Yesterday we headed back to Anini orphanage, which is home to 65 children with special needs. Anini is divided up into six houses that are mainly separated by medical diagnosis and/or gender.
Yesterday (at the farm) was a perfect example of how things don’t always go the way you planned… And since this is our first trip to Guatemala, it’s becoming quite a learning experience and we’re figuring out details and things that will be helpful to know for future trips to Guatemala.
We didn’t quite know what to expect for our day at the farm… The plan was to inform families from the farm’s surrounding community that we would be there to provide therapy services for children with special needs. Mama Carmen’s son had put up flyers the week before to let people know that we were coming. But we had no idea how many families would actually come. Would it be 5, or 500?? Would we drive up and find a line of families waiting for us, or would no one come at all?
We drove to Antigua this morning to meet up with the Mike’s Angels team. They flew in from Atlanta and have been here since Saturday as well. It was great to finally meet them.
We had a great Day 2 at Mama Carmen’s orphanage. It was nice to have the entire day to work with the kids there. Just as we predicted, Paige did TONS of speech evaluations today! Holly and Abby did more work on some of the equipment, and there were several moments when tools went “missing”, only to discover that one of the kids across the room was playing with it. They were quite fascinated by our stash of allen wrenches and velcro!
It’s been awesome to watch how various relationships and connections and conversations the past few months have led to this first TEAMworks trip to Guatemala. And on pretty short notice, a team of three therapists – Abby, Paige and Holly – agreed to be the first ones to go to Guatemala, begin building relationships, and assess the children and gather information in order to help develop a long-term plan for the work in Guatemala.