So I’ve been here at New
Hope Children’s Home for about a week and a half now and thought I’d write a
blog entry a little about the place and the daily routines.
CAMPUS: There are three main
buildings:
Girl’s Building: The girl’s building has two floors. One of the group of girls lives in the “house” or
“casa” downstairs and the other lives in the “casa” upstairs. Another room
downstairs is the computer room where the kids can go online and print out
things for their homework. Upstairs is the main office and also the casa for the girl interns where
Cassandra and Nora are currently staying. Cassandra is an intern from Michigan
who has been here since May and had also come for about a month last year.
She’s working with the older boys (Ninos II) with me. Nora is from Germany and
besides German, speaks a lot of English and Spanish. She came to New Hope a day
or two after I did and is helping with one of the girls’ groups.
Boy’s Building: The boy’s building has three floors. Ninos I is the group of smaller boys and they live in the
casa on the first floor. Also on the first floor is a casa where I am staying.
It has a kitchen/sitting area, a bathroom, and three bedrooms – two for guests
and one for David who is the founder of New Hope. I’m actually staying in his
room for now because he is back in the United States for a time, and when I
first came, the other two rooms were taken – one had a missionary couple from
Mexico (although they actually left yesterday) and the other room has another
missionary from the States named Rick who has a children’s home here in
Arequipa but stays here at New Hope since his home is a girls’ home.
The second floor is for the
older boys (Ninos II). One of the casas on the second floor is the bedrooms for
most of the boys. There is a common area, a bathroom, and three bedrooms (each
with two bunk beds). Another casa on the second floor has the kitchen/dining
room/sitting area along with a bathroom, small miscellaneous room for a few
toys and two bedrooms for a few of the older boys who are out of school and are
working. The top floor of the boys’ building is kind of like a suite for
missionary teams.
The other building on the campus has two floors. The top floor has some
old couches where the kids sometimes hang out and watch cartoons. The bottom
floor of the building is the kitchen where most of the cooking takes place for
all the kids.
Besides the buildings, on campus there are also two small cement courts
in front of the boys’ building. One has a volley ball net in the middle and a
small basket ball hoop on one side. The other court has a basket ball hoop and
a soccer goal on each side. In front of the girls’ building is a small
playground area for the kids.
DAILY SCHEDULE: So as I said before, I’m working with the older group
of boys called Ninos II (there are four groups of kids altogether – two groups
of girls and two of boys). There are 11 boys who are in school grades 3 through
high school. There are about 3 more older boys around 20 years or so who are also
part of this group who work/help out with the group.
On the week days, I usually
go upstairs to the boys’ casa between 6:15 and 6:30. Around this time, the boys
are getting up, brushing their teeth, getting dressed, cleaning their rooms,
closets, and making their beds. If I’m not helping making sure that some of
younger boys in the group are getting ready and doing what they need to be,
I’ll sometimes be in the kitchen helping prepare breakfast or the snacks that
the boys take to school. For the most part, breakfast consists of a couple
pieces of bread with jelly or butter along with a hot drink that I think is
mainly heated milk. For snack, the kids will usually bring a piece of bread
(sometimes with a slice of cheese or jelly or something with it) and a small
piece of fruit.
We eat breakfast between
6:30 and 7:00 and after breakfast the boys continue to get ready for school and
do their chores. They are on a rotation of a list of daily chores which
consists of sweeping and mopping (their bedrooms, kitchen, dining room, sitting
room, stairs, etc.), doing the dishes, cleaning the table, etc. There are two
“tutors” that help out and are in charge of the older boys. One is new and she
just started working here the day before I came. She works Friday and the
weekend and the other tutor Hermana Gloria works Monday through Thursday.
(Hermana means “sister” in Spanish and Hermano means “brother” in Spanish.
Putting Hermana or Hermano before a name is how the kids would refer to adults.
Sometimes the younger kids will just call me Hermano.) If Hermana Gloria is
working, she makes sure to do a song and a quick, little 5-minute devotional
with all the boys after breakfast.
Between 8 and 8:30, the kids
leave for school. All the kids attend Christian schools. From my understanding,
the school system here in Peru has a total of 11 years of school (the primary
grades are the first six years and high school is the last five). The high
school is about a two or three-minute walk from the campus and the older kids
walk by themselves. Cassandra, Nora, and I will usually walk with most of the
younger kids to their school. It’s about a six or seven-minute walk. After
coming back from dropping the kids off at school, we have our “free time” where
I usually go on my laptop, do laundry or whatever else I need to get done, or –
usually – take a nap. J.
The younger kids usually
return from school around 1:30 and the older kids around 2:00. When they
return, they get dressed and we eat lunch. After lunch is homework time. I’ll
sometimes help some of the older kids who need help with their English homework
(although yesterday, Miguel, one of the older kids, tried telling me that he
needed help with his English homework when in reality all he needed to do was
copy some English phrases a few times each – go figure, all he wanted me to do
was write it for him, hahaha. Of course, I refused.) If I’m not helping one of
the kids with English homework, sometimes I’ll help one of the younger kids
with their homework. Sometimes I help Arius, who’s 8 and in third grade, with
his multiplication tables. Last night, I was also helping Jhon (sixth grade)
with his math homework on finding the average and mode in a set of data.
Whenever the kids finish their homework, they have free time. They’ll usually
play outside with a soccer ball or basketball, or watch tv, or play inside in
their rooms or with some of their toys.
Dinner time varies depending
on the day. Usually dinner is around six or seven. After dinner, the kids help
clean up and then finish their homework (if they haven’t yet) or hang out for a
couple more hours before bed time.
On weekends, breakfast is
pushed back about an hour or so later and the kids have more free time. They
will also do any homework they have for the weekend and any chores. Some
nights, the kids will have a movie night or play soccer.
On Thursday nights, Sunday
mornings, and Sunday nights the kids attend church. Their church is about a
five minute walk from the New Hope campus. Victor, one of the 13 or 14-year
olds, plays the guitar and will play at church. Many of the songs they sing at
church are ones that I am familiar with from back home – just that the song is
translated into Spanish. It’s pretty cool singing a song you know in English
but singing it in Spanish.
I hope this helps give you a
little better idea of what daily life is like here in Peru. Also, for those of
you who want to know how you can pray, here are some prayer requests I’d love
prayer for:
·
My personal health – I ate something bad
Wednesday night and was sick all day Thursday. Also since then, I felt like I
was getting a sore throat although it quickly went away and wasn’t an issue,
praise God. So just for personal health for me and the kids and the other
workers here at New Hope.
·
That I’d keep my focus on God and my
relationship with Him – Like in the story of Mary and Martha, it’s hard
sometimes getting distracted with serving God and being so busy that you
neglect just sitting at his feet. Although I’ve been able to have that time
each day before God, my mind is often distracted with tons of other stuff.
·
That I’d continue to be able to understand and
speak Spanish better – Although I can speak a lot, I’m nowhere near fluent and
often need to ask people to repeat themselves two or three times. Sometimes I
seem to understand a lot, and other times I am completely lost. It gets
frustrating at times, but I know that if I keep my focus on God and seek first
His kingdom, He’ll take care of the rest.
·
That the boys would continue to learn about God
and be interested in memorizing His Word – God’s prompted me to start
encouraging the boys to memorize Bible verses (which I’ll try to make a blog
entry about that story later). We just started a few days ago and many of them
seem to be interested, but the pessimist in me is saying that they will sooner
or later lose interest. I just need to remember that any interest they have or
will have in the future is from the Holy Spirit’s work in them – and not from
me – and I don’t have to worry but just trust God to do His work in each one of
the boys’ lives.
Also here is a reminder of a few links that you might be interested in.
New Hope Website: http://www.peruhope.org/
New Hope Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/NewHopePeru
Some Pictures I’ve Taken and Continually Update: https://skydrive.live.com/?cid=935a7a3c68826671#cid=935A7A3C68826671&id=935A7A3C68826671%21105
No comments:
Post a Comment