Well our intern survived the operation but he has had some trouble with infection. He is still in the hospital.
It makes it ####### everyone as he is very needed at the lake orphanage. Our 16 year old who was gang raped had tests done and is not pregnant. Three of our girls have gone home. A 13 year old named Jenny who was trouble for her mom so her mom sent her to us. We had no problems with her and now the courts have sent her home. Two others 11 and 8, who were sent to us because they said the mom was using them for prostitution. Hope the courts knew what they were doing in sending them home.
We have been looking into the possibility of taking malnourished infants and babies. I am working with a facility in El Salvador who has been taking them for 20 years. They have had 800 children run thru their facility and only 8 have died. They are going to teach us how to work with this population of children.
We are also considering taking HIV pos. kids.
Everything tho reguires money. The van needs new tires and an alignment job and I just sent $2000.00 in salaries today, not to mention the money for the electric bill and food.
The good news is we have two men who have volunteered to go and make us a hugh garden area where we can grow baically all the food the kids will eat. They go down the end of Aug as does my family.
Vicki
http://www.safehomesforchildren.org

Well our intern survived the operation but he has had some trouble with infection. He is still in the hospital.
It makes it ####### everyone as he is very needed at the lake orphanage. Our 16 year old who was gang raped had tests done and is not pregnant. Three of our girls have gone home. A 13 year old named Jenny who was trouble for her mom so her mom sent her to us. We had no problems with her and now the courts have sent her home. Two others 11 and 8, who were sent to us because they said the mom was using them for prostitution. Hope the courts knew what they were doing in sending them home.
We have been looking into the possibility of taking malnourished infants and babies. I am working with a facility in El Salvador who has been taking them for 20 years. They have had 800 children run thru their facility and only 8 have died. They are going to teach us how to work with this population of children.
We are also considering taking HIV pos. kids.
Everything tho reguires money. The van needs new tires and an alignment job and I just sent $2000.00 in salaries today, not to mention the money for the electric bill and food.
The good news is we have two men who have volunteered to go and make us a hugh garden area where we can grow baically all the food the kids will eat. They go down the end of Aug as does my family.
Vicki
http://www.safehomesforchildren.org

Sorry about no posts for the last week, but we have been on vacation. A great week at a music camp. The city orphanage got two more boys ages 10 and 11 on Saturday. Our intern at Lake Atitlan had to go to the hospitalito in Santiago yesterday. They think he has appendicitis and he is on his way to Guatemala City to the hospital there. The poor young man has only been in Guatemala since May and already he has been roobed along with my son and daughter. They were held up by 6 men in a pick-up with machine guns. Now CJ is on his way to the city for an emergency operation.
The house we rent in Guatemala City is being sold, but we have found a much larger, nicer on only a few blocks away. The rent tho will now be $1300.00 instead of $800.
Vicki
http://www.safehomesforchildren.org

We have 3 girls at the orphanage that need glasses. We are trying to wait for an American vision team who can do the work for free. Hope Alliance is sending a team to the lake orphanage in Aug. so that is when we will have it done. We also have 2 girls who want to take computer classes. We sure could use sponsors for them and all our other kids. It helps the children to feel like they have a special person. Our children have been thru so much. Almost all the girls and most of the boys have been sexually molested. At least with us we know they are safe.
http://www.safehomesforchildren.org

At the lake orphanage we received an 11 boy. His mom didn't want to raise him so she left him with his aunt and uncle who didn't want him either. They brought him to the court in Solola. So sad. We now have 12 children there. They are all enrolled in schools except the younger ones. We received sisters 6 and 10 at the city orphanage. I don't know their story. We also got called this week about taking 2 pregnant girls. We are up to 26 at the city. It is harder to get them in school there as the schools give us the run around. I am going to move Byron,12, and Luis,14, out to the lake. We have alot more land at the lake to run around on. And we can get them going in school.
http://www.safehomesforchildren.org

I ordered 15 sets of bunkbeds yesterday. Today my husband went over the books and said we need to start fundraising to take any more kids. Our business has basically been financially supporting the orphanage but it has reached it's capacity. And I don't want to quit taking kids that need a place to live because of the finances.
Any ideas or help would be much appreciated.
A woman called today asking us to take 2 pregnant girls. She didn't give many details so we had our head nanny look into it more.

We have to buy 15 more sets of bunkbeds for the two orphanages. We are full up bed wise. With this many beds we are good to go for a while. Our social wok intern is visiting more courts in areas where there are no orphanages. We are also looking into a program to take malnourished infants. Claribel and Sindy want to take a computer classes if anyone wants to sponsor them for this. Sindy was the 16 who was gang raped the morning before she came into our care. Claribel is 11 and was taken from her mom when the neighbors reported she was used for child prostitution.
All you gardeners: we are trying to get organic four square gardens going for our orphanage. We have plenty of garden space for this. Would anyone like to donate for the materials.?

Two of our girls, Jackie age 7 and Stephine age 8 went to court last week. I was so afraid they would be sent home to their mama. They have been with us for 3 years and came to us from the hospital because of rapes by mama's live in boyfriend. The courts decided to leave them with us while the do an investigation to see if mama is still seeing this man. She has been for 3 years now. What is going to stop her. I am afraid she will just get more secretive or the investigator will do a slack job. Jackie has the most beautiful voice. I would like to give her voice lessons. Sure hope they stay with us.