School

The kids have been going to school for almost a month now, and so far they are loving it! This is Jardin (kindergarden) class - a small class of about 6 of the Casa de Paz kids including Karlita and Mateo.  This year we have a teacher coming in to do classes right here at the orphanage. She teaches at a school in the morning then comes here in the afternoon to teach Kindergarden from 3 to 6pm.  The teacher does not speak any English, so Karlita and Mateo are picking up the language fast!

Pastor Victor

Proverbs 11:2 NIV
When pride comes, then comes disgrace, but with humility comes wisdom.

So we took a trip to Lima this week to pick up the residence cards for Karlita and Mateo. That part when real smooth. We had in mind to take care of the paper work for Tahlia as well but that turned into a bit of a chase around the bush. Turns out we can't get the DNI (identification card) anywhere other than the Provence the baby is born in, and we couldn't do anything else until she has her DNI. So all the way back to Pacasmayo to get that and then all the way back on th to Lima to do the rest of it. Fun fun.

But the absolute highlight of the trip was getting together with Pastor Victors family. On our trip here with the team in 2012 Victors family came to Pacasmayo to take part in our ministry and to be taught by pastor Jeff (he talked about that and was so grateful for all he learned from Pastor Jeff) and his wife Mariela was in our group, and she became fond of Maggie. And vices versa. While in Lima Maggie had a prompting to update her Facebook status to say Maggie checked into Friends House with Jake, we chuckled thinking no one would know what that meant (friends house is a name of a hotel in Lima) but of course Pastor Victor happened to see it and within two hours his whole family was at the hotel to pay us a visit. We chatted for a bit and we agreed to come for lunch the next day. It was a great chat as you can imagine, and then they started praying. The room was so filled with the Holy Spirit I almost broke into tears of joy and immediately started praising and thanking God for this Divine appointment. Victor had promised to come pick us up the next day for lunch at their house. I only realized later that he does not own a car and picking us up meant hiring a taxing. But come he did and off we went.

We reached his house and I can't tell you how humbling it was to walk into their living space. I give you my

word I am not exaggerating, I have seen bathrooms bigger than their kitchen (which acted as the living room as well) the room was probably 8' by 8' with a small table, a tv, and a bookshelf/computer desk. And through a small doorway another room about 6' by 8' which was the kitchen/storage room (which by the way some of the must amazing food I've ever eaten came out of). This is in an apartment building, and if you go out into the hall, the next room is the one bedroom where the parents with the four kids sleep. I did not get a good look at the size but I would guess about 10' by 12'. Needless to say I feel pretty stupid for expanding our living space as I blogged about last week.

I know a lot of people that would be pretty miserable in a situation like this, but the joy in this family is unreal. Always a smile on everyone's face and ready to help where they can, just so beautiful. I learned later of some of the things Victor has done in the past and the money he has spent into his ministry, he could have paid for a house ten times the size by now. But he chooses to serve others before himself.

In case you are missing my point, I am not throwing a pity party for Victor, I'm throwing a celebration party because of the wealth he's storing up in heaven. I always ask God to bless anyone who reads what I have to say, "bless you" or "God bless" are famous ending words for emails or letters or what ever. But I think we need to remember God uses his children to bless people. So be a blessing and be blessed in return.

Birthdays

Feeling a bit 'partied out' today after two birthday fiestas in row this week.  If anyone knows how to throw a party - it's Peruvians!  Birthday parties (and pretty much every Peruvian celebration) includes LOUD music, lots of balloons and confetti, too much candy, cake, singing and dancing, pinata, and of course fun party games for the kids like musical chairs, and balloon-popping games.  Loads of fun.
Not every child at Casa de Paz gets a birthday party every year - thank goodness. That would be too much partying for anyone!  But this week we celebrated 2 very special birthdays.

Our youngest member at casa de paz turned 1 on Friday.  This sweet little guy came here as a newborn.  Having a severe head injury when he was only a few days old he was brought to the hospital by his mother, where she then abandoned him, and casa de paz took him in.  The head injury caused some minor brain damage and he is a bit behind, but praise God he is in good hands now and healing well!  With the needed therapy and lots of loving care, we are expecting a full recovery.  We are so proud of our baby boy and how far he has come in one year. Happy birthday little guy!

The other birthday celebration was for one of the young ladies 15th.  Here in Peru the 15th birthday is a big deal for the girls.  It is tradition for them to have a quinceanera (which means fifteenth year) to mark the transition of a girl going from childhood into womanhood.  At this special party the birthday girl gets to get all dressed up in a beautiful gown and tiara, and her father will dance with his daughter.  Since most of the girls here don't have fathers, Jake, and another volunteer Bruce got to share in the father roll for the beautiful birthday girl.  Happy birthday beautiful Princess!

Living Addition

Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. Be devoted to one another in love. Honor one another above yourselves. (Romans 12:9, 10 NIV)
I love those verses sincere love is acting in the ways of love and doing it with the right motives. Any one can do actions of love. Holding the door open for someone, helping with the dishes, letting someone in in front of you in a traffic jam are all actions of love. But if the "feeling" of love isn't attached to the action then good chance the motive was wrong and it counts for nothing.

So now that we have an extra person in our family we felt a little cramped in our 672 square apartment. So after thinking through some options and considering opinions from our great friends we decided to go with Mr Tony Giesen's idea. The room next to our used to be occupied by another volunteer who was a house mom and teacher here for almost a year and a half, but she is gone now. So we decided to open up a door way between her 286 square foot room and ours giving us a total of two bedrooms and 958 square feet. Doing this type of construction here is a little different than it was back in Canada, Wow does it ever get messy, the walls are literally made out of mud covered with plaster. And of course I got my Peruvian buddy to show me what's the best way to go about it. Well he grabs a strait pick and just starts bashing the wall with it, and before long he's got a good size hole. It amazed me how clean and accurate the hole was when it was done, the door jam fit in perfectly.

This option was much quicker and easier than building a whole new room, but of course now we lost a boarding room for upcoming volunteers but we will cross that bridge when we get there. We currently have one small and one large apartment available so we're good for now. We are lacking on volunteers right now which is costing us a lot of extra money for hired house moms, but God will provide.

There are certain things that are hard about living at an orphanage with your family. For legal reasons the kids are not allowed in our home or anywhere on the volunteers premises so it's often very hard to go "home" and close the gate so the cute little girl can't follow you. And on the other hand it's hard to see the sad face on your own child when they see daddy giving so much attention to the other kids. And I don't want my little Tahlia to grow up too fast but it will be sort of nice when she is a little older so mommy will have a little more free time. God has been so good to my family I truly feel very blessed. I am humbled every day by the love we receive from every direction. Thank you to all who pray for Casa de Paz and our family, your prayers are being answered daily. Bless you and may your day be filled with God's great love and mercy.

                         

Introducing our Newest Addition ~ Tahlia

On March 23, 2013 at 8:55am, we finally got to meet our newest addition - Tahlia Jade Hiebert. Born in Trujillo, Peru.  Praise God for a beautiful, healthy baby girl, weighing a perfect 7lbs.  It's hard to believe she's over two weeks old already! Seems like just yesterday we had her...but at the same time it feels like she has always been here.  We sure can't imagine life without her, she just fits into the family so perfectly!
We were blessed with a smooth and quick labor and delivery, and our doctor (who arrived only15 minutes before she was born) did and amazing job.  And having no family here, we are ever so grateful for Avis, who helped us out with the kids. "I'll be your Peruvian grandma!" she told us :) We don't know how we would have done it without her.  ThankYou Lord for always providing our every need.

A House of Peace for the Innocent

Change is good, change teaches you things. Either you are going backwards and the negative change teaches you what you need to do different next time to move forward. Or you are going forward and you still learn from it and embrace the next change. If you don't make changes happen, they will happen on there own but probably not for the better, so we should always strive to move forward into the next positive change.

At Casa de Paz change is an every day thing. Right now we are battling "Mindes" (the law) with a new rule; kids either need to be abandoned completely or taken back by the parents. A lot of our kids are here for protection from violence in the home. In Peru marriage is a rare thing. You get together with some one, have some kids and move on to someone else, seems to be the trend.  So very often the "new boyfriend" is violent to the kids or the mom is left on her own with no way to take care of the kids. Trust is another issue. Rather than getting together with a neighbor and striking some sort of deal like "take care of my kids while I get out and make some money and we will split the money" the kids get left behind all on there own for 12 hours or more while the mom is out somewhere trying to earn some cash. Often times the kids are very young. 

We just got five new kids that were found on the dump site, someone from the community finally called child services after the oldest 12 year got raped. The sad part is when the parents are found and the judge decides that the home is suitable to send the kids back. Nothing will change, the rapist will not be found and the chances of it happening again are very high. This is real life for too many children. Most of our children come from towns other than Pacasmayo where our orphanage is located. Pacasmayo has greatly improved since Avis Goodhart started her ministry. Casa de Paz which means ''house of peace'' is is exactly that, a house where children come and find peace. We make every effort to make this as much like a real family setting as possible, spending time with the kids and teaching them what they are worth in the eyes of God. little things like taking the boys out and buying them a bag of chips or and ice cream or playing cards or just plain old sitting there watching TV with them means the world to them. You can not walk around out in the yard without someone coming running up to give you a hug or wanting to be picked up, its pretty cool to live here. God has blessed my family in sending us here to help Avis with day to day operations, and we hope to do more and more as Avis goes out to speak at different church's in America to drum up support to keep Casa de Paz going.

If God ever touches your heart to donate and you are in Canada, please contact me at hiebert83@gmail.com and I will give you the details on how to do that and get a tax receipt. If you are in the USA simply click the GO YE link on the home page of the blog to go to Go Ye ministries web page and click donate on there, and you  will get a tax receipt. I pray for Gods blessing and anointing on you today and for ever in Jesus name amen.