cup, so we sat around with our Peruvian friends and watched some soccer for a little while as Betty and Jim talked with Dylan some more in his room. They came out after a while and Dylan actually distributed presents. Jim and Betty each got a lamp, Jim with a ship on it and Betty with a Teddy bear on hers. Then he gave presents to all of us. We actually all got a stuffed animal, which was really sweet of him. We headed back up the stairs and said goodbye to the kids at the school and went back to the office, where the older children had been diligently making some different food for us. There were three things they had been working on for the past hour or so. One was a drink/smoothie/something called champu (pronounced like shampoo). It was made out of corn and some sort of native Peruvian fruit. I won't lie, it was not my favorite. I ate most of it, but there was some type of fruit in there that tasted more like wax fruit than real fruit. The second thing they had made was chocolate. They had wrapped each chocolate individually and handed it out to us. Delicious! Lastly, there was some sort of chicken dish where the had wrapped chicken around spinach, ham, and omelet style eggs. It was so good, I really could have stayed there and eaten lunch. Unfortunately we already had reservations downtown at a rotisserie chicken place (the national dish of Peru as it seems; there were rotisserie chicken shops everywhere and our guide told us that there is a national rotisserie chicken day in Peru). We said good bye and headed for downtown.

There, we met Daisy, a one time Compassion sponsored child who is now going to college through their leadership development program and is sponsored by Jim and Betty as well. She was really sweet, studying journalism (I think) at a university in Lima. We ate a nice lunch of rotisserie chicken and french fries at one of the end of the table with Stephen, Caroline, Lucho, and Jackie while watching the World Cup. After lunch, we had about an hour of free time to wander the area. We pretty much stuck together as one big group and went to see some of the historic buildings in the square. Since the Cup was going on, the main square had been turned into a huge public viewing site. They had an enormous projector screen playing the game with people standing around and watching. Across the street from the square was the "Peruvian White House" as Emanuel described it, with a beautiful cathedral as well. We pretty much just meandered for an hour.

From there, we left for a local market (read "Tourist Market") where we could buy a few knickknacks before heading home. Laura and I found a few things and really just enjoyed hanging out. After buying our wares, we went to the hostel where we were staying that night, walked to a mall, and ate dinner at Chili's (very Peruvian of us). We walked around for the mall for a bit, headed back to the room, and tried to get some sleep for our very early rise the next morning, 5:45 to head back to Birmingham.