Amor Del Nino

On Friday and Saturday we went to an orphanage named Amor Del Nino which is in between Antigua and Guatemala City. It is run by an American couple in the mountains. They have hired Guatemalan nannies to help take care of the forty-one children living there right now. Most of the kids there seemed to be fine but some of them did have special needs. Our job was to love on the kids and play with them. We blew bubbles, painted nails, braided hair, took the kids on a walk, and played tag. There was a big difference in how the kids were treated at Amor Del Nino and how the kids were treated at Hermano Pedro. Amor Del Nino was a very loving place but it is still not a family. There was one little girl there named Adriana who only had one leg( the other was a prosthetic), but her smile and giggle were beautiful. I spent a lot of time with her one of the days.

Adriana and I

Waiting patiently for lunch

Hannah and Jose

Kairos Christian School

On Wednesday and Thursday a bus took us to a town nearby where a Christian Guatemalan lady named Mayra and her family have recently opened a private school. In Guatemala the public schools are bad and so the children that go to public schools get the bad jobs and the children that go to private schools get the good jobs. Mayra has the vision to break the poverty cycle by giving the poor children the chance to go to a private school. The children do not have to pay to go to this school as the children come from poor families. They have around forty-five children in attendance. The school is made up of three small class rooms, a boys and a girls bathroom, an office/ lunch hand out counter, and a small concrete yard. They are in the process of building a new office which some of our team got in on. The school has a budget of 6,000 dollars a month and they only have 700 dollars commited. Their family lives by faith and God provides each month. While we were there we did different odd jobs that needed to be done such as making sewing samples for crafts, cutting out paper shapes, shoveling rocks and dirt, construction, serving lunch and hanging out with the kids during recess. Unlike the kids at Hermano Pedro these kids did not have disibilities and they could talk which made it difficult to communicate sometimes as I know muy poco espanol. The kids loved our cameras and took a lot of pictures( I am very thankful for digital). The kids were always so happy and seemed to get along very nicely with one another. They really looked like they were happy to be there.

One of the schoolrooms

some of the students

Left to right: Anita( a lady on my team) and Mayra

some of the kids playing soccer

Hope For Home Guatemala Ministry Trip

I was priviledged to be a part of a team of nine from Ohio, Indiana and Missouri(me) that went down to Guatemala from February 28-March 8 to minister to children. We stayed in Antigua and spent time at a hospital, a private school and an orphanage. It was really cool how God worked it all out so that I could go. My passport came within ten days of application and God provided the finances for the trip in amazing ways. I know that God wanted me to be a part of the team that went and it will be exciting to see how He will use this experience in my life.

- Kristin

Guatemala Ministry Trip '09

Hermano Pedro

Hermano Pedro is a Catholic Hospital in Antigua, Guatemala with a residence of 240 people, most of them having cerebral palsey or some other physical handicap. There is also a malnutrition ward. The hospital is more like an orphanage in that all the people don’t just stay because they are sick and will leave when they are well; most of them live there permanently. The children there are kept in their cribs for the majority of the time and when they are not in their cribs they are in wheelchairs. They get very little physical therapy which means that they are not improving but instead lying there getting worse. They do not get much interaction except for the normal routine things and when mission teams are there. They are not given real diapers but instead rags stuffed down into a big cloth diaper.
We went to Hermano Pedro on Monday and Tuesday to love on the kids. We were able to take six kids out to eat for lunch on Monday and seven on Tuesday. This gave them an outing and something to do other than sitting in the hospital. Going to Hermano Pedro showed me how to see special needs kids as people that have personalities and feelings. We were encouraged to pick one child to spend time with as it could get overwhelming to try to reach all of the kids. I got attached to a little boy named Hugo. His body was twisted and he startled easily. He couldn’t talk and would lie there and look up. There was also a little boy named Elmer that I wish I could’ve brought home. Even though we were only scheduled to visit Hermano Pedro on Monday and Tuesday some of us ended up going either in the morning or evening on the other days. When we went in the evenings I would stand by Hugo’s bed and rub his cheek and forehead, sing to him and sometimes hold him.

Taking some kids from Hermao Pedro out to lunch.

Hugo and I

Melvin in his crib

On our way to lunch