Sunrise Peru Mission Trip 2008: Day 8

Friday, June 27

Today was a very exhausting day! We spent the morning at Reina de la Paz hosting a carnival for the girls. We had games and activities, including face painting, balloon animals, bowling, goal kick, bean bag toss, and ladder golf. The girls loved the games and activities and enjoyed picking out their prizes. Toward the end of the carnival, we began to pack up and somehow spontaneously formed a huge circle and threw Frisbees , footballs, and beach balls around. We also were excited to receive a brief dancing lesson from Giugliana and the girls and are proud to say that we did pretty well! Throughout the week, we’ve often found that the spontaneous activities are the most fun!

After the carnival, we had a pizza lunch with the girls – some of the girls said that they had never had pizza before, so it was fun to share that experience with them. We enjoyed the opportunity to eat lunch with them, since we had been eating lunch as a team all week (without the girls). We split up our team and sat with the girls at the tables and talked with them a little bit – they know that we don’t know much Spanish, so they used small words when talking with us! One of the girls said that her favorite part of our entire visit was eating lunch with us today because eating lunch together is what families do, and this made it feel like we were a family. We couldn’t agree more.

It was hard to say “good-bye” to the girls after lunch! We wrote notes to the girls on their tie-dye shirts and made lists of our e-mail addresses for them. We took lots of pictures and then kissed the girls and their babies farewell. There were many tears shed on the bus that afternoon.

As you may have read in yesterday’s blog, our plans for the afternoon at San Ricardo changed within the last few days. We had originally planned to do a carnival at San Ricardo similar to the carnival at Reina de la Paz, but we were informed that San Ricardo would be fumigating today and we (and the kids) were not allowed to be there. So Julie, our trip coordinator, conferred with the staff at San Ricardo, the Buckner staff, and our Team, and we decided to take the kids to a movie.

It sounds like a crazy plan, and we were all a bit nervous. There was much debating about whether or not the amount of money needed for 100+ kids, 10 San Ricardo staff members, our entire team, the translators, and the interns to watch a movie would be well spent. But in the same way that we knew that our presence in Peru is much more meaningful than simply sending money, we knew that any time spent with the kids is better than just using that money to purchase more supplies for them. So we rented an additional bus and shuttled the San Ricardo kids from a nearby sibling home (where they were staying while they fumigated) to the movie theater.

The kids greeted us with grins and hugs and were so eager to get out and see a movie (something that many of them had never done before), and they were very well behaved. They were so excited to receive a box of popcorn and a drink, and it was fun to see the delight on their faces as they carefully rationed their refreshments. Many of the kids even shared their beloved popcorn with us, which really warmed our hearts. How amazing that kids who have so few luxuries in their lives would choose to share them with us. We enjoyed cuddling with the kids, and watching them enjoy the movie… with the exception of a few kids who needed to use the restroom, nearly everyone was enthralled with the movie the entire time. Their laughter and applause throughout the movie were evidence that we made the right decision.

It was difficult to say “good-bye” to the kids from San Ricardo because we had to quickly get them back onto the bus, and that didn’t leave much time for saying our “good-byes”. But the kids held their hands out of the bus windows and we reached up to hold them one last time. Their faces were beaming as they yelled “gracias!” (“thank you”) out the windows as they drove away. We watched as they left and we had to be ushered back onto our bus by our translators… otherwise I think we would’ve have stood there for a while.

There were lots of tears shed on the way back to the hotel and I don’t think that our bus has ever been so quiet. Our hearts were broken for those kids this week with the realization that part of the reason they are so happy to see us is because they get very little love and attention. We would almost prefer that receiving hugs and kisses was nothing out of the ordinary for them, but we are painfully aware that this isn’t the case. We are so happy to have formed relationships with these kids and at the same time are so sad to leave them behind.

We rushed back to the hotel and had ten minutes to finish packing before we had to leave for the airport. We left behind several bags of donations for San Ricardo (and also several bags of donations at Reina de la Paz) – thank you to those who donated supplies! We hugged our translators “good-bye” and headed to the airport with Giugliana and Julie. Because of everyone’s crazy flight schedules, we did not get to say “good-bye” to our interns or to Jeremy before they left. But we made a list of everyone’s e-mail addresses and we hope to keep in touch.

After checking in at the airport, eating a quick dinner on the floor of the food court (those of you from last year’s trip will understand!), we said our “good-byes” to Giugliana. This was another tough farewell and many tears were shed. Giugliana took such good care of us this week and went above and beyond the call of duty in so many ways. She is truly amazing and we miss her already. Then we had to say “farewell” to Julie, our phenomenal trip coordinator. She was such a fantastic leader and such a fun person to be around. We have high hopes that she (and maybe Jeremy) will be able to stop by Peru during next year’s mission trip.

We quickly boarded the plane (we had just 15 minutes to spare!) and tried our best to sleep on the red-eye flight back to the States. We left Lima around 12:30 am and arrived safe and sound in Houston, Texas at about 6:45 am. We made it through customs and immigration at the Houston airport and checked in at our gate. We had just 10 or 15 minutes before leaving for Indianapolis at about 8:30 am. We landed at about 12:30 pm and were greeted in the airport by Jill DeYoung, Curt Vanderkleed Sr., and Sandor Volkan-Kacso. It was so nice to see familiar faces!

We are so glad to be home and back with our families, but we already miss Peru. The relationships that we formed, the friends that we made, and the experiences that we had were life-changing… not just for the teen moms at Reina de la Paz and the kids at San Ricardo, but for us as well. We all knew that we were going on this trip to spread the love of Jesus and the truth of the Gospel, but few of us expected to fall in love while we were there. And it’s safe to say that each of us left a piece of our hearts in Peru.