Our newest team

Here are some pictures of the team that visited and worked last week. We are so grateful for all the time and money that teams donate.

Gary and Sylvia's Team

We had a team last week of 15 people who were a great help. The men worked with our builder and some of his men to do all the inside walls of the clinic. I can't wait to see it. The women painted the insde walls of the big central room in the main house that we will use for the child development and prenatal classes. They also did some work on the dining room. Look how cute everything looks.I can't wait to see it and get the classes going.
Did I tell everyone that Mike's group paid our builder to do a simple new house for Jose and family.?
Also we got a donation that will enable us to add more kids to our incaparina program. It will also give us the funds to send the pregnant women home from the prenatal classes with a dozen eggs and a bag of incaparina for them each week. We also will pay the transportation for the women to coome from other villages.
Thanks everyone.
Vicki
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More Mike's team and the feeding program

The older gringo in the pictures is our new director Robert.

Mike's Team

This group was down at our place in Los Robles two weeks ago and did a milk distribution, finished the roof on the clinic and changed the locks on all our buildings. Here are some pictures of the kids there and soome of the men.

Good People

There are lots of good people in this world. We appreciate all who help us in Guatemala and are multi-denominational. In other words as long as you are wanting to do good and help, we are happy to have you. We have a wonderful team down there now finishing the inside walls of the clinic and painting cute kid's things on the rooms to be used for the child development and prenatal classes. I hear they have fixed up the tutorial room real cute too. I hope to have pictures soon so I can show you.
I received this week two boxes of great shoes for the kids from Bonnie and a box of handmade baby blankets for our birthing center from Laurisa's mom. They are all packed to go down with me along with the many wonderful shoes we received from Danny and his youth group. Also some medical supplies and the new walker for Samuel is on it's way to my house. It will go with me also.
The pictures are of my daughter Bethany who is also a good person. She is serving a mission right now in Italy. We miss her, but are really grateful for her service to others.

I had some great news this week. Robert, our new director, has located several children who used to be in our home. Maybe some of you remember them. Anna, Diego and Abram are living in Santiago with their grandparents and their druggy parents. Not a great situation for them, but now that we know where they live we can help with clothes, food , schooling and medical care. they are supposed to be in desperate straits. We also located Manuel, Rosa, Carlos and Rolando and their younger brothers and sisters. They live with their mom and the dad has run off. We will be able to help them also as there situation is also described as desperate. I know there are at least 4 younger bors and sis and the mom has lost a couple of little ones due to malnutrtion.
Robert was also able to find Anselmo, our old guardian. His mom Juana worked for me for 3 years and I had been trying to get Pedro to locate the family so we could help with their needs. Anselmo is working as a guardian. His two oldest children are on student scholarships thanks to Erin and fam. We will be meeting with this family also.

So thanks to all you good people and the help you give.
Vicki
http://www.casadesion.blogspot.com
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First I want to start off with thanks to Laurisa who made us beautiful blankets to give out at our new birthing center. Next is A.B.Combs school for their collection of shoes and cash that was donated to our program. Also to Kid to Kid for their great donations of clothes. We will start next month doing a clothing distribution to the Mayan kids and pregnant women.
We have gotten to the great point of having enough donations and enough porgrams in Guatemala to need to send a container down. Anyone who knows how to do this, please write me as this is new for me. Also we will need to raise money for the shipping. But I have investigated and this is the cheapest way to ship. Plus I have a hospital administrator who is building two new hospitals and has promised me equipment from the old one for our clinic. Also I am hoping for a small tractor for our gardens.
Two fundrasing ideas. One is to buy cheap banks. Dale Earnhart ones are supposed to be cheap at the Dollar Stoes. Then take 3 or 4 pictures form our projects and laminate them and wrap around the cans. Inventory and put in 30 to 50 stores. Collect once a month. I know a group who has made in the last little bit $4500.00 from this.
Another one is one that I have a picture of on this blog. We had 3 wonderful men come down for a week. Before they came they donned a Pennyman costume and went to their kids' school. They taught the children the value of reading and then challenged them to collect a penny for each page they read for the next month from mom, dad and graandparents,etc. They told them the pennies would be used for Spanish books for our tutorials. They brought down $1200.00 worth of books for our kids. I am going to try Pennyman in some of our schools along with a powerpoint on our programs. The pennies could be used for food or educational supplies or school supplies or whatever. Thanks Mike and team. These great men also did a milk and formula distribution and gave nutrition to 30 families and 100 kids. Robert, our new director, started a file on each family we help. Mike and friends also finished the tin roof on the clinic. And they brought the money for a new house for Jose. Very basic and not hugh to us USA people but beautiful to Jose and his family. Will have pictures soon of it. They also changed the locks on all our facilities both in Pana and Los Robles.
PICTURES FROM THE BOTTOM
View from the new clinic to our other facilities
Boys at our tutorials reading the new books
Two of the men who came
The clinic almost done
The clinic again
The new yard
Dominga cleaning the upstairs room
Kids from the tutorial
PENNYMAN

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Pics of March Medical team

Here are some more pics. The bottom one is the clinical team that came the first part of March. Next is a fun trip they took on Lake Atitlan. The next is the leaders of the team. One of the nurses and one of the clients.
The rest of the pictures are of clients who came to the medical clinics. We love all you volunteers. keep on coming.

TRANSITION TIME II

We have been going through a difficult transtion time for the last 3 weeks and now that it has settled down some, we have the time to write about it. First, Pedro has "resigned". We will miss some of the ways he has helped in the last 3 years.

We hired a new director, Robert Morris. We met him at church when we lived in Panajachel. He tutored our kids during that period and we got to know and trust him. He currently runs his own educational foundation helping with scholarships for Mayan kids, and we think he will facilitate getting ours in order. He seems to have a heart for the programs that we are currently running and the new ones we plan to initiate.

After research we have decided to postpone reopening the orphanage and concentrate on the community programs. With the country wanting to reopen adoptions there is much pressure to present a good face on the current hogars. This means a lot of regulatory and financial pressure on us. We have been professionally advised to do a boarding school instead as this goes thru the Minister of Education.
We have decided instead to focus on the chldren livng at home with their Mayan parents. For half the amount of money it takes to care for 30 children in a hogar we can help two to three times as many children that go home to their parents at night (and without the government hassle). The local children go to school in the mornings then eat lunch with us and get after school tutoring. They also get lessons on health and hygiene along with donations of clothes and shoes. As we have seen from recent visits from American volunteer doctors, the general health of the community is VERY poor. We have our hands full helping these children and their parents increase their level of subsistence. We have always felt a little guilty about spoiling a few orphanage children with an American-type lifestyle in a hogar while the community children were so needy. And most of the children that are in hogars are not true orphans. They are children whose parents place them in the hogars to give them the advantages that we are giving to these community children.

With the decreased costs we can increase the lunch program and the incaparina / formula programs. We plan to add prenatal and child development classes that also feed the mothers and their children. We would like to start a preschool / daycare that would run everyday. And Spanish and English classes. We believe that Guatemala will have to pull itself up by its own bootstraps. We want to provide the energy--i.e. food and other nutritional programs--and educational background--tutoring and scholarships. We have found that the school next door loves our volunteers and will utilize your volunteer time. There will be plenty of work for volunteer teams to provide the time and material donations these programs will need to get started and to keep them running.

Much thanks for your faith in us and your continuing support
Vicki and Jody Dalia

TRANSITION TIME

There have been some major changes that have happened with our projects in Guatemala and it is time I let you know what is happening. But first I wanted you to see some special pictures of my family. One is of Max, my grandson who just turned two. isn't he precious. He looks alot like my son Joey. Joey is not his dad tho. My daughter Jenn is his mom. The one with alot of peole is me and my husband with various kids and grandkids. It was taken the day of Will's ,grandchild number 17, name blessing.
There is a picture of Will in his swing with his cousin Katie. Another picture of three of my five grandbabies born this last summer. Cooper, Colbey and Chloe. My family likes the letter C. Another one of my four oldest still living at home. Big John, Heather, Scotia and Caleb. And last a picture of Will's older sister Tali.
All these pictures are so cute, I will continue the TRANSITION TIME in the next blog, coming up right away.

Pictures from Pediatrician's visit

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Donation

Just wanted to thank Danny Massey and his wonderful group of kids who donated 12 boxes of fantastic shoes. They are all great shoes and all came with a pair of socks. The Mayan kids will sure love them.

Pediatrician's report with pictures.

My family went to Guatemala March 18th to 24th. We spent four days doing medical clinics-the first In San Andreas and the next three at the orphanage in Los Robles. We had read as much as we could about the health and struggles of those living in the Highlands but of course it is a different experience to see it first hand. We read from the World Health Organization and World Food Bank sites that over 80% of the Mayans living in the highlands are malnourished. We saw much evidence of that. Besides, heartbreaking story after story when a child would complain that their stomach hurt and they would say yes they eat but it was just a piece of bread or a tortilla in the past few days, there was also much physical evidence to support this is long standing. It isn't surprising that so many are anemic with the difficulty of getting enough iron-foods available to them are not fortified and meat is too expensive. This would leave the main sources of iron beans and green vegetables. Although many eat some beans they aren't able to get the necessary 10 mg a day. The frequent pregnancies have to leave the women who where likely anemic to start with even more anemic. Nearly everyone we examined had an elevated heart rate. Likely this is due to anemia and dehydration. There were other physical signs to confirm this problem of anemia. Virtually the only people we saw who didn't have an elevated heart rate were the women who were hypothyroid. The most likely cause is iodine deficiency. This is another thing that we don't have to think about but our thyroids need to work properly-it is added to salt in our country. We saw at least 20 women with obvious thyroid goiters-they also had many physical signs of hypothyroidism-fatigue, hair loss, decreased heart rate, skin rashes along with a feeling of hopelessness. I can't imagine trying to walk everywhere and take care of a large family when your metabolism is so slow as they said, "I feel like I can't even move, or get out of bed." We felt very lucky that with the exception of three adults with hypertension we were able to provide the medication or supplement that they needed. We brought about 200 courses of antibiotic treatment and were grateful that the Mercy ship had left several hundred more. We saw many people with infections that this medication will really make a difference. We saw several children with pneumonias. They had been unable to sleep and had difficulty eating because they were working so hard to breathe. They were likely malnourished before this infection hit but then with the fevers, cough and infection things had gotten worse. I wish we could have been there long enough to see what a difference it made but you would expect that there would be some difference within a day or two. We saw many women with bladder and kidney infections. Most of these women had been suffering with symptoms for years-all had symptoms for at least 6 months. It sounded like it had started initially in their bladder but by the time we saw them it had spread up to their kidney's causing increased fever and pain and the potential to spread into the bloodstream and cause an even more serious infection. These women likely felt better also within a day of starting antibiotics. One women had been suffering for several years. She explained that her husband had died and she had no way to get any help or medication. Everyone was very grateful. There were many also with common questions parents have about their children's growth and development. I was happy that there was much back and forth discussion. I wasn't just telling them what I thought, but, I would try to explain something and then they would have many questions. Dozens of children came by themselves to ask about things-some normal and others things that needed to be treated. We were able to meet with three teachers while we were there and talk with them about things we think they can do to improve the health of their students. We were happy that even with the large classes they have they seemed to know the families well. Many of the kids complained of feeling lightheaded and dizzy when they would play. For all of them, we saw that they were dehydrated and their blood pressures fell when they stood up. This would cause this symptoms. Drinking more water is a challenge since clean water is not readily available but it will help. We brought 120 lice combs from the National Pediculosis Foundation and these were much appreciated by the families we saw. We also saw many people with intestinal parasitic infections. We were able to treat this as well and also gave out 30+ bottles of Iodine which serves the dual purpose of purifying the water and replacing the iodine they need. We gave out thousands of iron supplements and over 3000 children's vitamins. We also have out 125 bottles of prenatal vitamins to women that were pregnant and or breasfeeding. Each bottle we gave out had enough supplements for at least 4 months. We went to a couple of pharmacies in Pana and learned that the cost of vitamins in Guatemala is about 5 times greater than what we had purchased in the states and also they were not as good-didn't have 100% of all the necessary micronutrients. We gave out a thousand or so calcium supplements and insufficient calcium intake is a big problem. Lack of refrigeration makes intake of cheese, milk, yogurt etc. almost nonexistent also with the high price. So, they do get some calcium from beans and some drink powdered milk. We saw several dozen people with frank rickets and most all the kids would complain of pains in their legs consistent with a lack of calcium. We handed out numbers the first three days that we had clinics. We had slips for 487 people. We treated extra people in many families and we saw at least 60-70 people on the day that we didn't count. Sister Cranney gave out vitamin and formula supplements for at least 50 more. On our day back, Pedro called and said about 30 people had shown up that day to be seen as well. The need is overwhelming but one person and family at a time we felt we were able to make some difference. For some, it was a better understanding of a chronic medical problem, or helping to arrange for follow up care, for others it was treatment of an acute medical problem or an explanation of what had or was happening to them. For all of them I have to think that our visit helped them know that their struggles aren't invisible. My kids had fun playing with their kids and so many things that happened brought home to me how similar things are around the world. They have the huge additional problem of malnutrition that puts them always on the edge and makes even somewhat minor problems big and the big health problems on top of malnutrition are huge. I will sign off now because I could write for days. The people were uniformly warm, gracious and kept saying God Bless You. I'm sure He will bless them. For our part we left multivitamins for at least 6 months for the feeding program. Nearly all the kids had huge problems with cavities. We are hoping to supplement fluoride as well-fluoride in our country has decreased the cavity rate by nearly 70%. We also want to add calcium supplementation to the multivitamins. Pedro, Gil and Dominga are doing a great job taking care of the kids at the orphanage. We know giving them the vitamins they need will help. They will feel better and do better in school etc. We are hoping this might also be a draw for others around the orphanage who haven't yet used their programs. We know people were excited about the vitamin supplementation and the new birthing center. Thanks for the opportunity and coordinating everything during our visit. Jerrilyn

Here are the pictures that gregg her husband sent.
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