Guatemala. Land of the Eternal Springs. it's a beautiful country.
This month is woman/man-istry month this month, so the men and women are split up. Therefore, the women from my team, Super Mario (we had another name change!) and Via Gloria, are working at Los Gozosos (The Joyful), an orphanage for special needs children. There are 10 children, between the ages of 5 & 19 who live here. Their needs run the whole gambit of diagnoses. Some have downs, one autism, some are developmentally and cognitively impared, others with varying disabilities.
Kat & Jeremy Cearbaugh wrote about each of them when there were here a few months ago, so I'll attach their website so that you can read about the kids. They do a great job of introducing them to you 🙂
http://jeremyandkatcearbaugh.theworldrace.org/?filename=meet-our-kids
http://jeremyandkatcearbaugh.theworldrace.org/?filename=celebraciones
http://jeremyandkatcearbaugh.theworldrace.org/?filename=the-honeymoon-is-over
These last 5 days have been so long but so good.
Here's our basic schedule::
5 am: showering and dressing the kids.
6 am: breakfast prep
6:30 am: breakfast
7 am: get older kids ready for school
7:30 am: school until 12:00.
7:30 am: physical therapy for the kids who stay home
11 am: worship/pray with kids
12:30 pm: lunch prep
1 pm: lunch until 2 (this is family time for most central american countries)
2 pm: brush kids' teeth, clean up & play time
3:30 pm: kids nap, staff has worship/prayer time
4 pm: break time until 4:30 plus finish up other projects.
5:30 pm: dinner prep
6:30 pm: dinner
7 pm: get kids in pajamas and ready for bed
7:30 pm: worship/prayer time with staff and kids
8 pm: kid's bed time
8:30 pm: team feedback time
9:30 pm: day is officially over
I'm usually sleeping by 9:40. I am thoroughly and completely exhausted by this time and it's off to bed.
The nice thing is that with this schedule, as crazy as it can be, we don't all have to do everything all the time. We are able to pick and choose what to do, so long as everything is being covered. During the day, on top of the schedule above, we also have other things to do. Lots of laundry, general maintenance that includes mowing, pruning, and so on.
I've also been working on mastering the spanish language. It's been easier than I thought since it's basically immersion here at the orphanage. All the nannies speak it, the kids do, too, as do Marian, Bea, Rachel & Ann. So, I'm looking forward to learning a lot of spanish and being able to use it when I'm back in Denver!
Our free days are Saturdays. Tomorrow, some of my team is going to go zip-lining and will also visit a coffee farm just outside of Antigua. There are plenty of things to do in the area: visit Antigua, climb a volcano, go cliff diving into a lake, visit the markets, et cetera. I'm excited to see different parts of the world.
It's gorgeous here. Mostly sunny, warm but still breezy. We are in a town, 45 minutes outside of Antigua, called Chimaltenango. It has a population of 150,000 which is crazy. We are on the outskirts of the town, and behind tall walls of which most have razor wire on the top. Apparently the orphanage has been broken into a few times, so now at nights they have an armed guard on the premises along with a great, smelly, super friendly dog whose bark sounds vicious who helps guard. Don't worry though 🙂 The guard randomly lights firecrackers at night, (that sound like gunshots) to discourage lurkers who might be curious as to what lies on the other side of these razor wire walls.
With love,
Amanda
