Editor’s Note: This devotional is taken from a blog entry on the It’s Your Mission trip blog.

This beautiful little girl had been at Sagrada Familia Orphanage in Lima, Peru for 15 days. While I don’t know what brought her there, it was clear as I looked into those sad, brown eyes that this world is rife with injustice. No 3-year-old should ever be without a father, or a mother, or love, or anything to cling to beyond dirty blankets.

She was tiny in her pink zip-up sweater. Her goldenrod pants, the color of a child-drawn sun, clashed with the unending, penetrating stare in her eyes. There was nothing like sunshine in that look. 

We didn’t speak much. I sat her on a swing and pushed her back and forth so that we were always facing each other. I wanted her to know that I loved her regardless of what this world has done to her. Back and forth the swing went. She didn’t crack a smile, just the same listless, hopeless nothingness of a bleak existence, and only three years of it.

I wanted to see if she remembered how to smile. I started shaking the swing, holding it up in the air as if defying gravity, tickling her, making myself look ridiculous—-anything to elicit a smile or change of expression. 

Slowly, she began to giggle, and then a smile. She wasn’t showing teeth, but a little crescent on her face brought me joy nonetheless. Soon she was back to longing to be with familial love. But the fleeting instant of happiness was enough to elicit hope that all was not lost for her.

The ebb and flow of her emotions was a battle to behold between bleak, desolate landscapes and goldenrod tomorrows. She walked around the orphanage with me, always holding my hand. I like to think she found some comfort there. The Project Go volunteers are there to be and carry the love that Christ exemplified for all of us. She needs more love than this world can provide, but she has God. I know he is there with her, holding her hand in that orphanage in Peru.

Michael Dearman is a Project Go volunteer for Buckner in Peru.

To keep up with what our long- and short-term volunteers are doing with Buckner around the world, check out our missions blog.Prayers of the Week:
-God, we thank you for the work you are doing in the lives of the children of Sagrada Familia Orphanage.
-God, continue to bless those who work to take care of the orphans of the world.

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If you are interested in submitting a devotional for Buckner Faith Focus, please e-mail lhollon@buckner.org.