A VACATION OF COMPASSION
In 1958, 35 year old Englishwoman Anita Goulden went on holiday to Peru to visit her brother. Anita was a widowed, single mother who owned two haberdasheries in Manchester, England. She was about to go home by way of the United States when she saw an unbelievable sight--children with tuberculosis and meningitis lying neglected and abandoned in the street in pools of their own blood. "In my wildest dream, I had never thought of human beings in such shocking conditions," her diary recorded. "The appalling poverty; the indifference of those around. I can only liken it to visiting a store and finding all the goods priced wrongly. Precious goods worthless. Worthless goods precious."
So Anita stayed to help--for the next 44 years she stayed, only returning home one time before her death in 2002, and that trip was to buy medicine.
Anita started traveling by donkey to the nearby villages surrounding Piura, Peru to find more unwanted children. Her first stop in these towns was always the pigsty, the common place for leaving physically and mentally handicapped babies with the excuse that they were of no use to their families and sent as a curse from God.
"Anita's unwavering faith in God's capacity to answer her desperate prayers for food, clothing or housing when there was none left for the children, has succeeded in providing permanent care for the most sorely afflicted and has established a good education for 250 of the poorest
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