Well, this has been a wild week. Sad and happy.
Dilson's death was a hard, sad time for us all here. Through the generosity of Dilson's sponsor, the funeral was paid for and the family did not have the extra burden of going into more debt.
We took Cristobalina to the city again.....she is now walking and we have a video of this wonderful event on You tube I believe. I will get the link for it and post it later.
Another sad family of orphaned children joined our orphan program. These are five children, a girl 14, a boy 12, a girl 10 , a girl 8 and a boy 4....whose father died 2 yrs ago. The mother started drinking heavily a year ago and is physically abusive. She has taken to coming home drunk to their little wooden room and she throws the children out of the house. They spent two nights sleeping in the cornfields and the oldest girl knew she had to do something.
She worked and got the money together to be able to pay the bus fares for herself and her four siblings to go to San Jorge...where she knew her father had relatives. They traveled all day without eating, they took a bus, a pick up and then a truck...finally arriving in San Jorge at 10pm at night. They found their grandparents home, only to be met by cool reception....the grandparents said that they could come in, the unlces said that they were not welcome. But the children have been there a week. In an interesting twist ....the first wife of their father who had four children with him before he lleft her for the mother of these children...has shown great compassion for these children. She and her children, the eldest 23 ( and a single mother with a 2 yr old) decided that these children are their half siblings and they would help them. They now bring them to their home every day but they have a lack of space, the eldest daughter is already sleeping on the kitchen floor with her 2yr old because they have no room....so the children go home to the grandparents home every night to sleep. They are sleeping on the floor on just a piece of plastic.
The first wife has said that she is willing to have these children .....she knows that the grandparents and uncles will not make it easy for them to be at the house. One of the uncles has already put them to work, carrying heavy loads of firewood.
The first wife ( for lack of a better term) has a small room downstairs and her the room upstairs is ready to be finished. She has never been able to afford to complete the construction of the second floor ....but she said if she could have some wood planks or tin she could finish the room and the children could live there.
So we are going to look into this and see what we can do.
There has been much activity of unpacking toys and clothing....Christmas decorations going up.
The parties are all organized. I am nervous that we will not have enough toys but I am keeping my fingers crossed.
Yesterday we had one of our students brought here by her mother. She was very ill and unable to stand up. The mother thought that she had a urinary tract infection. We sent her to local clinic, they called us back very quickly and said that she had appendicitus and they were concerned that it might be perforated. So we quickly called the ambulance and rushed her to the local hospital. She was operated on very quickly after she arrived and is now doing well.
This afternoon, just as we were about to close a woman came from Santa Catarina . I was walking from one room to another when she asked me if I would help her baby. I asked her where the baby was and she said that she had left it at home because the baby has pnuemonia and she didn't want to bring it out in the wind. The baby is only 6 weeks old.
She had a prescription from the hospital for antibiotics. We are very careful how we spend the little money that we have for medicine. The doctors office was closed ....we decided to send the driver with her back to Santa Catarina to make sure that first, there was a baby and second that it was, indeed sick. ( People sometimes try to get meds to sell) .
Rodolfo and Juan Carlos the driver, drove the 15 mins out to the village, climbed up the steep hill to the woman's house. She lives in very bad conditions. The baby was indeed sick and in bed. So it is now nearly 7p.m. but these two staff members without any complaint turned around and came back to get the meds and take them out to the woman and her baby.
We lost our location in San Antonio for the pre-school....we have to move out and we have started doing that process. We have found somewhere else , it is not as good but it does have bathrooms closer and that makes a huge difference for little children.
Getting the Christmas parties funded was a really unexpected delight.....we had the first party today in Panajachel.
The kids loved it.
The Tamale baskets are coming in very slowly ....we hope that there will be more....we are keeping our fingers crossed tightly....we have 596 right now.
We are all working tomorrow ....getting all the toys organized for the Christmas parties and all the gifts out to the students.....
and then there is the big excitement of the Joel and Glendi's wedding tomorrow at 5p.m!
The clothes are bought, the suit has been picked up , the shoes purchased, the family is cooking frantically at Joel's house. It is a hive of activity.
We had cake and coffee for them yesterday afternoon after work. All the married people gave them good advice and Susie who is divorced, gave them options in case the marriage does not work!
We are all looking forward to the wedding and will get the photos to you asap.
Thank you for all you do to make everything possible!
Wishing you all a Happy Week end.
Sharon
Sharon Smart-Poage
MAYAN FAMILIES
a registered 501.(c).(3) Non Profit Charity
Yesterday we started unpacking the food for the 1,000 baskets that we have ordered so far.
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