"Good bye" Casa H (1st post on 17th June)

Finished my placement 30 May 09 Arequipa

Iwant to say a big thank you to Casa Hogar in Arequipa.

I have to catch up here on my blog but I think I’ll manage.
For I have been going on only because of your prayers!
.Prayer works to change every heart beat at a time..

I don’t want to say too much on this post but to say thanks for letting me be part of your family. Always remembering you, your 'Tio JD'

Hopefully 4th project!

I really need to keep up with adding new posting as so much happens and it’s hard to keep up! But with unknowns like when I found myself with no place to stay for the night and no new project for me, I have now two weeks unplanned.

This week I was supposed to be in Puno. But the situation has changed with the home there - there are no kids really up there so I will only visit for 2 weeks at the end of June. But now I’m left with 2 weeks here in Arequipa.. so this week-end past I visited New Hope Children’s home again. I took some out swimming and some on other little trips here and there.

But before I talk about this and other stuff, I want to show you some of the pictures from the end part of my stay in Casa H

This volunteering is organised by TNT (Traveller Not a Tourist) which

works in different projects here in Arequipa. I stayed in a big house with lots of volunteers from all over the world. Good times!

The kids are really cared for and looked after by the “tias” (aunties). I was called a “tio” (uncle) .. The love and dedication was really noticed. Good work, keep it up tias and tios.. !

On Saturday for one of my many wee trips I took one of the boys from New Hope with me to a very nice area of Arequipa. Sachaca is a very little town on a small hill.. all round it is the expanse of fields with Arequipa and it’s tall varied mountains on the horizon.

This leads me to say a bit about the opportunity of my time in Arequipa to look for 'terrenos'. (land in Spanish). I know that this idea is really for a later stage of my vision of setting up a children’s home.. but while I’m here I want to learn and see about the opportunities there are for land, and about costs and how you deal with the whole topic of acquiring land.
I looked out in the fields and newspaper listing of available land for sale. It is expensive.. 60 dollars a m2.. but some 19 m2.. the pictures are below..

My vision is to help lots of kids and young people, and not only them, but to have programs to help their families, to give work and education to a needy young generation that have little help..

Of course more and more I am understanding that I have to start off small - buy a house, get a few workers and look after a small number of kids,.. In fact this is what I’m thinking about when I talk about a big children’s home.. a big area with sport pitches and work- skill based studios and lots of small houses with aunties and uncles and about 9 kids in each house.. Here is a picture of the IDEA:

So, back to my wee trip... we took pictures of Arequipa’s landscape and then went down from Sachaca to a fair beside a lake..

I imagined my course with God. I want to follow Him, and if He wants, to be part of setting up His children’s home with all it's different programs, and also programs for providing funding. All this is for giving more opportunities for the kids and their families and putting God’s Word into the lives of the young generation to grow and follow him - also to reach into Arequipa and Peru with the Word of God. We want them to be independent with Him and able to live out a fulfilled life even though they come from a broken background..

Please pray:

Pray for my two weeks unplanned. I have an interview to see if I can work with an ‘open home’ that works with street kids.. they have a team that goes out at night to find kids that are on the streets and are uncared for..

Pray that my ongoing search for God's plan for my life is always focused.

Pray for those who pray for me that their prayers don’t stop, but keep going as they help me as I do this out here..

Many thanks again for following this Blog.. May God bless you as He works in your life.. the real thing is that we all pursue God's plan for our lives.

Reflection time at L A

These last days I have been filled with a realisiation of the vision and what it is all about.

I wrote to a friend and I thought I would post the letter to you also.

I remembered about the parable of “Who is my neighbour? - the Good Samaritan” and thought about what Jesus said about looking after the orphans and widows,

I thought about my heart.

I thought of the man in the parable and in this case of him once being an orphan, abandoned and left on the road side. I thought that I didn’t just want to stop and give him something there, not just to take him to hostel, not just to pay to look after him.

As I see it, a child needs care and a home where people would take care of him as he grows up and where he would belong. Where he would grow up and get to know - Why he was taken in. why he was loved. And what was in the heart of the people that supported him in this new home..

And that heart that loved him was transformed by an everlasting love that God placed in the heart of his carers, his new parents . The people that took him in were his ‘heart mum and dad’.

I want to be that parent to some of the kids of Arequipa. the city where I was adopted from and where God put in the heart of my parents to adopt me.

My prayer is that people can join me in helping me with this vision..

Boys from new home trip

Monday I got to know the older kids of Luz Alba.. and working in the afteroon, I got lots of time to do game activites with them..