A Bovine Christmas Blessing

About an hour outside Cusco, Peru sits Hogar Mercedes de Jesus Molina, a rural orphanage for 19 girls run by the Marianita Sisters. The sisters also run a feeding center, providing nutritious meals five days a week for about 90 needy children from the surrounding neighborhood.

To feed all those kids, the sisters get in-kind food donations such as rice, canned fish, dried meat, beans and vegetable oil from the local authorities; and the girls grow vegetables including peas, tomatoes, lettuce, and beans. The sisters also raise ducks and chickens. What they didn’t have were cows to provide daily milk for all the children. So late last year, Cross International Catholic Outreach bought them two cows.

Well, they just e-mailed us a delightful pdf Christmas card with a photo of all the girls. In the body of their e-mail they announced that one of the cows, Reinita (Little Queen), will deliver a calf soon! As Claudio, our project officer, put it when he read the news: “Our gifts keep on giving…”

Click here to learn more about our work in Latin America.