My
heart broke today. I cannot believe people live like this. Theyare so
starved of affection and love. It is so hard to see girls my age
living like vegetables. Lord….why? Why do they have to live like
this? As I walk through the hospital halls… all I hear is your
still-small voice asking, “Do you trust Me?”
I
am currently in Antigua, Guatemala for 12 days. A group of seven girls
are staying here and volunteering at a Catholic Hospital for disabled
people of all ages.
There are over 200
residents of this hospital, and their disabilities range from being
bed-ridden, malnourished, mentally ill, mentally disabled… the list
goes on.
In Guatemalan society, it is looked down upon to have a child who is
mentally or physically handicap. Many parents abandon their handicap
children, or fail to take care of them and let them die. This hospital
takes in the children (and adults) and takes care of them.
There are so many residents and not enough care-takers, so many of them
are in bed all day, without people interacting with them… let alone
loving on them and being their friend. We are thankful for the
opportunity to be here, to spend time with these amazing people, and we
pray that through this, they will experience the love of Christ.
Kari Stembel writes from Panama:
morning we had the opportunity to go to a women’s clinic where our
contact’s church goes regularly to ministry primarily to the
prostitutes that come in weekly.
Many
prostitutes come from Colombia and live here for awhile and some leave
their children while they are gone. When we got to the women’s center,
we prayed for the people there and the people God had planned for us to
talk with and minister to.
We split up into three
different groups each with a leader or translator from the church. We
were handed Bibles and told to give the gospel message, pray with them,
give them a Bible if they didn’t have one, write a note in it for them,
and then write their name and contact information down on a piece of
paper.
Read more…
