Guatemala, July 10, 2013

The Chicks and the Bunnies have had a great couple of days thanks to the Recreation, Art and Music teams.  The Chicks even got to finger paint!  Many of the Chicks are getting too big to pick up and carry.  Walking down the long hall to their bathroom takes forever!  We have to put one person at the ends of the hallway in order to get them where they need to be.  Chicks are still learning to go on the potty.  Most Chicks now wear underpants and we are ever vigilant about getting them to the bathroom several times a day, but we still have accidents.  Many accidents!  It seems like we spend our whole day in the bathroom! 

We learned an important lesson.  Don’t put the pots down on the floor in advance, but  put them down as the children come back from lunch. Otherwise, they play in the pots and then brush their teeth while they are on the potty. 

Dairin and Maria Ascension go on the toilets. Dairin loves to climb and stand up on the back of the seat.  One day she is going to fall in! Yesterday, the music team came to the bathroom for music and entertainment using the puppets to peak around the bathroom door. The children loved it and so did we!  

Today, Emily and Courtney were  deemed Baño Princesses because they got the group in and out of the potty after nap in record time!    

The Rec team took the children outside for a little bit of sidewalk art with chalk.  They loved being outdoors and able to run around.  

Yesterday it was too cold to go outside so the Rec team brought recreation time to the Chicks.  They played with blocks and stacked cups. Ana Lucretia loves the cups and gathers them all up and carries them with her.    

Alex, Walter, and Rosita love rocking in the rocking chairs.  If you want to sit down in them you have to scoop up a child to sit down.  Walter is doing well  from his eye surgery though his eyes are still very red sometimes.

Marta and Sucena continue to rule the Chicks though Lesvia is assertive when she wants to keep a toy.  All the Chicks are becoming less and less dependent on help and can now eat alone and, for the most part,

referee their own fights.   

Hopefully it will not be long before Maria Ascension moves up from the chicks. She races around with her walker.  She is so happy to have it.  Last week, a physical therapist and nurse practitioner evaluated her suggested she continue to walk with her walker in order to strengthen her weak ankles. 

Gaby must not have been feeling well. She cried for a long time before lunch. 

The highlight of the day for them was watching the ducks and squirrels race on the tricycles around the courtyard.   

More about the bunnies tomorrow!  

Guatemala, July 6, 2013 (Saturday)

First Baptist Church of Palmetto, First Baptist Church of Labelle, First Baptist Church of Kathleen and friends from as far away as Oklahoma and Tennessee along with the three interns who will be living at the Malnutrition Center for the next five weeks arrived safely in Guatemala.

  

Our flight from Miami was a little rough and left late, but our capable pilots made up the time.  After rounding up piles of luggage, we boarded the buses to head to Antigua.  After dodging traffic and “chicken buses” and traversing mountain roads with glimpses of volcanoes were delivered to our home for the week in Antigua.   We have more than fifty people on this team, but with a record 101 children at the Malnutrition Center, every pair of hands will be kept busy.  We all have plans of what we want to do, rock babies, sing with toddlers, and tell Bible stories to busy little minds.  Some of us will do maintenance or lawn care, work in the kitchen or the garden.  But we all come resolved to be flexible and do whatever needs to be done.

  

People came for a variety of reasons.  Some have been before and return to the place where they left a little piece of their heart.  Or a big piece in some cases!  This may be their first time, but they have heard someone else speak passionately about the children and the nannies, the

country and the needs.    Or they felt the Holy Spirit whispering in their ear to go, to see, to take that leap of faith and do something out of the ordinary.  We come from more than six different churches  from around the country, but we will have so much in common by the end of the week.  Memories shared, hearts broken, friends who do not speak the same language as we do, new children that are “ours”.

    

One of the best things about going on a mission trip is watching the team come together as one.  A group of strangers who will be brothers and sisters by the end of the week.  Another great thing is watching people’s perspectives change.  What once was important at home, no longer is a priority when faced with the difficulties that some of the Guatemalan people live with daily.  For one week, we will set aside all the things that we think we need to survive to serve people who know the struggle of survival.  We will also learn the true measure of a servant as instead of serving, we will discover that the Guatemalan people understand the true definition of servanthood.  

If you are longing for something different, if you are seeking God’s face, it is time to sign up for your own mission week.  There are opportunities all around the world.   And people just waiting for you!  Come join us in serving Christ with Orphan’s Heart and find that it is you who will be changed.

     

HOME SWEET HOME IN HONDURAS!

BEFORE...

 

 

AFTER...

Grandmother Ampara, Mother Yesenia, and baby Dariela are so proud of their new home!

 

As mentioned in an earlier blog post, an ORPHAN'S HEART construction team was in Honduras last month building homes for families in need.  As you can see, the homes have been completed, and the families have moved in!  What a rewarding sight to see! 

 

In this ministry, ORPHAN'S HEART is partnering with Wellspring of Life and Food for the Poor, who matches dollar for dollar the funds needed to build a safe and secure home for a family.  In addition, ORPHAN'S HEART gives above the cost of the home to provide bedding for the children, as shown in the picture above.

 

Check out our website www.orphansheart.org to see the many places where ORPHAN'S HEART is working and where you can use the gifts and skills that God has given you to be a blessing to others!  Come join us in sharing the love of Christ with a world in need! 

 

 

HONDURAS - Wednesday, 9/26/12

Day 4 - Wednesday:  

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord:  

We didn’t get to the pouring of the slabs today.  We moved many wheelbarrow loads of fill for the foundations.  We have learned that the work usually progresses and is measured by standards to which we are unaccustomed back in Milton or elsewhere on construction projects we have undertaken back in the States.  We are reminded that we are here to “let our light shine” by serving the people of Honduras as God prefers, which is different than showing them how we prefer to serve.  

This afternoon before we left to go back to the hotel, we had the opportunity to visit and pray with a lady who had lost her father recently.  We prayed for God’s peace, comfort and provision for the lady and her family.  While at the lady’s home, we witnessed the residents of the village working together along their dirt street to install the first plumbing system in the history of the village again with tools we would consider primitive. (It was just March of this year that the village first had the luxury of electricity.) 

Earlier in the day we had experienced digging a footer in the ground for a small front porch that each home will have across the front.  The black ground was as hard or harder than any hard pan soil most of us had ever seen.  It was so hard that a pick ax was required to break it up before we could even dent it with a shovel that creaked and bent as we pried at the earth.  

The focus and determination of the residents to make their village a better place to live is remarkable and heartwarming.  Whether or not we get to pour a slab tomorrow, we pray that our final day in the village will bring glory to God and be a testimony to the love of Christ in our lives.

HONDURAS - Day 3

Day 3 - Tuesday:  Food for the Families:

We arrived at the work site today to find that the 3^rd house had the block work finished by the nationals.  Quite a blessing that allowed us to jump right into the main task of the day – completing and compacting the fill for the foundations of homes 1 and 2 by shovel and wheelbarrow. 

The highlight of the day was the food gifts that were given to each of the 30 families of the village.  Each family received 20 lbs corn meal, 5 lbs rice, 10 lbs beans and a supply of cooking lard. We could see that the families were very grateful as they gathered under the weathered, palm branch covered bamboo shelter to receive the food.  The shelter was located in the same pasture where the children had played soccer on Sunday.  It was a special time when we all gathered together under the shelter to bless the food before helping the women carry their food back to their homes.   

Tomorrow we hope to begin mixing and pouring the concrete for the floors of each home.  

God is so good!

 

 

 

 

 

HONDURAS HAPPENINGS!

Day 1 - Sunday:  Letting Our Light Shine 5-Gallon Buckets at a Time: 

We began work in the village of El Doradito.  We had to move yards and yards of a rock and clay mix fill into the foundations using shovels and 5-gallon buckets.  Two wheel-barrows were brought to the site later in the morning.  Work processes here are primitive by most standards.   We quickly grasped the block wall construction methods and worked together to set the blocks for 1 house and half of another.  The highlight of the day was the afternoon church service in the backyard of one of the village resident’s home.  Bob, Ron, David, Blackie, Robert, Rick and Hunter shared with the villagers, with Bob’s 13 year-old son Mauricimo translating.  At the end of the service the residents gathered around us and prayed over us in Spanish, with Mauricimo translating to English.  The children of the village played soccer in a pasture near the work site.

Day 2 - Monday:  Getting to Know Each Other:  

We worked closely with the volunteers from the village again today.  We finished the two-thirds of the block walls on the third house today.  The men and women of the village contribute labor to the construction of each other’s homes.  We work with them in addition to paid construction workers, for which certain aspects of the construction are reserved.   During the course of our work, we have the opportunity to share and get to know the village residents and construction workers while we work alongside each other.  It is a blessing to see bonds being formed between the team and the residents despite the language barrier.   They are very patient with us as we grasp bits and pieces of their language, culture and construction methods.   Hard work is appreciated by all and seems to overcome most barriers.  We handed out the tape measures to the workers that were donated by John and Alice Guidy.  Blackie gave away his hammers and extra gloves today as did several other members of the team.   The hotel where we are staying in San Pedro Sula is very nice.  The evening meals and comfortable rooms at the hotel are very much appreciated after a hard day’s work in the heat of the Honduran climate.  We share WOWs and prayer requests after dinner each night.