We arrived here one week ago today. Sometimes it feels like we've been here a month and sometimes it feels like just a few days. Last night we heard stories about some of the kids and where they came from. Praise God for this Home. Perhaps many of the children would be dead if it were not for this loving safe haven.
Yesterday the paint crew finished their work and as a reward...we get to dig ditches today. The cabinet crew will finish the cabinets today, but will not be able to varnish as it's too windy. It's the dry season now and there is a lot of dust and wind. The dust gets into everything! The bike rake crew got promoted to laying wire into open ditches (surrounded by PVC piping, of course), as that became the more urgent need. School starts next week and they should have about 350+ kids at the Christian School. This is a large source of income for the Home and enrollment numbers are down from 400 last year. Some are not enrolling their kids this year because they're unemployed. Some are unemployed because their job was to assembler or sew products for the US. With the US economy down, orders are down and there is no work for them. Such a vicious cycle and for us, we can still eat while the economy goes awry but for Guatemalans, it is detrimental and a matter of survival.
Larry, Lori, and Bobby left the compound to fix a woman's gate into her home. She is dying in the hospital of cancer and her 4 children are at home alone. The oldest continues to pass out and no one knows why. Lori is a nurse and she was to check her vitals, etc. She suspects malnutrition, but of course, there could be so many other reasons for it. As she was in the home, she saw some kind of meat in a pot - raw and not refrigerated. There four chickens running around the home that kept knocking the lid off the pot and eating the raw meat. The kids would shoo away the chickens and put the lid back on the pot. There were four beds in the home and the chickens were running all over them and you can just imagine what else. The gate ended up being just a sheet of metal - which is all that protects them at night. God is definitely watching over them for safety! After fixing the gate, they used a pick ax to cut down weeds that had turned into small trees - the neat thing was that the kids got the neighborhood kids together and they took the weeds and used them as horses to gallop around the street. The street was dirt with lots of potholes and some "kind of liquid" running down the middle. Bobby is considering throwing away his sneakers instead of bringing them home.
Dan, Trent and a new friend of ours, Amy, headed to "Squatters Village" yesterday to interview some of the people for the Pastor Trent has befriended. Hopefully the Pastor will make a video to share with his congregation some of the ministries taking place within the village. The interview was about how the church was helping them survive. There are many gangs within the village and an older boy who was from the church was hanging out with the younger boys (ages 9-12) keeping them occupied to keep them off the streets - Praise God for this young man!
Many of the heads of the children we see at the school and in the surrounding villages are misshapen. This is because the moms don't pick up the babies so the babies do nothing but lay. This happens particularly when the babies are "disabled" or mentally challenged. This occurs frequently due to the high incident rate of incest. It just breaks your heart!!! There are a lot of mission teams that come to this area, yet it's never enough, but we must not give up or be overwhelmed. We must pray - pray - pray and follow God's direction for where He wants our love and action. We are here to represent Him and we will do so no matter what danger or obstacle seems to stand in our way.
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