September 2026
When you meet Josué, the first thing you notice is the uniform.
Josué is a police officer in Cusco, Peru. On his shifts he rides a motorcycle, wears a bulletproof vest, carries his sidearm, and helps keep the peace across the region. But his instinct to protect people does not clock out when his shift ends.
The Lord has given Josué a special concern for Home of Refuge. Over the years he has become someone we trust deeply. He helps protect the ministry, looks out for my dad personally, and knows Cusco and the surrounding areas better than almost anyone. During my most recent visit, he spent part of his own free time driving my wife and youngest daughter around the city. There are few things that make you feel safer in an unfamiliar place than a local police officer at your side. Josué knew the roads, the neighborhoods, the people, and the places worth seeing, and though he was off duty, he gladly gave his time to care for our family.
That tells you something about him. Serving people is simply woven into who he is.
But before I tell you more about Josué, I want you to meet two people named Carlos and Rufina.
Carlos & Rufina
Carlos grew up working the land in Paccaritambo, Peru. From an early age he learned the demands of Andean life: farming, caring for livestock, providing for a family, and surviving conditions that give nothing away for free.
Rufina grew up with a deep desire to follow the Lord. In those years there was no evangelical church anywhere near her, so worship took determination.
The two met in Ccarhuacalla, married in 1986, were baptized, and went on to raise five children. Still there was no church nearby, so every Sunday Carlos and Rufina walked about two hours to Huanoquite to gather with other believers. Picture that walk. The Andean sun, cold mornings, rain, uneven roads, long miles. They walked there, worshiped, and walked home. The next Sunday they did it again, and the next, and the one after that.
Their hunger to know God did not stay their own for long. They began gathering neighbors closer to home and sharing the Gospel, and people started coming to Christ. Those new believers needed someone to teach them, pray with them, and walk beside them, and Carlos and Rufina gave themselves to exactly that. In time they helped establish an evangelical church in Ccarhuacalla, and eventually they became pastors.
For years they preached the Word, led people to Christ, discipled believers, counseled the struggling, and prayed with families. Carlos kept working the land while he served the church. Rufina cared for their home while she taught, encouraged, and prayed alongside him. Their lives grew so tangled up in the lives of their people that ministry stopped being something they did and became simply who they were. They walked their congregation through marriages and births, sickness and hardship, celebration and grief. It was never about standing in front of a room. It was about handing their lives to people, one soul at a time.
A Loss No Parent Is Ready For
Thirteen years ago, their older son was killed in an accident.
Some losses change the shape of a family for good. You spend years memorizing a child without meaning to. The small boy running through the house. The laugh you would know in a crowded room. The habits, the expressions, the particular way he fills a doorway. His chair at the table feels permanent, because it has always been there. And then it is empty, and it stays empty, and the world outside keeps moving as if it had not noticed that yours had stopped.
Carlos and Rufina carried that. And they kept walking with God. They kept opening the Scriptures, kept praying for people, kept giving what they had. The years kept moving, and so did they.
A Different Season
Today Carlos and Rufina are old. The strength that once carried them up mountain roads and through long days of ministry has thinned. They cannot serve with their bodies the way they used to.
Here I have to tell you something about where they live. In much of the Andes, when parents grow old and can no longer work or provide, they are quietly left behind. Some of them end up on the streets, cared for by no one. It is common enough that people barely question it. But Carlos and Rufina’s grandson will not have it. Not for his grandparents.
And age has handed Carlos and Rufina something the years alone can give. Decades in the Word. Decades of prayer. Decades of watching God prove faithful through ordinary days and devastating ones. That kind of wisdom cannot be rushed. It comes from praying when the answer takes years to arrive, and from watching people come to Christ, stumble, grow, and finally begin discipling others themselves. Carlos and Rufina carry that wisdom, and now Home of Refuge has the privilege of caring for them.
Twice each month they receive food, encouragement, prayer, and time in the Word. There is something holy about serving people who spent their whole lives serving others. For decades they were the ones giving; preaching, praying, counseling, discipling, carrying other people’s burdens. Now we get to come alongside them. When you support Home of Refuge, you help place food in their hands, and you help remind them that the life they poured out has not been forgotten.
But there is one more part of their story, and it is my favorite.
The Police Officer
The young police officer you met at the start of this letter, the one who protects the ministry and looks out for my dad, the one who spent his day off caring for my family, is Carlos and Rufina’s grandson.
And there is more. The older son they lost thirteen years ago, the one whose chair went empty, was Josué’s father. The grief you read about a few paragraphs ago is Josué’s grief too. He was still young when that accident took his dad, and he grew up carrying the same loss his grandparents carry and the same heart to serve.
Suddenly his story reads differently. That heart to serve did not come from nowhere. He grew up watching it. He watched grandparents who would walk hours just to worship. He watched them tell the Gospel to people who had never heard it. He watched neighbors come to Christ. He watched them pastor a church, teach the Word, care for families, work with their hands, bury one of their own sons, his father, and keep following Jesus anyway.
Today Carlos and Rufina receive help from Home of Refuge, and their own grandson helps Home of Refuge care for others. During my visit I stood back on purpose and watched him. I watched him hand food to elderly men and women. I watched him hug them. I watched him bow his head and pray with them. He served with his whole heart, and there was such gladness in the way he did it that I could hardly look away.
Because I was not only watching a young officer volunteer his time. I was watching the fruit of Carlos and Rufina’s life, carried now by the son of the son they buried. Decades of leading souls to Christ, decades of discipling, decades of serving, and here it was, alive and moving in the next generation. The compassion continues through him. The Gospel that shaped their home is still bearing fruit.
When You Think About Home of Refuge
Think about Josué. Think about Carlos and Rufina, two pastors who gave most of their lives to the Gospel. Think about the people they led to Christ, the miles they walked, the prayers they prayed, the son they buried, and the wisdom they carry now. And then think about their grandson, a man who protects strangers on the clock and spends his own free hours protecting, praying for, hugging, and serving his elders, starting with the grandparents who helped raise him.
That is the circle Home of Refuge gets to stand inside. We help care for Carlos and Rufina. Josué helps us care for others. And across the Andes there are many more like them, faithful elders who poured out their whole lives for their families and their Lord and are now in danger of being left behind.
Your support has never been more vital than it is right now. We have seen the need with our own eyes, and we have real opportunities in front of us to reach more abandoned elderly men and women, to put food in their hands, to pray over them, and to remind them that they are still known and still loved. Will you help us serve them? Every gift feeds someone who has lived a long story.
Carlos and Rufina may not have the strength they once had, but the life they lived is still speaking. I have seen it standing right in front of me.
Sincerely,
Raul Rivera, Tony and Rosa’s son
