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In 1995, the Holy Spirit placed on the heart of Jim Recker the mission of organizing in his church a short-term missions team for international missions. They chose as their first assignment a church building project in Lima, Peru. At least one team of volunteers were sent there every year until 2001 for various assignments, including work teams and English-outreach teams.

Out of these teams emerged a core group of several dozen highly-committed people, many of whom were eventually called by the Holy Spirit to commit their lives to local and international ministries of many types.

In 2002, when assignments to Lima were no longer available through their denomination, the Lord again placed a burden on Jim’s heart, this time to return to Lima to form a mission to minister to the hundreds of thousands of abandoned, orphaned, and impoverished children who live on the streets of that city. In Jim’s words, ” The Holy Spirit started to put the abandoned children of Peru on my heart until that was all I had on my mind. I couldn’t sleep at night.” Then in February 2003, while on a mission trip to Mexico City, he shared the idea with Chris Peterson and Art Cothran, who in turn discussed it with Art’s wife Suzanne Cothran.

As the idea caught fire, eventually a fifth member was added, Vanessa VanderGalien, a teacher who is native to Lima, Peru. Together as founding members, on June 1st 2003 they formed the non-profit corporation Corban Inc.