Hogar de Angeles
Ministry this month has been challenging. My team #Ahavah has been working with a home for disabled adults called Hogar de Angeles through the ministry of Hope At Hand. The compound houses dozens of disabled adults, and some children, with cases ranging from birth defects and paralysis to schizophrenia and severe autism.
We work in a house on the far side of the compound that houses 9 men: Moises, Santiago, Santos, Juan, Sammy, Franklin, Samuel, Ines and Ivan. Each house has two or more “Tias” who are women who work in the specific houses with the people, they bathe, dress, do laundry, cook meals, clean and care for their homes. The Tias live in the houses on campus with their home 10 days on, then have 10 days off. Our Tias names are Pita, Ingrid and _______________. Pita is my favorite Tia, she always has a smile on her face and genuinely LOVES on these guys! She always goes one step above and beyond for the guys, rubbing their hands and arms down in lotion and spraying her own perfume on them to make them smell good – the guys love it and I can see in the men’s smiles that they love being pampered by their Tia.
The men in our house are almost entirely non-verbals, so that was very intimidating and challenging at first. Only one person on our team speaks or understands much Spanish (my team leader Kyndall) so when she wasn’t in the room to interpret the Tia’s comments, or worse when the Tia’s left to run errands, we were there with the guys and kinda clueless on how to interact with them or answer their grunts and pointing. We really had to rely on Jesus to get through the first few days, none of us had much experience with the disabled but we really wanted to be of use there.
The first week was a lot of taking the guys out for fresh air and pushing their wheelchairs or holding their hands and slowly walking around campus; going to the basketball courts and playing with other residents. We would push them downhill to the bottom of campus (we are up in the mountains so there is a rather drastic incline difference between the courts and our house atop campus) and then push them uphill again to the top of campus once more, (my legs are always sore these days, haha, but I am just glad I get good exercise without a gym). Some of our residents like to wander off and we sometimes have to go chase them down and hold their hands the rest of the day, at first it was very tiring!
As time has gone by we have come to LOVE OUR RESIDENTS!!! OUR GUYS ARE THE BEST!! OUR HOUSE IS THE BEST!! When we walk in the door in the mornings “Buenos Dias!!” the guys just light up with smiles and the Tia’s too, and we walk up to each one and touch their hand or hug them and tell them in Spanish how happy we are to see them! We ask them, “Como Estas?” how are you doing in Spanish and we just start interacting with them. We have come to recognize certain habits, behaviors and sounds from each guy to generally be able to tell what they need or when something is wrong and we need to get a Tia to help. Franklin likes to stick his tongue out playfully and LOVES when I change the TV channels for him; he doesn’t even pay attention to the shows sometime because he thinks the way I ask him if he likes the channel is toooo funny; so I have a little act I put on now every time Franklin wants to change channel on the TV.
Our residents are hilarious, full of life and we have a great time together every day! We have two residents who are extra special cases; Samuel (sam-well) and Santos. Samuel is very aggressive so he has to stay in a room alone, he never wants to leave his bed so we don’t see him much. Santos is a psychiatric case who has schizophrenia, I had never seen him before this last week because he also never wanted to leave his room and would lay all day under his blankets. This week Santos came out three days in a row to hang with us!! Day one he was very scared and nervous around us, so I poured into him that whole day; holding his hands, smiling at him, telling him Jesus loved him and that it was okay. Since then he comes out excited to see us and smiles all day! I love it! Thanks so much for all your prayers and donations!!
