"The Poor will Always be with you"

In Matthew 26:11, when Jesus says "For you always have the poor with you, but you will not always have me," the focus of the verse in normally on its second part, about how to treat Jesus.  However, the first half of the verse is pertinent as well.  In Peru, it is far easier than in America to witness the impoverished conditions that many people spend their lives in.  Here, where public services are sketchy at best, and government aid is more or less non-existent, there are many people who work long, hard days every day just to sustain themselves.  This poverty isn't a temporary thing, caused by some bad decision or lack of motivation by a breadwinner.  It is simply the life that many people are born into with very little hope of getting out of it.  It's not a problem that can be solved, let alone solved all at once.

Here at Hogar de Esperanza,  the kids receive not only their basic necessities, but also get opportunities to experience things that many of them may not have had access to if they were living at the income level that their families were at.  These things include hot water (crazy how much more that seems like a luxury down here), movies, internet access, clean clothes, trips to day camps or restaurants, and good education.  In fact, although we are normally happy when kids here can be reunited with their families, it is often difficult for them to acclimate to the impoverished conditions that their families live in. 

Recently, we had one sibling group go home to live with their grandparents.  It was exciting--we knew that their grandparents cared deeply for them, and that they would love them well.  However, love does not magically provide dollars and cents, or in this case, the Peruvian currency of soles.  The oldest girl in this family was privileged while she lived at Hogar de Esperanza to be able to attend a good, private, Christian middle/high school.  This privilege is only available to a few of our oldest kids, and only if they take full advantage of it.  This past year, she was the only child at the orphanage who proved herself motivated and responsible enough to attend there.  Now that she has gone home with her grandparents, though, the orphanage no longer pays her expenses, and her grandparents would barely have enough to pay for books and a uniform, let alone tuition.  (the lower class public schools here don't even use text books, so those books would seem like a luxury for many families).

Courtney and I, along with one other volunteer here, have decided to put the extra money that we raised for the new sheets for the kids for Christmas (which they love, by the way--thanks for your support!) towards paying for this girls continued Christian education at this great school she is at.  However, combined, this only comes to about $600, and the school that she is at costs about $1500/year.  She has received a scholarship that cuts the cost down to about $850/year, which is very exciting.  However, that still leaves a shortfall for this year, let alone the three years she has left there.  Courtney and I have committed to paying for her first year, whether or not we're able to raise the money from outside sources, and we're turning to you for help.  It will be great if we can raise the $250 we need, but far better if we can make a dent in her tuition for years to come as well.  If you'd like to help, you can make out checks to Hillcrest CRC with "D and C Mission fund--School" in the memo line and send them to Hillcrest Christian Reformed Church, 3617 Hillcrest Rd, Hudsonville, MI 49426.  If you'd prefer a more convenient way, you can pay through paypal by using the widget in the upper left hand corner.  


A final thought: I considered not even writing this post, thinking that maybe people are sick of giving, that it seems like people like us doing mission work are always just asking for money, and that when you give us money we just ask for more.  However, as the verse that I began with says, the poor will ALWAYS be with us.  We are not going to reach a point at which there are no needs, where there are no people less fortunate that us who need help, and as long as that need exists, it should be made known to those have the power to do something about it.  Thanks in advance!  -D

Word of the day- lumberjack

Before beginning to share about the English classes I am teaching this summer, I must apologize for the lack of posting that has happened lately.  Things are starting to seem so normal here that I often don't think that people back home would be at all interested in the current goings-on. 

For this reason, I am writing this post today to tell you about my favorite  part of summer here--my opportunity to teach English to the kids.  Monday through Friday I teach one hour a day to kids of a wide range of levels.  We mostly work on vocabulary, although in the past couple weeks I’ve been delving into parts of speech and verb conjugations with the older kids.

The biggest challenge for me is targeting each class at what will be most useful for the kids in that class.  If they are on the pathway to an international adoption, I try to give them the words and phrases they'll need to know when they get dropped into an English speaking family.  If they are approaching the end of their education, I need to teach a much higher level of English--trying to tie together all the vocabulary they've learned to make real-world conversations possible. My experience this summer has made me wonder if maybe I do want to teach after all.  (It was just a fleeting moment of curiosity, however. I am SO excited to go back to school for my MLIS in the fall!)

These are the girls in 2 of the 10 classes I teach.  I am so proud of the progress they have made over the last 2 months! -C

P.S. I did teach the word "lumberjack" last week to one of the boys classes; we were discussing another volunteer's crazy red beard, and there was no way to converse without this valuable English word :)

Fund Raising

One of the weirdest parts of being here in Peru for me (David) is that we have to rely on donations.  Without the help of family, friends, and churches, none of what we are doing here would be possible.  When we left to come here, we were a long, long way from meeting our cost estimate.  It was a step of faith, and it has been amazing to see how God has provided.  While we've been here, we have experienced some setbacks in our finances.  Living here costs far more than we expected, as we have realized that we can't eat only the orphanage food like we were planning too.  More importantly, our student loans are refusing to behave.  We were planning to defer them due to "economic hardship" or "unemployment," and were informed by the people we talked to at the Department of Education that that wouldn't be a problem.  However, they've now decided that we don't technically qualify for these options, for reasons we won't bore you with.  This means that while we're in Peru, we'll need to pay a bit over $2000 in student loans.  Lucky for us, you have all been incredible in continuing to support us even though we've been off the radar for a while now here in Peru, leaving us only $700 short of meeting our costs.  If you'd like to help, feel free to use the widget on the blog here, to send it to my parent's address (7128 Rolling Hills Dr Hudsonville Mi 49426), or to the David and Courtney Busscher Mission Fund at Hillcrest CRC.  Your donations, care packages, prayers, and encouragement have made our time here possible, and we thank you from the bottoms of our hearts.  -D and C

PS--someone took care of this within 24 hours of us writing this post, which is absolutely amazing.  The minimum amount for our student loans will now be covered, but if you would still like to contribute, we will be sure to put it to good use!

Summer

We’re getting back into the swing of things here at the orphanage.  The official summer schedule has started, which means we’re all busy spending a lot of time with the kids.  Every day, I (David) have tutoring time with the five oldest kids here who are still in school.  During the school year, this normally revolves around completing homework given to them at school, but during the summer, it’s my job to come up with things for them to do.  I’ve decided to put them through the process of researching for and writing an essay.  In their school, it seems like their homework is just to copy and paste answers from Wikipedia, so for this project I’m making them use additional resources.  We have a book series of middle school reading level on important people in history in various fields, and I’m having the kids compare/contrast two people who are in the same field and decide who they think was more important.  Papers are being written about Albert Einstein and Isaac Newton, Pablo Picasso and Leonardo Da Vinci, Michael Jackson and Bob Marley, and Michael Jackson and John Lennon.  After a week of working an hour a day, we’re still in the research phase, although I’m encouraging them to try and develop a thesis and outline now.

After tutoring, I work with a house’s worth of kids in the garden.  It’s a challenge to find work that I can have a bunch of kids doing at once with minimal supervision, and especially hard to keep the younger ones from destroying things in the process.  It went alright this week, but it’s going to be hard to keep them interested in pulling weeds.  They’re far more likely to pull each other’s hair and start a wrestling match in the middle of my fragile plants.  Speaking of the garden, here are some pictures of what my first nearly five months of work have accomplished.

This is a patch of aji (peppers) and nabo (it's like a mix between white carrot and an onion, and it goes in soup)

These are all little lettuce plants that I transplanted from their germination patch

These are all radishes, except the near-right corner, which has a few lettuce plants that we're ready to transplant

And this is the whole garden

After working in the garden, I have an hour of reading time with the Amigos, the house of older boys.  I’ve decided to read the Chronicles of Narnia aloud to them in Spanish, and they are loving it.  At first I wasn’t sure if they would be interested or pay attention, but now they actually get excited when I walk into their house holding a book (who woulda thought?) and they beg me for just a few minutes more, just a chapter more, just stay here til it’s done, when I try to leave at the end of reading time.  It makes me very happy that they’re so excited to have me read to them, and I hope that this encourages them to read more on their own as well.  We’ll almost be able to read one book a week, so I should be able to finish the series with them this summer (and don’t forget, now is summer).  

In the afternoon, we put on various “classes” for the kids.  I’m in charge of outdoor games, so I spent the afternoons this week playing soccer, jump-roping, soccer, volley-ball, soccer, and sand boarding.  (if you didn’t notice, they’re a bit fond of soccer).  Behind the orphanage there are some pretty steep sand dunes, and I got to take both of the younger houses sand-boarding this week.  It’s a blast watching the 7 and 8 year olds trying to make it down the hill standing up, and only succeeding half the time J.  It was also very fun to play there with the three-year-olds.  They were very scared, but really enjoyed riding down the hill in the arms of us volunteers.  Of course, the hill is steep and sand is difficult to climb, so by the end of the time out there I was walking up the hill carried at least two kids and three boards.  What a workout.  

In the evenings, we have some time to just hang out with the kids.  They’re more calm and tired out by then, so that ends up being the best time for us to have quality conversations with them.  It’s fun to just sit with a bunch of kids in the coolness of the summer evening and talk about their hopes and dreams.  That, or get pranked with a bucket of water and/or a giant group of people waiting to throw you in the air.  Less restful, but fun nonetheless. -D

Brief Update

First, some photos from Christmas celebrations.

 It was cool to see how many groups wanted to come in at Christmastime to give gifts, throw parties, and distribute paneton and hot chocolate!  We wish we could have this sort of outpouring of love all year round!

 Christmastime here is during the summer, so it often includes lots of sunshine and trips to parks and pools! 

We also had the opportunity this Christmastime to travel home to Michigan to see our family and friends!  We were even fortunate enough to see snow our second day in the States!  However, we had a terrible time getting our flights to work so we could arrive home as scheduled.  The evening before we left for home, David checked all of our flights (isn't he great?) but found that one of them had been delayed about 6 hours, which meant that the rest of our flights were adjusted, causing us to have an extra day of travel and arrive home a day late (missing parties and appointments).  He stayed up the rest of the night finding an alternate way home and speaking with various airline representatives, well, if by the "rest of the night" you understand to be until 2:00am, when we had to wake up to get ready and leave for the bus station to catch a bus that would take us north to Chiclayo, from where we would catch a flight to Lima in time for our regularly scheduled Lima-Miami flight. There was a lot of desperate praying going on, but each time we ran into problems, things still worked out in the end.

Since arriving back to the albergue, we have reached a total of 14 volunteers--that's twice as many as we've normally had over my time here!  It's a lot of fun; everyone has a lot of energy, and the kids are getting lots of attention and love. We have loved coming back and seeing all the kids, but we have not loved coming back to all the mosquitoes.  I have 41 mosquito bites right now...forty-one!  I've started a strict regiment of applying bug spray multiple times daily.  We also bought a fan to help keep us cool at night since it gets quite hot here.  Quite a change from Michigan!  -C