Guatemala – April 2013, Day Three

Total we headed to a rural community where Mama Carmen’s farm is located. We’ve visited families in this community each time we’ve come to Guatemala, and we were looking forward to following up with those families to see how the kids are doing and what new things we might be able to help with.

Our first stop was seeing 16-year-old Keila. She’s been using a walker given to her by someone else, but it was a little too big for her and also a little broken, so we were able to give her a new one that is a much better fit and will help her walk with better alignment. Eric also tweaked the orthotics we gave her last year and showed Keila’s mom some helpful stretches. Paige gave her a chapter book and she and Julie gave her exercises to increase her lung capacity and support her breath and speaking. Her mom seemed very eager to learn from our team and she jumped right in with practicing all the different stretches and exercises.

Next we visited 24-year-old Benicio. He just had a birthday in March, so we gave him a belated birthday gift – new shoes!! Benicio LOVES shoes (we gave him some last year as well), so he was really excited to be getting a new pair again this year. But, we told him he had to make a deal with us – he could only use the shoes if he promised to also wear the Benik for his right hand. He smiled and agreed.   Paige remembers Benicio from our first Guatemala trip, and noticed a decrease in his drooling.

We then headed over to Wilder’s house. Eric delivered the custom orthotics we had casted for him last year. They fit perfectly! Wilder’s mom seemed most concerned with his education. He doesn’t go to school, and she really wanted some guidance on how and what to teach him. Last year, the team made some letter flash cards for Wilder out of paper. But this year we were able to give him some letter tiles that are more durable, as well as several books to develop pre-literacy skills. Paige also gave him some Spanish flash cards to help with word production. Julie gave Wilder different activities to work on fine motor skills, and also educated his mom on the progression of pre-writing skills.  Julie and Eric also adapted a folding chair to help him stabilize at his trunk so that he could stay in a good position while doing all these various activities with his hands.

Our last stop was to see Cindy, a little girl who has leg-length discrepancy. Eric worked hard to rig up a built-up shoe from scratch. This was a first for him! Big shout-out to Juan (our driver) and Joel (our original connection to these families) for being such a huge help in assisting Eric.

Tomorrow we head to two orphanages that we’ve been to during the previous trips. Please pray for::

- good health for our team for the rest of the week.

- we are still awaiting confirmation from one orphanage we want to visit – pray that it will work out for us to see those kids.

- that we would come into contact with new children to serve so that we can continue expanding our work in Guatemala.

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