Prizes for Children's Day.

Our daughter, Zoe and Mayan Families employee, Marco delivering small toys, pencils, toothbrushes and a wonderful monkey for the raffle. These gifts were to be distributed for prizes for games held in front of the historic Catholic church in Panajachel.

The Panajachel Fair is in full swing this week end, with a big harvest moon to help along the fun!

Two cute little faces.

This little puppy was dropped off at our door yesterday. She is only about three weeks old.
Our daughter, Aleeya has become her surrogate mother. Our older daughter, Zoe called her Chocolat.
Chocolat will be spayed, vaccinated and we hope we can find a loving home for her.

Dogs can be shipped to the U.S, there is no quarrantine but the dogs do have to have all their vaccinations and paperwork.

If you would like to have this cute puppy in your house, we would love to send her!

Please consider sponsoring a dog to be spayed so that we can reduce the number of unwanted animals and the suffering that they endure.

The Guatemalan September Animal clinic.

Saturday 26th we had our monthly spay and neuter clinic to reduce the population of unwanted animals here in the Solola area of Guatemala.

Here Mayan Families employees are helping collect animals from houses that have asked to have their dogs spayed or neutered.

Jonathon below is a sponsored Mayan Families student who is in our skills program.

He is very involved with the animals and helps run the monthly spay and neuter clinics.

Here he is collecting unwanted puppies from Xecotoj. The mother dog had the puppies and they are now just running around the streets.

This is the new community of Xecotoj. It is a housing community that was built by the govt. for people who lost their homes in Hurricane Stan in 2005.

These puppies were left on the street and fortunately, there was not much traffic or else they would have been run over.

The mother dog was very worried about her puppies and were they were going.

We unfortunately, were not able to get the mother dog to spay. She is a street dog and doesn't trust people and was not going to let herself be captured.

These adorable faces below were also very anxious but they are now all doing well.

They are in a big fenced area that we have for puppies. We have homes for three of these little puppies when they are bigger. We need to spay and neuter them, there are four girls and one boy. There were two other puppies but we couldn't find them.


Maria is the mother of one of our sponsored students....Maria is a single mother who loves her two dogs but could never afford to have them spayed without the help of Mayan Families.

This is her second dog that she has had spayed and she is so happy that now she will not have a horde of male dogs coming into her yard and will not have puppies that she cannot afford to feed.

We had several cats come along to be operated. Some come in bags and some come in boxes!

Pedro who is the Mayan Families Tuk Tuk driver is a new convert to having an animal spayed. He brought his cousin's dog from San Marcos , a village on the lake, he then took him home and is caring for him for two days before the dog takes the boat trip back to the village. Pedro also adopted a cat this week.

This young girl brought her two puppies to be spayed and neutered.

This woman is a widow and now a single mother, she is so happy to have her dog spayed. She loves her dog but she could not afford to have this operation nor could she feed more puppies.

Rosa, who volunteers with Mayan Families for the animal project, Hope for the Animals, brought several widows with their dogs. Rosa talks to many people in the community and encourages them to spay and neuter their animals. Rosa also feeds many stray street dogs and brings them for medical care when needed. She recently brought a dog in that had been run over and was screaming in pain. Unfortunately, we had to put him down his back legs had been severely injured and he would not be able to walk again. If it had not been for Rosa, he probably would have laid in the street for several days in terrible pain before he died.

This woman is another animal lover who shared with us the horrific story of her neighbors who buried new born puppies alive. She talked to the young boy who had buried the puppies and tried to explain to him that this was not the right thing to do. The family has moved away from the village or else we would have sent Helen, our project manager to talk to them and explain that this kind of treatment of animals is against the law and that they could be fined. Admittedly, it is a very tiny fine but at least they will know that there could be some repurcussions
At the end of the day, we spayed and neutered 26 animals. We had 8 more that should have come to the clinic but we were upset to learn that someone had thrown poison in the village of San Andres and 8 of the 10 dogs who were being brought into be operated today died horrible deaths the night before after eating the poison. Two were inside their own yards and someone threw it into their yard.

We believe that 25 dogs died so far.

The bridge from San Andres to Panajachel, Guatemala.

The bridge on the back road from San Andres to Panajachel is having a lot of problems.
The small bridge has collapsed and it is making it very dangerous and slow to cross over it.
The govt. is building a new bridge to go across but in the meantime, pick ups full of people coming down from San Andres and other villages, now pull up on one side, the people walk across the bridge and then take another waiting pick up down to Panajachel.

The recent rains. while very welcome for the crops has not been so good for the bridge.
A small earthquake and now landslides of mud have caused this damage.

We hope the new bridge will be built soon!

In the meantime, most people are choosing to come along the Pan American Highway through Solola.

Water filters.

These four women were among several people who received water filters yesterday.
All four of them are widows and find it very hard to have enough money to meet all their costs.
Now they can have unlimted fresh drinking water for themselves and their families.

This is a wonderful project funded by Rotary and has made a huge difference in peoples lives.

Bernabe turns 2yrs old.

Little Bernabe has been on our feeding program for milk for a year now. He has finally put on weight and while still small, he is in good health.

His parents were so thrilled that he turned 2 yrs old and is now in good health, that they brought us a basket of home made tamales for all the staff to celebrate his 2nd birthday.

This family does not have a lot to eat so this was a very generous gift for them to bring us. It shows just how much they have appreciated the milk program and what it has done for their son.

We gave Bernabe a teddy bear to celebrate his big day!

Water Filters to the Community Health Center.

We delivered water filters to the Centro Salud...the community health center in Panajachel, Solola , Guatemala.
This water supply will be used so patients and staff can have clean drinking water.
There are many people attending the community health center daily and these water filters, supplied by the Florence Rotary Club in Oregon, will be a great asset.

The staff at the Centro Salud were shown how to clean and maintain the filters by Mayan Families Staff, Julio and Juan.

No Rain, no food....more heartbreak on the way.

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/5min/story/1256933.html

Upcoming Event by Mayan Famiiles supporters.

If you are located near Hamilton County, Indiana...Want to help Mayan Families and have fun shopping? Our group of adoptive families will be holding our annual garage sale to benefit Casa Bernabe and Mayan Families in Guatemala. ALL proceeds from the sale will be sent to these charitable organizations. The sale last year was a HUGE success, much more than we ever anticipated. YEAH!!!THURSDAY, OCTOBER 1ST, 2009 Our location is on Wildcat Dr. in the Cherry Creek subdivision. The community is located on the East side of Hazel Dell, just South of 146th St. To get to our location take the first right after turning in to the community. House is on the East side of the road and should have big banner out front. Sale may possibly extend to Friday. Items in the sale will include: clothing, toys, housewares, furniture, etc.Please feel free to email me for more information to "email reynolds @ hot mail. com" (remove quotes and spaces)Please say "Hi" if you stop by the sale. We would love to meet you!

A dvd for children about Guatemala.

This sounds like it would be very interesting for children about Guatemala.
http://blogcritics.org/video/article/dvd-review-more-families-of-mexico/

Update on Albertina.

Albertina, who we built a house for this month so that she could escape a very abusive situation, has given birth to two very healthy babies....a boy and a girl. She gave birth yesterday in the hospital in Solola and all three are doing well!
Thank you everyone for the help that you have given this family.

Beds

These are the beds that the two elderly women in the previous post sleep on.
Just bare boards with a straw mat. Not very comfortable on old bones....or even young bones.
If you would like to donate a bed or a mattress to one of these women, they would be thrilled. A bed costs $160 and just a mattress is $45 for a double. and a single is $30 US.

Women for the Elderly feeding program.

These are two of the women who will be in our feeding program for the elderly this week.
We had hoped to have the lunch served at our pre-school after it closed for the day but we have found that most of the elderly are too frail to be able to walk to the pre-school so we will be doing meals on tuk tuks.

Marta's funeral

Thursday afternoon, on a very rainy day, Dona Marta was laid to rest. Marta was 43yrs old. She had uterine cancer which was not detected till too late. Unfortunately, this is more often the case than not in Guatemala. Dona Marta had a very difficult life. A single mother of six children, her husband abandoned her about 7 years ago and has never been financially responsible for the children or been to visit them.

About 4 1/2 years ago her then 15yr old daughter died at the hospital after suffering stomach pains. We are not sure exactly what the diagnosis was but it may have been that her appendix ruptured. Several months after that her youngest child, approx. 2yrs old died of stomach illness. The family did not have money to seek medical treatment.

When Marta was diagnosed with uterine cancer we were able to organize chemotherapy for her but she was too scared to go to the city and to a hospital. Mayan Families, through generous donations have supported the medical care for Marta, have provided food for her children and school sponsorship. We have tried to allievate the horrible pain that Marta suffered. We are all pleased that she is no longer in pain . Her youngest children are still very young, 8, 11 and 13yrs old. Glendy is 17yrs old, another brother, 18yrs and the eldest brother 20yrs old. There is an elder sister, 24yrs old but she is married with three children and lives a long way away in another village. Glendy has been responsible for nursing her mother, bathing her, changing her diapers while also making meals for her brothers and washing all the clothes by hand.
Marta's coffin leaves the house and is prepared to be carried all the way to the cemetary as is the custom in Guatemala.

Glendy being comforted by friends and family.

The procession begins the long walk to the cemetary.

Women always go in front of the coffin, single file on both sides of the road, carrying bunches of flowers

It started pouring rain as the procession continued to the cemetary. They had held a church service with a pastor at the house.
As is the custom in Guatemala, family and friends had spent the night sitting by the coffin. There is a little window in the coffin where you can view the person's face.

Before the burial, the smaller children were lifted to the coffin to kiss the glass window above their mother's face.

After a short service at the cemetary, the coffin was placed in a cement resting place, right next to the mother that we attended the funeral of just a week ago. There have been three funerals in the past ten days of mothers who have passed away much too soon. A total of 14 children in three families left motherless in ten days is too much.

After the coffin is placed in its resting place, a bag with Marta's all of Marta's clothing and possessions are put next to the coffin and then it is sealed with cement. The flowers will then be placed around the resting place on a ledge and above. Later the cement slab will be painted with Marta's name and maybe a painting of something that was important to her.