Joy Filled Days
So for the past 3 weeks I have been living and working in Chimaltenango, Guatemala at Los Gozosos – Joy Filled Homes – a special needs orphanage.
It's been tough for me to find time to blog (and we ironically actually have wifi here), the reason being we are SO busy! Our days are long:
-Breakfast is at 6:30am every day
-We alternate helping bathe/dress the children in the morning: that's at 5:30am
-We alternate helping out in school each day: that's 7:30am – 12:30pm
-We alternate helping serve meals: breakfast serving at 6am, snack at 10:30am, lunch at 1pm, dinner at 6:30pm
-We alternate doing physical therapy: 10am & 2pm
-We alternate dishes: takes forever. lol.
-We are basically Assistant Nannies & Assistant Teachers. There are 3 Nannies here full-time — 6 in total who rotate in 48 hours shifts. They are incredible women of faith who have stuck with this ministry, even when there was no pay check to take home. I have grown particularly close with Oty, she is a complete doll 🙂
-After dinner, team time with both teams, and then team time in our individual teams, we don't usually get to bed until after 11pm. It's makes for a joy filled, but LONG day.
Because I am the only fluent Spanish speaker, I am constantly translating. Constantly. In formal and non formal roles. Translating sermons, translating medicine (that's for another blog entry), translating prayers, errands, questions, comments, instructions, everything. It's safe to say that by the end of the day my body & brain are spent! But that's the way I think it's supposed to be — we only have a month in each place, so you gotta give it your all!
But all the busyness has taken a toll on our bodies. This month my team & I have had more sicknesses than I had expected. We had a few girls in the hospital with amoebas (pretty common when in 3rd world countries — ya get it from either water or unwashed food), lots of other stomach issues, and several sore throats. My sore throat landed me in the Dr's office after I finally couldn't even swallow my pancakes last Monday (and I love pancakes!) After a few shots and several prescriptions, (Dr says it was tonsillitisitis) I am now feeling much better. With the odd side effect of some strange goose bumps type rash — the Dr says it was just the medicine 'working' (killing the bacteria), I am learning that 3rd world health care is always gonna surprise me 🙂
Working with special needs children is TOTALLY new to me. It has it's challenges, but overall has been a huge blessing. Some highlights:
-Dressing the little girls for the first time. With some of them, who don't have a lot of control over their bodies, it's like dressing a little baby doll 🙂
-Swinging on the swings with the girls (during recess from school), dancing with them when there is any music playing (even if it's a ringtone on a cell phone – these chicas love to dance), or just cuddling them (ALL of them are SO affectionate!)
-Buying marshmallows for Daniel, he is the oldest – a 15 yr old sweet little boy with Cerebral Palsy, who LOVES marshmallows. We got him some from the grocery store the other day and he was SO happy I thought he was gonna cry 🙂 Daniel is also now saying that he is coming home with me to the USA. He says we'll eat marshmallows & pancakes every day 🙂
-Watching the children pray for each other and adults. The other night one of the nannies was going through a lot at home (many of the Nannies & teachers are our age or even younger, like ages 20-30 yrs old) and at bed time during prayer and songs before the kids are all tucked into bed, she started to cry. Two of the children came over to hug her, lay hands on her, and pray for her. Little Daniel prayed so fervently that even he started to weep. And yesterday at church during the worship music portion of the service (the service went from 9:30am-2pm! Luckily we dipped out at 12:30pm to head home and feed the kids. I digress.) There was a woman of the congregation who was crouched down near the front crying and praying. Leelah (one of the children here who is 10yrs old and autistic), tugged on my teammates arm to take her up to the front. When she reached the woman, Leelah knelt down next to her, bowed her head, and sat silently next to the woman, consoling her and caressing her back. These children know God & are vessels for his power. It's incredible.
-Dancing with Helen (age 12, with Downs Syndrome) during worship at church. We've been visiting a different church every Sunday- which I love b/c we are exposed to so many different types of worship & teaching- and last Sunday was this wild, loud crazy church that had the most vibrant and colorful of the services. They had girls & women doing a synchronized ribbon dancer routine up front and even had food trucks, carnival-style out front after church. I wasn't feeling well that Sunday, but rocking out with Helen & the ribbon dancers definitely lifted my Spirits.
-Getting to know the SARUGAMI family (for another blog post). A family that God has laid heavy on my heart and has already provided several ways to bless them through my being here. Single widower father of two incredibly bright, affectionate, adorable, handicapped children. I absolutely adore them!
This is a very special Guatemalan family that I awesome opportunity to spend time with this month. I will definitely be posting more about them in the near future: Mirna (left) completely stole my heart from the first day I met her, Gab
-Bonding with the other team. My team (Team OIL) is stationed here at the Orphanage with another team (Team Isha). It's so funny, b/c even though we've only been in out here living in our teams for like 7 weeks, we've already developed these 'team cultures'. My team? Well, we don't really tip-toe around one another. We call one other out on one other's crap, we laugh a LOT, and we are borderline offensively sarcastic with one another – all the time. lol. Turns out Team Isha wasn't SO used to so much brazen sarcasm & outspokenness… so it made for an interesting first couple of weeks! Living in a 3 bedroom house (and outside in our tents, of course) with 13 people has turned out to be a LOT more crowded than living at a huge ranch with 57 people (last month). We've been challenged and have learned to share space, think before we speak, choose our battles well, and give one another some room (whenever that can be physically possible). We've also laughed until we've cried. It's been a roller coaster.
-ALL FEMALES. All the time. Not sure if I mentioned, but obvio you know my Team is all-girl, and so is Team Isha. The Nannies? All female. The founder? Female. The teachers? All female. The children here? 7 out of 10 are female (but 2 of the 3 boys do not walk or talk). The cat & dog? Yep- you guessed it. Female. SO much estrogen! But, oddly, I've enjoyed it 🙂
Sorry to throw so much info at you at once, but wanted to catch you up before I let another day slip by.
As I heard a wise World Racer once say, the days are long but the months are short. So true. The time here has FLOWN. More soon!
And here is a Guatemalan modeling pic I took late last night all dressed up one of the nanny's traditional Mayan outfits 😉 The basket I added just for fun! These are the things an all girl team thinks up to do for fun at the end of the day 🙂
