Thanks for all the cards!

So I hadn't recieved a single card in the mail until today. But today they delivered 21 of them to me all at the same time. Thank you all so much. I opened about half of them and realized the majority were birthday cards so I'm going to save the other half until next week. Thank you all so much!

Also some other really fantastic news. Today we got the official paperwork that the 7 year old twins that are pictured in the post above are declared abandoned. Meaning that they can now be adopted. The agencies are in the process of looking for a set of parents. Currently there are no parents here in the northern district of Peru that want to adopt 2 kids so they are sending their file down to Lima... But, if you guys have knowledge of someone in the states that would like to adopt 2 twin boys (very tender and well behaved at that) keep us in mind. I can post more pictures later but I got to head out to the pastors house for missionary night.

Updates

Sorry it has been awhile since I've posted but nothing really out of the ordinary has happened. I did not end up going to the birthday party for the politician on Saturday because the other people that I was going with had to cancel and I didn't really want to go by myself.

I had a great meeting again with the local business man on Monday. He came up here to check everything out and he was just amazed. He said he had no idea that it was like this, it wasn't the big scary orphanage after all. After seeing everything he told me that he would be willing to help us out. So Maribel is going to be making some lists of things that he could help us with. While he was here he tried one of Gladys (our cook) empanadas and loved it. He said that we could come down to his business and sell them to his employees anytime we wanted.

It was another visitation day but a lot fewer people showed up this week. However the lady still came to visit the twins, and Jose's and Anabela's dad came to visit. Jose was excited to introduce me to him.

In other good news we found a man willing to sponsor all the kids in the orphanage to go to school for the rest of the school year! Praise God! That was an answered prayer, because we have been worried about the school these last couple weeks.

Tomorrow I'm going to Trujillo again to supposedly sit down and talk with the judges that are making the decision about the Rojas family. They don't know that we are coming and it was our lawyers idea...so I don't really know how that is going to pan out. We'll see.

Picture of Cristopher and other kids getting ready to leave for school

Here is a picture of the twins and the lady that comes to visit them every visitation day

Politicking

Well the last couple of days have been much better and had a little bit of Peruvian adventure thown in as well.

Thursday night at 7:00 I had a meeting with one of the local businessmen. He's one of the head honchos here in Pacasmayo. He owns a chicken and food delivery service that makes deliveries in about a 100 mile radius. We got the meeting set up through one of the ladies who goes to our church, who is his secretary. His name was Ronal Enrique and he was all business. At first he seemed pretty cold but he warmed up quickly. He was asking a lot of questions like...why are you asking me for help, do the americans not want to give to you guys? I learned a lot in that meeting. I learned that the reputation of the ministry is not quite what I thought it was. Everyone in town thinks that the ministry is just full of absolutely rich Amercians and see's us as a way to sucker money from us. However from the past activity of Go Ye I can easily understand how that message got across. I learned that a couple years ago there was a container that Avis sent down here that was full of gifts and old computers which were dispersed among the comunity here. And while we know that they are donations from other people the people in the comunity don't make that link, so they believe we just go around and buy stuff and hand it out.

So anyway, I sat and just listened to everything he had to say, and let Maribel do most of the talking. Ronal soon lightend up and I realized that he did truely indeed want to help the kids, and always has wanted to help the kids. He was just scared that the money he gave might not go to the kids. This is because we also had another bad employee a couple of years ago that people got the impression that when she gathered stuff for the kids she was also gathering stuff for herself. Which I believe was probably true.

What came out of the meeting was this. They are going to start helping us little by little. First they are going to allow us to come on the bonus day of every month when each employee of their company recieves a big bonus of rice and milk and allow us to ask and collect the bonuses from employees who are willing to give up their bonus to the kids of the orphanage. Then he said after we build a better relationship with him and his company he will give more and more. However, he said one thing that he and his employees would like are...guess what...English lessons. They are quickly expanding and wanting to do international business and are very interested in learning English so he asked me to put together a plan describing how we could hold a couple classes a week teaching English to his employees. So Ronal set up a time to come and see the actual orphange himself on Monday at 12:00 during is lunch break. So please pray that goes well. Around 10:30 that night after the meeting I got a phone call. Ronal was sending one of his delivery crews to bring us some chickens that night. So get this...at 2:30 AM which is the time that his delivery crew runs they came by and dropped off 6 chickens. I should restate the fact that this was at 2:30 in the morning haha so I was a little tired the next day. When they showed up I opened the door and realized that they were delivering live chickens. So at first I was a little apprehensive. I told the man I didn't realize they were live chickens and that I had no where to keep live chickens. He assured me that they'd be fine so I went with it. He carried them by their feet squawking and thrashing all the way to our kitchen. I opened the door to the kitchen he just set them down and they all huddled together and didn't move all night. Gladis had the job of preparing them the next day. Glad I didn't.

Today I had another meeting with a man who owns an international agriculture company based here in Peru. He lives in Lima but has a house in Chempen where his main business is stationed. He and his wife (who works at the world bank) came and visited and looked around the orphanage. They were super nice people and loved what they saw. They were both also fluent in English which made the meeting that much better, although I would forget sometimes between sentances and switch back to spanish but they didn't seem to mind. They said that they would love to help, and we exchanged contact information. They said that they will definitely help us out and they will try and talk to their friends as well. I mentioned it didn't have to be financially and he said he would love to send fruit, vegetables, rice and sugar! So please be praying for that as well!

And now I just got done resting a little trying to catch back up on sleep from being awake recieving chickens haha. But now I need to get ready to go to a birthday party for a big politician here in Pacasmayo. Pastor Auden, Wendy, and Maribel all got formal invites and they said they could bring someone along so I'm going. There's gonna be all the businessmen and big shots in one room so we'll see how that goes. I'll keep you updated.

Getting Better

Well the last couple days are have been a little better. I got news that after Maribel and I left the courthouse that the parents of Luber showed back up and the judge got a statement from both of the kids stating that they wanted to go back to their family. I feel a little bit better about it, but I know that they will just be back on the street in no time living with their 15 year old uncle again... but at least they'll be happy I guess. They also know that they can always return to live with us if they want a bed and some food.

Today was another hard business day though. We have to make some cuts in the expenditures because after I showed Avis exactly what they spent the last couple of months she realized there was no way that she could continue for much longer paying that much money. So the first thing I have been doing is making cuts in the salaries. I felt that there is a lot of extra people that are getting paid or people that are getting paid too much. So I had a couple of tough meetings with some people today, and have a couple more tomorrow.

After all the salaries are dealt with I'll be going through and setting budgets for everything. So if you guys are wondering if I'm busy....the answer is yes. Yes indeed I am.

I'll post some more pictures and stories of kids soon hopefully. I will be able to spend a lot more time with them in the next weeks. This week has just been kind of hectic with all the trips back and forth to Trujillo and all the meetings.