This was my third mission trip to Peru and I always come home with images of the babies in my head. Fortunately the babies we saw in Chincha were chubby and happy.
One day, I was helping a woman who had a precious little year old boy with her who kept falling asleep in the chair as we tried to take her blood sugar. Finally I picked him up and rocked him in my arms as we walked around to the doctor station thinking about how beautiful he was and how he slept so soundly in the midst of all the commotion. I asked her how old her grandson was and she said that he was adopted. He was the product of a rape of a 16 year old girl who then abandoned him and this woman had taken him in.
We all hit the wall at some point when the situation overwhelms us. This was my hit the wall moment. I had to quickly hand the sleeping toddler over to another person in our group and ran to the rest room and had a really hard cry. (Yes, we had a bathroom with three toilets and running water...a true luxury!) I went next door to the dental office for tissue and after telling them about the little boy, we all had a group hug and group cry.
The displayed picture is of a different child later in the week but was just so precious I wanted to share the picture.
