November 9, 2009
After a wonderful omelette breakfast at the Vista Real Hotel, we loaded the bus and left for Zacapa. The team decided to wait to do errands in Zacapa instead of Guatemala City. The skies cleared up for us and we had beautiful blue skies most of the way. A HUGE answer to prayer!
We arrived at the orphanage just after noon, unloaded the bus, and determined what we could get started on. A couple of the men decided to stay and get started on the well pump while the rest of us went for lunch and to take care of a little business.
Let me tell you how awesome Gary, Randy, Scott and Tony are. The first task was to get chain link fence put up to keep out curious children. The Solar panels are on the roof and mainly just need to be wired to the batteries that are being installed in a storage room. They think it will take about 1 1/2 hours to complete. The well pump is installed in the cistern! Water filters have been replaced. They were able to accomplish much more than they had expected at this point.
There are 96 children here now. They range in age from 6 months to 17 years old. There are many children still here since my last trip a year ago, and probably 3 or 4 from two years ago. We could see the excitement in their faces when they recognized us from the previous trips. This is a government-run transitional orphanage where the children weren't intended to remain for long, but since international adoptions have been suspended, many are staying here longer. Also, many of the children are social orphans-they are placed here if their parents are going through a custody battle or if their parents are not able to take care of them. Many of them are visited by their parents periodically.
So today we got loads of hugs and tickles. Lots of kids way too big to be carried begging for it. Lots of requests for help to do things that they know the Gringos will help them with. The monkey bars are high up off the ground and some of the girls want help because they are afraid to fall. Jennifer latched on to me early on and took me on a tour to see the raised vegetable garden and their chicken coup. They are growing onions, carrots and tomatoes-if I was able to understand correctly. They seem to be especially proud of the chickens-as we were on our way out, another child was leading another of the ladies on a tour.
I know there's a game plan tomorrow, but I'm not quite sure what it is. I just know if someone hollers "Help!"-that's where I come in. The kids are going to be taken to a park to be kept out of the way as much as possible. They are expected to fill the cistern with water before 2:00pm when the city turns off their supply for the day.