Guatemala – April 2013, Day 5

This morning we visited an orphanage we’ve never been to before. We were told there were lots of kiddos that need speech therapy, but as soon as we walked into the children’s school room our eyes were drawn to one particular boy. Little Alejandro is the son of one of the orphanage workers, and Paige and Julie were able to work quite a bit with him. It was so nice having his mom right there to give her important information for Alejandro.

Alejandro gets occupational therapy, physical therapy, and speech therapy once a week. However, his mom said that because his diagnosis is not as involved as the other children that get services around him, he often doesn’t get as much attention as he needs during therapy. Paige introduced PECS to him and he picked it up so quickly! She also introduced some sign language for mom to use with him. Alejandro was VERY hungry to communicate; he just needed to be shown a way to do it non-verbally. Julie was able to leave a weighted vest for Alejandro so that he could be more aware of where his body was in space and feel more stable. Eric tried to find orthotics for him but unfortunately didn’t have the right size…

The orphanage workers were really concerned with a couple of little ones who have trouble paying attention during activities. We gave them some strategies, but explained that sometimes little ones like to have fun during class.

In the afternoon we went to Anini, the orphanage we have worked with for the past two years that is home to over 60 kids and adults with special needs. We only had a limited amount of time there today, but Allen (our contact at the orphanage) prepared a list of kids that they would like help on for each discipline. We were encouraged that children from every room are represented on the list so that hopefully less kids fall through the cracks this year. In the past, we’ve mainly worked with just House One, but now we’ll get to work with lots more kids that we haven’t gotten to see before.

Gregg and Eric developed a game plan for tackling lots of wheelchairs tomorrow, and they were able to get started on Israel’s chair today. His chair has been one that the previous teams have noticed as needing the most modifications, so we’re very thankful that Gregg and Eric will get to fix up his chair just right for him.

Paige got to work with Lupita, a little Guatemalan firecracker. Once we took her out of her House and headed to the work area, she decided to take advantage of her freedom and us gringos. Paige worked on approximating words more precisely and increasing vocabulary and word length.

Julie got to work with Paola, a 34-year-old gal who tricked Julie into believing she was 18. Allen’s biggest concern with Paola was working on her fine motor skills, so Julie was able to assess her current level of function and make recommendations of what to work on next.

We have a big day ahead of us tomorrow – we’ll spend the entire day at Anini and hope to get through all the kiddos on our list. Please pray that we are efficient tomorrow and that each person on the team can see all of the kids that the orphanage has requested us to work with. There is lots to do, but we are confident and eager to get rolling and help these sweet kids. Also, pray that traffic wouldn’t be bad tomorrow. It took us 2.5 hours to get home today, when it usually takes about 1…. We are hoping to get to Anini earlier than normal so that we have more time to work, but supposedly traffic is pretty bad early in the morning as well.

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