One of PEPE’s goals is for each child benefited to receive visits every three months from the local church’s visitation team. We call this PEPE VAI, which stands for Child Support Visit. It is the church making its presence felt in the child’s life, reaching their entire family because we want them to feel protected both at PEPE and at home.
The PEPE unit at Iglesia Bautista El Paraíso in Santa Cruz de la Sierra is committed to helping the children and their families. Therefore, they appointed a team to conduct visits to all the PEPE children.
This is how Gilda, the missionary-educator, accompanied by a church leader, arrived at the home of César Avalos, who is only 4 years old and a PEPE child. They were warmly welcomed by César, his mother Martha, and his sister Carla. His father, Mr. Eusébio, was at work.
César is a very intelligent boy with good oral language skills, very sociable, and cooperative in class. He likes to help his friends by showing them how to do the proposed activities. But it wasn’t always like this. In the early days at PEPE, he cried a lot because he didn’t want to stay and fought with all his strength not to enter the activity room. He was very shy and didn’t interact with anyone. It was a process that required a lot of patience and perseverance from the missionary-educator and her colleagues, but they succeeded!
The visit was well used to share about César’s progress at PEPE and about Jesus’ love for each of them. César listened attentively while hearing about Jesus, and to our joy, his mother and sister accepted Jesus as their Savior that very morning. What a celebration in that house, what a celebration in our hearts, and what a celebration in heaven!
Now, in that house, Jesus is present in three hearts, and it all started with César, our little PEPE missionary.
Mary Luz Fonseca – National Coordinator of PEPE Bolivia
*Text editing: Carmen Ligia
*Translation: Victor Baptista
