It has been awhile since I have posted any news. So here is my latest news of  our service to the children of Peru.

Actually I am in Florida for my annual R&R. I have been blessed to return home and visit with many good friends and family. I was also blessed to travel to Reno, Nevada to attend winter conference for Reliv International, Inc. and our Reliv Kalogris Foundation. It was great to visit with many good people and friends who share our mission to “Nourish Our World” with our wonderful nutritional supplements and other nutricutical products.

Then a great week long visit with my son Taylor Scott in beautiful Telluride, Colorado. We had a very good time together.

I am happy to be returning to Peru on March 28th and I wil lbe visiting all of our nutritional feeding programs for children during April and May. April into the high Andes mountains down to Arequipa, Ayacucho and Apurimac and May into the jungles. I will also serve on a couple of Medical Ministry International missions during this time.

I am going to do my best to write more often and I promise short stories and some fotos of our travels and service to the people and the children.

God Bless,

Taylor

Click on fotos to open in separate window!

It is getting close to the end of another year for our ministry and service to the children of Peru. I want to take this opportunity to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and a blessed New year.

I also wish to thank all those who have been following our service and ministry here this year. Though I confess I haven’t posted in quite awhile in this format.

I have been using Facebook Taylor J Benson to share fotos, thoughts and stories of the children we serve here in Peru with our wonderful nutritional products that are provided by the Reliv Kalogris Foundation in St Louis, Missouri in the USA.  The Reliv Kalogris Foundation

I hope you will check us out and please continue to pray for us as we are blessed to serve the children of Peru.

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I have recently been interviewed here for an opportunity to have an article published in the December issue of a magazine in Zurich, Switzerland. I am taking the liberty of linking that first draft here for you to read.  Taylor Benson article November 2011  I am looking forward to seeing the final effort and the actual publication soon.

I am also looking forward very much to returning home to the USA at the end of this month. I will be home for three months for some much needed R&R,  to visit with my son in Colorado, my church family in Florida and to attend the winter conference with Reliv International, Inc. and our Reliv Kalogris Foundation.

I want to praise God the Father for this life of service and ministry I have and it is an amazing journey for me. There is so much to thank Him for and the greatest joy I have is to serve the children here with The Potters Hand Foundation, the Reliv Kalogris Foundation and to serve with my friends of Medical Ministry International.

If it pleases you I would love to hear from you and if it has been placed on your heart to share in this ministry, tax deductible gifts and donations can be provided through the “How you can help” link.

May the Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you!

Taylor J Benson

Founder/Director/Servant

The Potters Hand Foundation

a 501(c)3 not for profit Charitable organization

It surely is a busy and blessed time for this ministry I am called to here in Peru.

First I was blessed to serve on a one week mission to serve the spiritual and physical needs of the poor with my friends of Medical Ministry International down in Ica.

This is another of the amazing places I have been to here in this beautiful and dramatic country. Ica is a very dry, desert region to the south just east of the Pacific ocean and west of the Andes mountains. The day before our actual mission began our visiting team of volunteers (from the US, Canada, Germany and Peru) went into the sand dunes via dune buggies. Then most went sand boarding down the face of steep dunes. After this a rest in an Oasis area near a small lagoon. A great day of new and reacquainted friendships.

Click on the fotos.

I was the camera keeper for everyone, both to protect them from the sand and take fotos for everyone so I didn’t go boarding!!

Then on Monday we began our service to the poor of this area. We were helped by small local churches, some folks from Compassion International and others. It was a blessed week and went by very quickly. This was my second MMI mission of the year.

Now, as I am back in Lima the next major milestone for me is that our 4th annual shipment of our Reliv Now For Kids nutritional supplements from our Reliv Kalogris Foundation in St Louis, Missouri is here and working its way through the Peruvian Customs processes. The shipment arrived on June 4th and it should be released to me any day now. The real excitement for me is that this shipment is 25% greater than last year. This equates to more children which we will be able to provide this wonderful blessing too.

Soon I will begin a new program with some indigenous tribal people in the jungle, the Ashenincas. This a different tribal community than the Ashaninkas I am already providing our programs too. This is possible because of my relationship with a missionary group named Segadores, which is acting as our local site coordinators for these native peoples. I am looking forward to traveling into the jungle with my friends soon and beginning to help these new children. More stories and fotos about this another time.

I wish to mention again that our ministry here in Peru has grown from our wonderful nutritional products and feeding programs for children in need and at risk in the Andes mountains and into the Amazon jungle. We are now providing simple, portable water purification systems for each program and into the homes of the villages we serve, parasite medications for the families of each village, integrated health education and spiritual and family counseling.

Serving the poor in their area of greatest needs and soon, in partnerships with other local caregivers we hope to help children with better educational opportunities so that they may build themselves a better future. We believe in empowerment and helping the poor help themselves and their children.

At present we are serving in 6 departementos (states) of Peru and soon into two more. All of these areas are in remote villages in the Andes and in the jungles with the exception of a few here in the shantytowns surrounding Lima.

So I invite you to clink on the link below and, as our Lord teaches us, prayerfully consider becoming a part of our ministry and partner with us as we serve Him and His children. I am very grateful to those who are helping and partnering with us now as what we have accomplished to date would otherwise not have been possible to achieve. I am very blessed and excited about our future of service here in Peru. It has been and always will be an incredible journey of faith and I have grown and learned much. Please click here-  Please join us in service!

In His name we serve,

Taylor

May 17, 2011

An open letter to family and friends,

I’m taking this opportunity to express my humble and grateful thanks, first to God my Father for His love and gentle, patient and persistent work in my life. From Him I have been blessed to have been given this dream to serve the children of Perú. As I have walked in faith with Him I came here to Perú in 2007 with this dream and the support of our Reliv Kalogris Foundation in St Louis, Mo. by their agreeing to provide me with our wonderful nutritional supplements for children.

www.relivkalogrisfoundation.org

In May of 2008, after I had been blessed to receive permission from the Peruvian Government to import these products as a donated, charitable effort, I received my first shipment into Perú.

That first year I was blessed to provide these products to 89 children in the Lima area. They were children with HIV Aids, children with special needs, and orphaned or abandoned children. This was an amazing beginning for me and The Potters Hand Foundation. With the help of friends here, we were blessed to begin this journey and to chart a hopeful future of service to ever more children, especially in remote areas of the Andean highlands and then into the remote jungle areas.

We now serve 460 children, mostly young children of around 3 to 5 years, in 5 states of Perú. I also wish to acknowledge and thank our site coordinators who are the ones who make these daily and long term feeding programs possible which are transforming, and in some cases saving lives. Some of these people are teachers in small remote schools, nurses who serve the poor, nutritionists who manage care centers for poor children, missionaries who serve the indigenous tribal people in the jungle and others. I am blessed to be the messenger and seed planter for and with these dedicated people.

With great anticipation and joy I am looking forward to receive my 4^th annual shipment of the Reliv’s “Now For Kids” supplemental product in June. This time, we will be receiving our shipment with our own ONG (NGO) The Potters Hand- Sirviendo a Niño’s y Ancianos del Perú.

This can happen only with the help of friends here who believed in me and who have seen the benefits of these nutritional products and the changed lives of the children here. In the past we had to use a local ONG to act as receiver for our shipments for importing purposes.

Now with The Potters Hand- Perú, we are blessed to expand this ministry of serving the children and soon the ancient ones who live in extreme poverty in the high Andes Mountains. We are developing and exploring other avenues to help these people. For example simple, portable water purification systems for each program site and then for each family’s home, and  parasite and worm medication for entire communities, integrated health education programs, and spiritual and family counseling.

This has been an amazing journey of faith for me these last few years. I also acknowledge that this has been, and is, a wonderful, challenging, difficult, joyful, tearful walk. I have been spiritually stretched, challenged and I have grown much. Even to recognizing that by God’s grace and His love I continually find Him making me to see where I still need to grow. Even facing fears that have sometimes stifled me in the past and kept me from being all I could be. Facing those particular fears is essential and amazing when we break through to the other side.  I am there now. I sense it and I have determined to break through completely as ALL things are possible through Him who strengthens me. Daily, moment by moment, Quantum Faith!

The Lord has brought me to this place and to this ministry and I trust Him in all things as I continue to grow and to let go, to let God “drive this bus”. Taking my hands off the wheel is another good expression.

I acknowledge all my many friends and family who have been there for me during this incredible journey. First my son, Taylor Scott, whom I love. Our Reliv International family of Independent Distributors and our Reliv Kalogris Foundation who know and are accomplishing our Mission to Nourish Our World. Without them neither I nor our other International Coordinators around our Reliv world could serve children in need with our wonderful products.

I acknowledge my Christ Fellowship Church family in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida. This is the church where God my Father drew me and introduced me to His son and my Lord, Teacher and Friend, Jesus. Our church is all about Jesus, faith, family and service.

Over the years, before I was led here to Perú and even now, the folks there are helping me to grow and I know that I am not alone as I serve in a distant land.

www.cftoday.org

My sincerest thanks and gratitude go out to all my friends of Medical Ministry International, with whom I have been blessed to serve and to grow here in Perú during the last three years. I love you all. I’m looking forward to serving on many more missions with our MMI teams here in Perú and soon, in other countries.

www.mmint.org

One more thanks to the folks of the parent organization for my Potters Hand Foundation.   ie, the United Charitable Programs in Falls Church, Virginia, whose mission is to empower people like me to help others by sponsoring targeted charitable programs that effect positive change through charitable, educational, scientific, or religious actions worldwide. This program has allowed me to grow foundationally and serve here in Perú. This has been the vehicle and means for this simple missionary, cowboy, sailor, adventurer and servant to go out into the mission field and serve, to make a difference in the lives of children in need and at risk.

FYI, donations made out to the Potters Hand Foundation can be mailed to, or sent electronically via the PHF website, to the United Charitable Programs. The UCP handles all the IRS and regulatory requirements for the PHF. This is a blessing for me while I serve here in Perú.

www.unitedcharitableprograms.org

So this is my effort to thank God my Father and all the folks and organizations that have made this journey possible. As I grow into the future, as I continue to heed His voice and His nudging in my own understanding of who I am in Christ.

If you are interested in learning more and/or helping this ministry please feel free to contact me. I appreciate more than words can express all the folks who have provided support and who are partnering with our ministry for the children, both with prayer and with financial support. I could not continue or grow with my limited personal resources which I have freely given. I will do my absolute best to serve our Lord and His purposes for my life, making a difference in the lives of children in need.

Please feel free to send messages, comments. I above all value your prayers. Prayer changes lives, events and circumstances.

Blessed to serve I am,

Taylor J Benson

Founder/ Director/Servant

The Potters Hand Foundation

And Jabez called on the God of Israel saying, “Oh, that You would bless me indeed, and enlarge my territory, that Your hand would be with me, and that You would keep me from evil, that I may not cause pain.” So God granted him what he requested. I Chronicles 4:10 NKJV



It is the middle of May already and I have been back in Peru for more than a month. The weather was very pleasant during April which was a blessing. I had expected the oncoming winter climate but it has been very mild, cool with a lot of sun. Reminds me of a mild winter day in Florida. But weather and climate is changing around the world, si.

I was blessed to serve again with friends and colleagues of Medical Ministry International on mission to serve the poor down in Arequipa in April. A one week mission which was in the Canyon del Colca. A very beautiful and amazing place with it’s geographical wonders and two distinct cultures.

Click foto to enlarge

Click foto to enlarge

I also was able to visit one of my nutritional supplemental feeding programs in the area. A small Colegio Inicial of 3 to 5 year old children. This is in a village named Sacsayhuaman. The profesora , Margarita is our program coordinator for this program of 20 little ones.

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Well, I have been very busy these last few days and not getting this out so I am going to close it now. I have been visiting my nutritional programs here in the Lima area and working on my documents in anticipation of my next annual shipment of our nutritional supplemental products from our Reliv Kalogris Foundation. I hope to have more news about this and other events that are happening for me here in Peru soon.

Bendiciones a todos,

Taylor

“Yet, O Lord, You are our Father.
We are the clay, You are the Potter,
we are all the work of Your hand…”
Isaiah 64: 8

I have returned to Peru after a great and much needed R&R back in the USA. I was home in Florida for three months beginning right after Christmas. And after my 7th Christmas celebration with the children of the Posada de Amor, outside of Lima. An awesome time.

I was happy to be home for awhile and all my friends and church family took very good care of me. I gained back the 14-15 pounds I had lost in the previous 11 months I was here. Very good food and fellowship.

Now I am back and tomorrow, Wednesday the 6th I am going out on my first mission of the year. I will be traveling south to Arequipa where I will be visiting 4 of my nutritional feeding programs for children in the area and serving with a great team of folks in the Colca Valley. This is a mission to serve the poor with Medical Ministry International.

We will be in the canyon for one week, then I will return to Lima to prepare for the next adventure.

It is now the 7th of April and I am finishing this blog in Arequipa. I got pretty busy the last couple of days and didn’t finish my previous effort.

I will be visiting some kids today and catching up on some friends. By Saturday I will be joining our MMI team to begin our mission into the Colca Valley.

Bendiciones a todos,

Taylor

So it is a great blessing for me that some friends are preparing an evening of friendship and fellowship and we will be gathering together one  more time.

I would like to invite all those who can to join us for this celebration of life, love and service.

The location: Christ Fellowship Church, 5343 Northlake Boulevard, Palm Beach Gardens, Florida 33418- in our Life Center.

Map link here:  Christ Fellowship Church

Date: Wednesday, March 23rd.

Time: 6:30pm till 9-ish

For me it will be a wonderful, blessed time to fellowship and share with everyone, so I look forward to this moment even as I am happy to be returning again to Peru.

Blessed to serve,

Taylor

I am doing well and looking forward to returning to Peru at the end of March. Return flight tickets are purchased and I am ready to go. Though I am happy to have a few more weeks here in Florida with friends & family.

It seems I live in two worlds now and I move back and forth between them. Praying to keep things balanced and in perspective.

I have a new video of some of my programs for children that a friend has helped me put together. More like John did all the creating here and I am blessed to provide the story and the fotos. It is my first one and I hope to do much more “story telling” about this ministry I am called to and more about the lives of the children.

I hope you enjoy it. Click on the link below and it will open in a new window.

Children of Peru!

Blessed to serve,

Taylor

It has been a wonderful visit back home in the USA and here in my home state of Florida. I am certainly enjoying the weather here these last few days. Sorry for friends up north but it is 82 degrees here today with mucho sol (a lot of sunshine). So one more month for me here and then I return to Peru where summer will be ending and another winter begins. Seems I have not seen much of summer for a year and a half, since August of 09 as my travels keep me where winter is!! Maybe when I plan to return here to the colonies this coming  August I will be blessed to get in some sailing, something I have missed for over 4 years now.

But I am blessed that my ministry in Peru serving poor children in need is doing well. I am blessed to be able to share this God ordained and directed story with friends here in Florida, in Atlanta when I attended our winter conference for Reliv International and our Reliv Kalogris Foundation and I was very blessed to visit with some friends in South Carolina and speak to their church congregation there. A wonderful church family and they received me very well as I shared my ministry with them

Click on foto to enlarge

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Now it is near the end of February and I am making plans to speak to other groups as I look to God my Father for continued support for The Potters Hand Foundation and our purpose of providing our supplemental nutritional products, simple and portable water purification systems, health education and parasite prevention programs to the poor.

Click on foto to enlarge

Ours is a ministry of empowerment and helping the poor help themselves. I truly believe in the analogy that as we teach a man to fish he can feed his family; going further he then can teach his children how to fish; meaning how to live more fulfilled and complete lives.

I will be preparing soon to receive our 4th annual shipment of the Reliv Kalogris Foundation nutritional products in Lima. It is my hope this will be accomplished by the end of April.

But for the moment I am truly enjoying my church family here in Florida and many other friends around the country by phone and other electronic means. I also hope to visit with my son in Colorado but we think that may have to wait until next August or so.

Now to get back outside to enjoy this wonderful weather. Maybe a walk on the beach and gazing at the sailboats on the horizon.

Blessed to serve,

Taylor

Wishing all my friends and family a very blessed and prosperous New Year.

It has been a great year for the ministry and purpose of The Potters Hand Foundation and I want to thank all those who helped make our service to the children of Peru prosper and grow.

To recap as of the end of year we are providing our Reliv Kalogris Foundation’s daily, long term nutritional supplemental products to about 450 children in 16 programs in 5 states of Peru.  Some of these programs are for special needs children, children with HIV Aids and poor children in remote Andean mountain villages and also for the children of the Ashaninka native peoples in the high Amazon jungles.

In addition to these wonderful programs we are now able to be providing simple, portable water purification systems for each program, health educational programs and other educational opportunities for children.

We are also very blessed in that in the coming year we will receive a 25% increase in our annual product shipment and this will mean we can develop more programs focusing on more remote areas in the Andes mountains and deeper into the jungle where the need is ever greater.

Another blessing for me is that our sister ONG or Peruvian foundation The Potters Hand- Sirviendo los Ninos y Ancianos del Peru, is finally complete- complete and will be the receiving organization for our product shipment in 2011 and beyond. The final papers were signed just last week before I left Peru to come to the USA.

I also wish to mention my friends of Medical Ministry International and to acknowledge all those who came to Peru this year to serve the spiritual and physical needs of the poor. Folks came from the USA and Canada to serve and it was my blessing as well to serve them and to serve with them.  My thanks and acknowledgement to the in country team whose leadership and dedication made all of these missions possible. Thank you friends.

But for now I am very happy to be back home in Florida for some rest and recuperation. It has been a wonderful ten months down in Peru though I am sure ready to come home to visit my family here, including my Reliv International family, my Christ Fellowship family and others.

May the New Year bring you hope and promise as we walk with each New Day that comes.

Taylor J Benson

Founder/Director/Servant