Hogar de Esperanza is growing very rapidly with 10 children coming to the orphanage in the last two months. Last December we had a number of children leave to go home with their parents and the orphanage got down to only 27 children. Since then, we now have 39 beautiful kids and three families from the US that are interested in adopting. We have an open invitation for parents that would like to adopt to come to the orphanage for a week free of charge.

Poco a poco. That describes best how the water project is coming. The people of alto Salverry have really pitch in and put in about 4000 feet of water tubing. We now have the reservoir built and the tubing in place and a half filled in water well.(If you remember we had someone come with a bulldozer and a shot gun and start filling in our hand dug well. We are close to a favorable resolution in this mater) It will only take a couple of days to get the well going, but we are waiting for funding of the pump of approximately 2000 dollars. After finishing this project the hard part will start. The people of Alto Salverry will have to get together and form a water district and come up with a system of paying for the water.(electricity maintenance and depreciation) This is extremely difficult due to the fact that the people do not trust each other.
We might have to spend a lot of time with this but it is very important in order for the city to come together for this and other municipal needs. Such as police, fire protection and health services.(the city has none of these services)

Our volunteer program has really grown. About three years ago Heather LLoyd was our first long term volunteer. She did a wonderful job and we could see that her work really contributed to ministering to the children. The following year David Alinski came for a year and helped us at the Ranch and do administrative work. Since then, we have had a number of short term volunteers doing a number of different projects. Starting in June, we will have two young women volunteers for one year from the Coast Guard Academy. Erin and Haley are between their junior and senior year at the Coast Guard Academy and decided to take a year off to make a difference with 39 children. Also we have a married couple Joel and Robyn Hanson coming, who are taking a one year sabbatical from their careers to help coordinate the volunteers into the programs of the orphanage. We also have Amy Pitchford coming for a survey trip in June to see her own possibililty of coming for one year beginning next fall.

Encourage everyone to go to our web site at www.hogardeesperanza.com and enjoy. Our Canadian volunteer Paul Roy has done a super job of keeping it up to date. Thanks for all your support,

Chau,

Dave and Vickie