Cuy, or guinea pig, is the national dish of Peru and is eaten during important festivals, served crispy and complete with head, legs, and eyes. It's estimated that Peruvians consume around 65 million cuyes every year.
Peru has the highest sand dune in the world, Cerro Blanco, located in the Sechura Desert in the south of Peru. It measures 3,860 feet from the base to the summit.
Peru is home to the pygmy marmoset, the smallest monkey in the world. The average adult body weight of a pygmy marmoset is just over 100 grams (3.5 oz), and they can rotate their heads 180 degrees.
The Andes Mountains, home to our Friends of Peru ministry site, are the second-highest mountain range in the world, after the Himalayas. Mt. Huarascán is the highest point in Peru at 22,204 feet.
God is Working in
Andahuaylas!
Please pray for...
Key staff positions to be filled
Spiritual protection, unity and cohesion as we add new staff members
Guidance for our Families Together team
Continued protection and health, knowing that while the threat of COVID-19 will eventually retreat, recovery from its impact will be more long term
Prayer requests updated 6/2020
Friends of Peru is located in the small town of Andahuaylas, nestled in a valley in the Andes mountains. Rescuing children who have been orphaned, abandoned, or abused, we work to care for them in holistic, restorative ways. Children get to experience a loving, family-style home with nurturing house parents who help them work through past trauma. There are currently 16 children who have a home here.
Our Families Together program is critical as we seek to restore children to biological family members when possible. We offer support and resources to families, as well as ongoing assessments of safety and progress.
We recently added a staff psychologist who can provide intensive counseling for the children and recently reunited one boy with his father. A new multipurpose building gives us space for staff offices, counseling, academic support, and a meeting area. In the coming months, we hope to add a social worker to our Families Together team, connect more children to relatives with the hope of reintegration, and raise the level of care through trauma-informed training.
The needs here are many, but by God’s grace and through His Spirit’s power, we will continue to reach children who need to be rescued and families who need restoration.
Our campus houses orphaned and abandoned children in family-style homes with loving, attentive house parents. In most cases, the kids have been through difficult and painful circumstances before coming to us, and we count it a privilege to give them a safe place to live and recover from their traumatic pasts.
Greetings in the name of Jesus from the ministries of Kids Alive Peru!
It’s been my joy in this first year of my new role as Country Director to catch amazing glimpses of all that God is doing through and because of your support. Your partnership and your gifts are helping to plant hope in the lives of at-risk children, and we rejoice that this is not simply a hope for escaping poverty or abuse – you are planting the living hope (1 Pet. 1:3) in their lives that means an eternity with the One who loves them!
In the past year, God has laid it on our hearts to be more fully involved in protecting children from the kinds of abuse that are often accepted, or at least overlooked, in Peru. We are accomplishing our goals by a combination of careful training of our staff, collaboration with other ministries who share our vision and will help us increase our impact, and working with local churches to reach out to their communities with the life-giving message that children are precious.
But swimming against an entrenched culture of silence and indifference can be hazardous, and our staff and others have experienced threats, isolation and loss of relationships because of their commitment. Choosing to follow Christ and to commit to life in a kingdom-centered culture often puts us at odds with the surrounding community. Please pray that we will stand strong for children even in the face of this adversity.
Peruvian authorities are increasingly determined to reintegrate children into their biological families, a welcome and much-needed effort. We are on board! But without the costly and time-consuming investigations that determine whether and when the family is a safe and healthy place for the child, we risk multiplying the trauma that fractured the family in the first place.
We are meeting this challenge through the formation of therapeutic teams of psychologists and social workers (and in some cases, attorneys), who will do the necessary work to ensure healthy transitions for our residential kids. We are also coming alongside families to strengthen relationships and parenting skills so that reintegrated children can grow up in healthy environments.
In all our ministries, whether in the city, the jungle, or the mountains, we remain dedicated to planting living hope for children who, without your compassion, have little earthly or eternal hope for the future. Thank you for partnering with us in this great task!
Dan Anderson
Country Director
Peru
