Donate Today

Posted 12 November 2012 by admin

As a board we have decided we need to take this step of trying to communicate with you regarding the situation that we are facing in our labor to care for children at risk and particularly the 26 kids who presently live at the orphanage. The truth is we have wanted to do this before but have been waiting to have more answers to the questions that are hanging over our heads but we have become more and more aware that many of those questions are only going to have partial answers for now and are going to take more time to be resolved completely. With this in mind we are going try and put together a fairly complete picture of where we are to date, recognizing that some of you have heard some of the news, others only rumors, and still many more who have only just recently heard that there is an orphanage in Trujillo.

A Brief History

The orphanage began in October 2001 mainly through the impetus of Dave and Vicky Miller who had visited Peru several times and seen the desperate situation of kids here and desired to respond to the call from God to care for the “fatherless” James 1:27. Although this project began with their church back home in the US, there was a problem that arose in the congregation and the church could not carry on, leaving the Millers to carry the load. They formed the board Saving Street Children in the US which served as the channel for bringing funds to the orphanage here in Peru. Over the past 11 years, there have been many blessings. Many children have been taken out of dangerous and abusive situations. Many kids have been adopted into families that will love and care for them. Many people have been giving and serving sacrificially through visits and as volunteers. There has been much accomplished to this point. There have also been many challenges in maintaining this ministry; the day to day function, growing regulations placed on the orphanage and the passing away of Vicky Miller to name a few. These challenges as well as the lack of help from the authorities here in Peru generated a growing frustration on the part of David Miller. The new regulations as well as the present need for greater security mean an increase of the present budget by thousands of dollars and the concern that Dave has is that we will not be able to meet this budget and care for the children and the staff who are working here sacrificially to care for them.

The Robbery

Even with the present challenges we were working to face them and carry on until the event on the evening of October 21, 2012. That night at about 8:00 pm, about 10 armed men broke in, beat up and tied up our night watchman, Jose. Over a two hour period they went through the volunteer’s quarters and the offices taking everything that they could find of value. Computers, cameras, and other electronic devices as well as a sizable amount of money were lost. During this time everyone involved acted heroically. Jose escaped from his bonds twice and the volunteers impeded the progress of the burglars speaking to them only in English and when locked in a room together they prayed for the children. One of the greatest blessings of the night was that the robbers never entered the children’s buildings. I believe that apart from being the protection of the Lord it is telling of the value placed on the children here. We are thankful that they were spared the trauma, most of the kids didn’t even know about the event until the next afternoon when they returned from school. We are also thankful that there was no bodily harm done to any of the volunteers and we trust that the Lord will help them deal with the residual effects of the trauma that they have suffered.

The Result

As a result of the robbery and the concerns for security in the orphanage the board had a meeting where we discussed what direction we should go in. We talked about trying to provide the security necessary or moving the orphanage or changing the structure completely in order to carry on caring for the children. We also decided that we needed to close down the Volunteer program as we felt that they were really the most at risk and bringing the orphanage into that risk as well. The volunteers understood the decision completely and even offered in our conversation with them to “get out of the way” so we could focus on the needs at hand. They moved off site but continued to visit the kids. Some have travelled; others have found or are looking for other opportunities to serve. We still have some of them around still willing to help which is a blessing. In our second meeting we continued along these lines but kept coming back to the security issue. Each time we did Dave was more and more concerned with the prudence of carrying on given the risk that was involved. Understandably he did not want to be responsible for the injury or death of anyone be it those serving in the ministry or those who would try and assault the orphanage. Because of this and through the counsel of some men in a men’s group he is involved with it became more and more clear to him that this was the Lord leading him to close things down. This was not what anyone, including Dave, wanted but we respected what he said and began discussing this proposal. At the end of the Skype meeting, Alex and I were left here talking about the possibility of trying to carry on even without the support of Dave and Saving Street Children, and Pablo called us to weigh in on this thought as well. I wrote a couple of e-mails to Dave and then we had a Skype conversation discussing the possibility of us carrying on. We all agree that it seems like an insurmountable challenge, but for some reason the Lord had given us enough hope to consider carrying on even though it seems unrealistic. Dave has accepted this proposal but confirmed that he will be resigning from the board the end of the year and Saving Street Children will be terminating their support at that time. We discussed how this is a case of what Paul talks about in 1 Corinthians 3:6 and 7. Dave and his family have planted and carried much of the weight of the institution for 11 years, an anniversary that was celebrated the day before the robbery, and now we trust there will be others who will carry on from here providing the care that these children we have in our care need and even others as well.

The Road So Far

Until this point and time, we have experienced the challenge that it is going to be to carry on with this ministry. As I have been saying from the beginning, there are too many questions and the answer to one question depends on the answer to another question, and so we are left trying to advance a bit at a time in each area. One of the things that we have decided is that we will remain at the property where we are at. We came to this decision not simply because of the obvious economic reasons (we could not even sell the property at this time) but also because there would be no way to do this without interrupting our care for the kids. Not having foreigners on site will help make us not be as attractive a target and then shoring up our defenses should be a fairly effective deterrent. Over and above all of that, we are trusting that God will be gracious to us. We want to explain some of the other major issues that we are facing right now as well.

  • Security: Obviously this has been a priority and we still have not improved our situation much. “Incredible,” you say, well if you knew the story it would make perfect sense. Right after the robbery we were promised from the head of the police in Trujillo that there would be a police presence through the nights for two weeks. This was acquired through a meeting with him and then confirmed. Then it did not materialize, they showed up a couple of times in one night. There was another option for provisional added security in order to give us time to work out something more permanent. Once again that fell through, but now we have an ex-policeman who is moving into the orphanage tomorrow with his wife, he is armed and he will give us 15 days, enough time to get things set up with another company. We meet tomorrow to talk about estimates that we have been receiving and the direction that we need to take. It is a tough process especially because the cost seems to be about $3000 to $4000 dollars more a month when we are thinking about how we are going to survive with the basic needs met. We do have someone in the US who has offered to work on providing for this as well as other security measures. Right now we are talking about electric fencing and someone else from the US has offered to install it as he has done this work in Peru before. But obviously to get this going we have to get a channel through which funds can be sent. The hurricane has impeded that as the mission office that we have been in conversation with has had no power for a few days.
  • Channel for funds: This is obviously a big concern as time is ticking we would like to have an idea that there are funds coming in before the end of the year. We know that there are people out there who are already connected to the ministry here and the children, and there are a number of others who have shown an interest due to the awareness raised by the break in and subsequent need. It is our hope that we will soon have that channel in place and we will work to get word to you on how you can help if that is your desire.
  • Administration: It has become more and more obvious to us that the load is too great for one person, and Alex is trying to cover too many areas. Obviously Pablo and I are trying to step in and help out at this time but we are also involved in other ministries. We have already had a conversation with a man weeks ago who is an accountant and apparently helped to restructure another orphanage that is operating successfully here in Trujillo. We hope to meet with him soon to see if he is going to be able to give us some guidance especially in the area of the politics of an orphanage. There is another friend in the congregation who is accompanying us right now and helping us with some of the tasks that need to be done which is necessary especially while Pablo is in the US.
  • Other Issues: There are also several other chronic issues that the orphanage has suffered with over the years and many of them seem to be misunderstood as well. Yes, there are 50,000 soles in land taxes that the municipality has billed us for. Although this is in the books it is something that we have not paid and will never pay. Orphanages are exempt from land tax and it is simply a matter of them recognizing us as such. We have a lawyer working on this, as simple matters are never simple matters here in Peru. Probably the hope is that we would pay off someone in order to get out from under this cloud but we don’t do this, so it will continue to take some of our time an energy until this is pushed through. It is kind of funny (or not) but the same land that we are being asked to pay taxes on is land that other people are claiming is their land. We have had as many as three different claims against the land that we are on and we are in the process of dealing with these. Living anywhere other than in Peru you might think this strange but here there are people who do this as a business. They work through the municipality, or contacts they have there to draw up papers staking their claim to adjacent lands and part of our land in order to gain land through a court battle where money talks or they get paid off by people trying to protect their property. We now have paid the municipality for a special service that advises us when someone is starting the process with our land and it has saved us once already. We have now been put in contact with a lawyer who is a specialist in land issues. She was hidden in a ladies prayer group who are very concerned for the kids in the orphanage and she has a vested interest in clearing up the problems. The government regulations placed on orphanages in Peru has been another thing that has been a drain on the energies and economy of the orphanage in the last few years. These are unrealistic requirements that someone in government has come up with in the last few years so that they can say, “our orphanages are quality orphanages.” While in reality none of the orphanages can meet that standard and instead of helping children it only serves to be a hindrance to their care. There may be some of the regulations that are helpful but when you talk about things like earthquake resistant windows and 6 month medicals for each child, things I don’t even have in my home, a medical, educational and legal specialist for every 20 kids, you begin to realize that this will only discourage orphanages from opening up and taking kids that are suffering abuse, malnutrition and neglect. Through all of the previous board meetings I was beginning to feel discouraged with how we are as an institution, our image, but when Alex and I visited the Trujillo branch of the government agency MIMPV (was MIMDES before) we heard a different story. They communicated to us that there greatest fear is that we shut down, we are the only orphanage that takes families of children as most others have age restrictions or only take girls or boys. They said that we are the only orphanage in the area that is attempting to try and meet the regulations and that they as an office are opposed to them as they see how they are harming the care of children. I spoke to two other men who operate orphanages and asked them about certain regulations and they do not meet them and yet their orphanages are approved. Could it be that we are not just playing the politics right? So we are not doing too badly. In fact, last week they contacted us to ask us if we would take two more children. We said we could not take them given the circumstances, and it is something that we have been doing for months as a tactic to push the Judges, who want to send us the kids, to complete the documents for some of the kids that we have so that they can be adopted. The Judges are responsible for this and have been dragging their feet on this for some time. The only leverage we have is to refuse to take more kids until they do their job, and so this is why the number of children has been dropping as some of them have been adopted.

Hope

I am sorry that this has turned out to be such a long a letter but I felt that I needed to share some of the details of what is going on so that you will know what the situation is exactly, what we are up against and why things seem to be dragging on. I get the sense that some people are wondering why we are not further on in this process than we are at this point. It is a big task and at times it is discouraging but the Lord has always seemed to do something to show us that it is something that He is interested in us doing. He has used the tragedy to awaken many to the need of these children here. There are many who are offering help, often precisely the things that we need and that is great. There are many people who do not live in Peru who are wanting to do something for the kids here, but also it has been very encouraging to see a movement on the part of people here to reach out to these kids. We have a women’s prayer group who are offering everything from food, clothing and a watchdog to legal help and an appointment with a congressman. There was a group of university students who showed up with interest in helping the kids with their daily homework the day that the volunteers were explaining that they were going to be leaving. We are trusting that these are signs that the Lord is working in hearts and lives in order to continue this work and bring glory to Himself. We cling to the words of Ephesians 3:20 and 21 that say,


Now unto Him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us, unto Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end Amen.


We appreciate your concern, your prayers and support. We will be sending out more information soon as to how you can help. Obviously, the main need will be the ongoing support of the children at the orphanage, so be in prayer as to how the Lord may want you to be involved in this.

Thank you,
The Hogar de Esperanza Association

2012 Newsletters