Rich & Ramona Wagner

We were given a baby today.  She was given to us in a dirty diaper, wrapped in a smelly blanket.  Her name is Evelin.  She is four weeks old, and was born several weeks early.  Evelin is the result of a 14-year-old Quechua girl being raped.  Normally, the baby would have been sold or left to die.  We have been lobbying since her birth to either let a local Christian couple adopt her, or let us take care of her in our MTW orphanage here in Cusco.  Today the family decided to give her to us.  She didn’t even have a name until today.

I met with the family at our MTW clinic so that we could have her health assessed.  She is underweight and hasn’t had any of the shots she needs.  It was the first time she had been to a doctor.  I came away with the baby, and a long list of medical tests, shots and formula that she needs.  She appears healthy, besides having been born early and underweight.  The tests are just to make sure she is physically fine.  All the children we will take in will have a medical evaluation first thing so that we know how to care for them.  Tomorrow we will make sure she gets all the medical work she needs.

After prying the baby away from Ramona, we will place her with a Christian couple that we work with at our orphanage.  They are  . . . . country people.  A picture of their kitchen floor is on Photobucket.  Don’t worry, this is culturally normal.  We personally will keep our guinea pigs outside the house in a pen.  It’s just normal here to keep them on the kitchen floor. 

The orphanage just became legal last week.  We have all of our paperwork approved and we got it all done just in time.  Evelin is our first baby.  You can see her on the “Wagnersinperu” Photobucket page I have linked to at the end of this letter.

Last weekend Ramona and I surveyed some rural villages on our new Honda Bushlander.  On a very rural road we found a man selling pottery.  It turned out that he is a new Christian, speaks Quechua & Spanish, and wants to tell his family and friends about the Christ who has changed his life.  But he didn’t know how to do it.  So we are planning on packing up the generator, the Jesus Film and everything else we take on trips like this, and traveling back into the rural mountains to his home village next week.  Please pray for our trips like this.  Many times it is the first introduction to Jesus that people will have.

Please pray for Evelin and how we can best minister to her needs.  It is an encouragement to me that we can finally do something about the unwanted babies that we come across in our ministry.  Over and over, in Colombia and Mexico, we saw babies allowed to die because “they are just Indian babies.”  We were expected to understand that statement, but I never have.   I pray that I never will.

Thank you for your prayers, and your financial support.  They are very encouraging to us.  If you would like to be involved financially in taking care of unwanted Quechua children you can give to Project # 94721, the Josephine house/Cusco mercy ministry.

Lord Bless,

Rich & Ramona Wagner
MTW Hinterlands Ministry
Cusco Peru

http://s227.photobucket.com/albums/dd146/WagnersinPeru/