After years of ministry outside the urban sprawl of Cusco, Peru, MTW missionary Ruth Powlison was leading a women’s group and overheard conversation about an unwanted pregnancy. It became clear that this baby would have no second chances.

To the Quechua culture, adoption is understood as the acquisition of either a burden or an asset. Why would you bring an extra mouth into your home unless it could be useful? Why would you rob your own children?

So Ruth leapt to say, “We’ll take the baby.”

The other women in the group laughed. They could not believe she was serious, but she insisted. She went home that day to her husband Keith and said, “Well, we’re adopting a baby.”

The time came and the Powlisons brought Ellie home as a daughter. Nine months, countless feedings, bathings, and embraces later, the baby’s parents indicated that they would be taking her back. Keith and Ruth were devastated. Their heartbreak was evident to their Peruvian friends and caused confusion.

One such friend said, “Why do you weep over someone else’s baby?”

The Powlisons pressed on, struggling to understand what had happened, and to their great joy, the confusion ended with Ellie remaining at home with them. Years passed and a second baby was adopted. The full meaning of the girls’ adoptions became clear to the community, but slowly. Nationals saw the two dark-haired, dark-eyed children with their American parents and assumed that they were servants for the household. But when they came closer, they heard the girls speaking English. They learned that the children were treated as real family.

In addition to the Powlisons’ adoptions, five other couples who have served with MTW in Peru have adopted children of their own. As a growing need became evident, Ruth helped found an orphanage called the Josephine House. There, more than 35 children have been rescued from situations of abuse, neglect, and life-threatening harm.

Recently, national believers who work alongside the team have also begun to adopt children, raising them as sons and daughters. Yolanda, who is adopting a son, told us, “We know that God cares for the orphans in a special way, so the Josephine House is obeying God’s commands when we care for these little ones.”

The Powlisons did not go to Cusco to start an orphanage or with a mind to adopt as a testimony to the gospel. God started decades ago with a seed of longing in their hearts to adopt a child. He guided them to a peculiar place on the map through practical and ordinary means, and they obeyed. Through a long-awaited yearning, through faithful obedience and prayer, through the ministry of true religion to orphans in their distress, God moved.

To learn more about the Josephine House visit www.josephinehouse.org.