My experience

By Sherry Rettinger

This entire week was very exciting! We all had several experiences that brought us closer to the children and closer to the Lord. Heather and I spent our mornings in the Tikari casa with forty 12-15 year old girls, teaching them about salvation and showing the love of Christ to them. We stressed to them that it is faith in Jesus Christ dying for our sins that gets us to Heaven and nothing that we can do for ourselves. Also, we made sure they are aware that there is no sin too bad that will cause them to lose their salvation, nor is there anything God will not forgive. All of these things were completely against the beliefs they had been taught their whole lives, but the girls were hungry for the truth. We saw ten girls in our casa come to Christ, and many more that were not quite ready to make that decision, and are very excited to see how they will now grow with the Lord. Lauren holds a new Christians’ class to continue to disciple to them. It is very exciting to imagine how those ten girls can impact their world in the future!

Our last day at the Orphanage was on Friday. That day, before we said goodbye to the older children, Shawn, Gavin, and I went to the baby house to deliver some baby blankets and clothing and say goodbye to the babies. We also had some small gifts of a candy bar, some hair ties, and a puzzle book for the casa mothers there. Four women run that house which is an incredibly big job since there are about thirty small children ranging from six months to two years old. Once we got there, we gave the gifts to Olinda (one of the house mothers) who was so very thankful to us. I then started looking for other things in my backpack to give her. I had some baby wipes and kleenex that I did not need, so I gave them to her (since they did not have any there). Then I came across the Spanish Bible I had been using all week during our small group time. We had already given Bibles to the older children and their casa mothers but had not in this house. So, I gave that Bible to her. She hugged the Bible to her chest, started crying and said Thank you (in Spanish) over and over to me. Then she came and hugged me and we cried together. I felt so blessed to be the one to give her this gift and I am so thankful that we were able to bring Bibles to the community. We tend to take for granted that we have Bibles available to us everywhere, yet there are many in the world who do not.

On Saturday, we had some free time before getting on the plane that evening. Several of us went to the square downtown to look around. I took a tour at the Cathedral de San Francisco, which is the oldest church in Peru. The church is filled with statues, paintings and carvings of Jesus, Mary and other catholic saints. This idolatry opened my eyes to the dangers of Catholicism. All of the catholics in Peru pray and bow down to these images every day, thinking that will get them to heaven. We also visited the underground catacombs where over 200,000 people had been buried. The tour guide explained to us that the richest people were placed directly under the statues of saints, the middle class were next, and then the poor were on the outskirts. She also said everyone wanted to be buried under the church because the closer their dead bodies were to the saints and the church, the closer they were to Heaven. The most shocking thing to me was that there were several passages of scripture from the book of John posted throughout the catacombs. One was John 14:6 “Jesus saith unto him ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life; no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.” They have the truth right in front of them, yet they have complicated salvation to include works! The great deceiver is very hard at work there.

Thank you all so much for allowing me the opportunity to visit with these wonderful children and share the gospel. I saw God at work there and I know there are many more blessings to come. I can’t wait to go back!