Hola amigos! Como estas? Estoy bien. This is as far as I can go with my Spanish in addition to other simple words that are similar to Tagalog or what I learned from 4th grade Spanish, but no worries I have people within my group that can speak/understand Spanish, what a bonus!
This month is our "womanistry/manistry" month where all the guys are together in one site and the ladies are in two ministry sites since there are more of us than guys. The guys are located near the beach where they are involve in various projects such as visiting an orphanage, nursing home, doing team building projects…etc; 3 teams of ladies are in Antigua, where we also had our debrief in the beginning of the month, working with various projects as well such as visitng hospitals, retirement home, youth ministry….etc; and there's my team and another working in Chimaltenango at Los Gozosos (The Joyful) an orphanage that house 9 children with disabilities (down syndrome, autism, severe hearing/vision, microcephaly, hydrocephaly, cerebral palsy, attention disorder/ sensory integration difficulties, and learning disabilties). The children's age range from 6-19.
To give you an idea of what we do thus far:
– 4:30ish AM wake up
– 5 AM help the kids shower and get them ready
– 6 AM breakfast prep
– 6:30 AM everyone has breakfast
– 7:30 AM therapy session for some of the kids
– 8 AM kids are at school (it's a small school made out of cinder blocks located within the compound right beside the house that also invite other children with disabilities from the community to attend) so some of us has to go help out with that and others work on projects (such as yard work, organization, laundry,…) to 11 AM
– 11 AM Worship and prayers (we sing songs from a Spanish hymn book so…it gets quite interesting listening to a group of non-spanish speaking people sing in spanish and out of tune, since we've no idea how the tune goes with most of the songs)
– 12 PM lunch prep
– 1 PM we have lunch
– 2 PM play time with the kids/ therapy session
– 3:30 PM prayers and worship while kids take their nap
– 4-4:30 PM break time/ finish up projects
– 5:30 PM dinner prep
– 6:30 PM dinner time
– 7:30 PM prayers and worship
– 8-8:30ish PM group meeting/ feedback
– 9:30ish PM day over
As you can see, our schedule is quite regimented as our ministry calls for it but it sometimes does not necessarily fall at the exact hour….by sometimes I mean rarely do things fall out of the hour. It's not as bad as it looks…can be sometimes, by this i mean not rarely, but we're very appreciative that our hands are needed. We do get days off and that is on Saturdays, and we get well fed…lots of rice and beans, that is very well blended pretty much liquified, nonetheless tis food from Central America. The compound we live in is gated and a guard comes in every night to patrol the place so it's a secured site which allows us to sleep outside…yeah we're tenting it this month and i'm happy because I'm just now finally using my tent! Although the children we work with are in need of intense care, they are taught how to be independent/help/behave so we have to show positive examples such as making sure we eat all our food, include them in activities where they can help,…etc. Even though we haven't been here for a full week but already feel like we've done tremendously a lot (truth) I'm enjoying my time taking care of these children, getting to know their precious hearts, creating a bond with the nannies and really just loving on the ministry. The Lord is beyond great, believe it!
* If you want to know more about the ministry visit their site http://losgozosos.org/LosGozosos/Welcome.html
