Nuestros Pequenos Hermanos - Guatemala

Thursday started with a bang. Neighbors to the orphanage figured they had waited long enough and began popping off mortar rounds at around 5 AM.  Guatemalans do love their fireworks this time of year.

Jan Leiritz, the director of the orphanage stopped by at about 7:45 and for the next three hours we talked about the orphanage. Jan was born and raised in East Germany, his father was career military as were many others in his family. He had a different calling. Nine years ago came to Guatemala, met his wife Maria Jose and says he can't imagine ever leaving the children. He became National Director for NPH Guatemala three years ago. Did I mention he's like 6 foot 7?

Jan Leiritz

NPH Guatemala has 350 children who live on campus in Parramos, and another 130 who are either attending High School or College. Their college bound batting average is spiking next year going from 6 to 18. Impressive numbers. The on-site school is held in higher regard than the local schools attracting children from the local community attend. Most walk one hour each way with only one tortilla for the day -- the value of a good education is clearly understood. Additionally NPH has five vocational training programs: sewing, baking, cooking, metal working and wood working. NPH stresses vocational training at all of the 9 of their orphanages.

They have 100 children in K-6 and another 150 or so in 7-9 and vocational. Vocational training starts when children reach 12 years of age.

The Montessori school has 45 children. Finances come from Holland, and along with Harriett Neidermeyer (a German national who runs the program) there are four Guatemalan teachers. One of the teachers had been an orphan at NPH! The facilities are amazing.

Montessori School 

Their high school students live in houses run by the orphanage in Chimaltenango, Guatemala. Each house has tios (uncles) or tias (aunts) who oversee the children. But in a hallmark of NPH's model, they are constantly striving toward self sufficiency. The children are responsible for life skills as basic as getting to school, washing their clothes, and cooking their own food.

While the orphanage is situated on only 17 acres, they do an amazing job of growing half of the vegetables they need on site. The green houses and fields are first rate.  They have a herd of goats and four cows for milk and cheese. The main source of meat are the pigs they raise. The hen population provides all the eggs, and they make bread in their bakery for the children at the orphanage. Having a bakery operation on site for vocational training has it's benefits. A german baker comes over several times a year to train and bake. Locals hear about his coming and actually place orders for their brown bread!

Tomatoes in the Green House

Lettuce you can drool over

They have a medical clinic on site with a doctor and four nurses. As part of the training program in Guatemala, future dentists must give a year of service, the orphanage benefits by having on site basic dental care.

We were just as impressed by NPH Guatemala as we were by NPH Honduras. We also learned something new. There is a program run by the European Union called SES or Senior Expert Service. Through the program experts in everything you can think of sign up when they near retirement at age 60. SES then takes requests from places like NPH and lines up the expert they need to visit. One psychologist, Ruth, comes on a frequent basis to train Guatemalan employees on basic therapy techniques for handling the children's psychological needs. For example, they have started group therapy with the girls.

The World Orphan Fund will consider a proposal from NPH to expand their agricultural production and create an agricultural vocational program at the orphanage. We're excited by the possibilities.

After NPH we headed to Hogar Madre Anna Vitiello. More about then in our next post.

Welcome to Guatemala

Wednesday

3AM. The first miracle -- I'm out the door on time to catch my flight in Milwaukee.  Out of darkness of Interstate 94 I was greeted by a billboard I had never seen before. It simply said "Children are a gift from God." Talk about your signs, even I could get that one.

I had to run through the Atlanta airport to catch my flight where two of our directors were waiting. Thankfully Brenda had texted me the gate number. I was at Terminal B and needed to be at Terminal E. Brenda and her husband Phil had flown in from Minneapolis the night before and had a rough go of it. Radical turbulence and lot's of throwing up. They got to the airport at 1:30 in the morning and spent the night there - figuring it didn't make much sense to pay for a hotel room for maybe 3 hours sleep.

As the plane winds through the mountains on the approach to the airport in Guatemala City you can't help but feel you're about to enter a very special and beautiful place. Plus I'm seriously happy for the warmth, it was 12 degrees when I left Wisconsin.

We weren't entirely sure our NPH contact would be at the airport. When things are settled in this part of the world, you don't get that familiar American reassurance of "see you tomorrow." We walked out the door after customs to a huge roped off crowd. Some had signs, but no NPH. We called the orphanage, couldn't find anyone who spoke english. I started calculating which of the 20 people Then I finally saw the piece of paper in the crowd.

The drive to Parramos took about an hour. We were surprised to find that the orphanage had hot food waiting for us in the volunteer house (casa voluntario), and soon Jan Leiritz, the director appeared at the door. He's a big man, but has a charming german accent and an air of humbleness about him. He introduced us to Cesario who speaks english and took us on a tour. Cesario came to the orphanage when he was 8 years old. He's 22 now and says he came back to help his brothers. I've always been struck by how NPH homes stress they are one big family. Here at NPH, that family is 350 kids. More about the orphanage tomorrow.

16 Days - 12 Orphanages

A team from the World Orphan Fund will arrive tomorrow at Nuestros Pequenos Hermanos in Parramos, Guatemala. It will be our second time at the Orphanage and the first of twelve orphanages we will visit over the next sixteen days.

Following NPH, we will visit eleven additional orphanages in Guatemala and Honduras: 

• HogarMadre Anna Vitiello Orphanage in Sumpango, Guatemala
• Mama Carmen Orphanage, in San Lucas Sacatepequez, Guatemala
• Rayo de EsperanzaOrphanage in Rio Dulce, Guatemala
• Hogar El Refugio Internacional in Naco, Honduras
• Nueva Esperanza in San Pedro Sula, Honduras
• Good Samaritan, San Pedro Sula
• El Refugio Aldea de Ticamaya, Honduras
• Our Little Roses, San Pedro Sula
• Hogar de Ninos de Emmanuel, San Pedro Sula
• Hogar Suyapa in El Progresso, Honduras
• Orphanage Emmanuel in Guaimaca, Honduras

Keep can track our progress as we post stories and pictures here and on our Facebook page.  

The Christmas Orange

I'd like to tell you a story my grandmother told me when I was six or seven years old. We had gone to her home for Thanksgiving dinner and the drive was rather a long one. I had filled the time with making a list of all the things that I wanted for Christmas that year.

Later that evening after I was ready for bed, I showed the list to my grandmother. After she read it, she said, "My goodness, that really is a long list!" Then she picked me up and set me on her lap in the big rocking chair and told me this story:

"Once there was a little girl who came to live in an orphanage in Denmark" (Now my grandmother was from Denmark, so this story might even be true.) "As Christmas time grew near, all of the other children began telling the little girl about the beautiful Christmas tree that would appear in the huge downstairs hall on Christmas morning. After their usual, very plain breakfast, each child would be given their one and only Christmas gift: a small, single orange."

At this point I looked up at my grandmother in disbelief, but she assured me that was all each child would receive for Christmas.

"Now the headmaster of the orphanage was very stern and he thought Christmas to be a bother. So on Christmas Eve, when he caught the little girl creeping down the stairs to catch a peek at the much-heard-of Christmas tree, he sharply declared that the little girl would not receive her Christmas orange because she had been so curious as to disobey the rules. The little girl ran back to her room broken-hearted and crying at her terrible fate."

"The next morning as the other children were going down to breakfast, the little girl stayed in her bed. She couldn't stand the thought of seeing the others receive their gift when there would be none for her."

"Later, as the children came back upstairs, the little girl was surprised to be handed a napkin. As she carefully opened it, there to her disbelief was an orange all peeled and sectioned."

"How could this be?" she asked.

"It was then that she found how each child had taken one section from their orange and given it to her so that she, too, would have a Christmas orange."

How I loved this story! I would ask my grandmother to tell it to me over and over as I grew up. Every Christmas, as I pull a big, juicy orange from my stocking, I think of this story. What an example of the true meaning of Christmas those orphan children displayed that Christmas morning.

-Author Unknown

Cold War Kids

Because members of the Russian Parliament were bent out of shape by the U.S. calling their country out for human rights abuses, they decided they would take it to a whole new level by passing a bill to make it illegal for American families to adopt Russian children.

The Russian measure was developed in retaliation for a new American law that will punish Russian citizens who are accused of violating human rights, by barring them from travel to the United States and from owning real estate or maintaining financial assets here.

Russian Orphans

Since 1999 approximately 45,000 Russian children have been adopted by American families.  So of course it makes perfect sense to deny children an opportunity to grow up in a loving family to prove a political point. We agree with U.S. Ambassador Michael McFaul who said:

                "The welfare of children is simply too important to be linked to other
                  issues in our bilateral relationship."

Pray that the upper house, or ultimately Vladimir Putin put an end to this gamesmanship, because the only ones who will suffer are orphaned Russian children.

Have you seen our sister?

We received hopeful news from Honduras a few nights ago. New friends at the orphanage known as Amigos de Jesus told us they had two brothers at the orphanage who desperately were looking for their sister. All three came from Nueva Esperanza and were separated when the Orphanage burned down last November. They've been apart for over a year.

Nueva Esperanza After the Fire

We got connected with Amy Escoto at Amigos de Jesus though Father Den O'Donnell, one seriously cool priest from Pennsylvania who, along with others, founded Amigos. Amy asked us to check to see if Lucia (the sister) was at Orphanage Emmanuel, because she understood we knew people there. We were sad to find out she wasn't.

But we then asked missionary friends we know, Jen Cook and Joy Dodd (Joy to the Nations), to ask around at orphanages they visit near San Pedro Sula for Lucia, and four days later we got this note from them through Facebook:

We went to Las Casitas today to teach the last cooking class we were scheduled to teach and we think that we have found the girl Lucia, that you were talking about. She has been there for quite sometime. She uses a different last name. She is 15 years old she told us today. And she said that she has 2 brothers and gave us their names and ages. She thinks that they are living at Nueva Esperanza.

She is a sweet girl, quiet but informative. She gave us all of the info so we know that it is all genuine...her full name, age, how many siblings...we did not coach her, it was all from her, though she cannot remember her birthday, which is not unusual for the kids.

SO...we think that this may be her. 

We sent an email to Amy and guess what? We we had a match!

Thanks a ton, R.J.

We’ll contact them and see if we can at least get her here for a visit and we can perhaps look around for a place that is able to have her or maybe even keep the 3 together.

Muchisimas gracias for remembering this little family and putting the word out. I look forward to our paths crossing one of these days!

Feliz navidad!

Amy

So let's get this straight. We call a priest in Pennsylvania, who introduces us to an orphanage we've never visited. We then get asked by people there, we've never met, if we could find out whether a missing sister was at a different orphanage. We find she's not there, but ask missionaries in another part of Honduras to look for her. In four days. they find her and a broken family is connected. How do you explain that? There is only one way. God.

So when you see your children, grandchildren, sisters, and brothers over the holidays, say a prayer of thanks and hug them close. They are gift from God who never forgets a single one of His children.

From the volunteers at the World Orphan Fund we wish you a very Merry Christmas.

Wait a Minute, You're Catholic?

I may lose a few FaceBook friends over this post, but if so, we'll probably both be better of because of it.

I have been talking with a new missionary friend about our trip to Guatemala in December.  In the course of conversation I asked him if he knew of orphanages that needed help there.

We work with several Orphanages in Guatemala. I will look into their needs and get back to you. What are the requirements and or qualifications for you ministry to consider working with an orphanage?

I told him our criteria, none of which mentioned denomination, so I was surprised at the next question: OK great so denominational affiliation does not matter? For example, we minister in an orphanage for children with HIV in Guatemala, but it is part of the local Catholic church.

I was blown away. Do people really filter by denomination when it comes to God's abandoned children? Clearly he had run across it in his work.

Psalm 27:10 says: When my father and my mother forsake me, then the LORD will take me up. It doesn't say I'll only take them up if they're Protestant or Catholic. 

I don't blame people for supporting institutions that are tied to a particular denomination. I do take issue with calling yourself a missionary for the Lord and somehow in the process forgetting that He loves ALL of his children. 

At the World Orphan Fund, denomination will NEVER, EVER be a factor in deciding where to help orphaned children. 

God Goes Digital

Coincidence is God's way of remaining anonymous.

Late last year the World Orphan Fund provided funding for a Toddler House at Orphanage Emmaneul in Honduras. About half way through the construction, a government orphanage burned down in northern Honduras leaving 150 children homeless. Emmaneul took the vast majority of those kids, most of whom were toddlers. It was a God moment to be sure, but there's more to the story.

We posted about the coincidence on our Facebook page, and a missionary named Joy Dodd noticed it. Joy and fellow missionary Jen Cook had sung to many of those same children and had wondered where they had gone.

Joy Dodd at El Refugio Internacional

Now connected, Joy and I had a conversation about orphans and I asked her to keep an eye out for orphanages the World Orphan Fund could help. Immediately she told me there was a small orphanage in Naco that had been struggling, El Refugio Internacional.

We visited them in June and found that didn't have enough income to buy the groceries they needed. They only had $1,100 a month to care for 27 children. To make matters worse, they were paying $200 every month just to get clean bottled water.

So the World Orphan Fund immediately began sending an extra $500 a month toward food, and we told them we'd help them get clean water. We provided the funding, Go to Nations provided the expertise and last Saturday El Refugio had clean water for the first time in two years.

The joy of fresh water!

Yep, the Lord uses Facebook.

Joy has since started her own ministry "Joy to the Nations." Visit her website to learn more about it.

Work Begins on Special Needs Home

On Wednesday we received the first pictures from Rancho Santa Fe as they broke ground for the new special needs house we're building there. The orphanage was running out of space and would have been forced to limit their admission of special needs orphans. The World Orphan Fund is covering 100% of the cost. When finished the home will be home to up to 16 children.

Rancho Santa Fe, located in La Venta, Honduras, is part of Nuestros Pequeños Hermanos International (NPH), literally meaning Our little brothers and sisters. It’s an organization that has provided a home for thousands of orphans and abandoned children since 1954. Currently there are nine NPH homes throughout Latin America. Rancho Santa Fe was started in 1986 and cares for nearly 600 children.

Happy Birthday Liz Presley

My favorite movie of all time is the classic Frank Capra movie It's a Wonderful Life. I watch it every year at Christmastime. In it, a distressed George Bailey wishes he had never been born. With some heavenly intervention, he temporarily gets his wish, and is shown all the lives he has touched and the contributions he has made to his community. He also gets to see how things would have turned out differently had he not been there. But can someone get that kind of hindsight in real life?

I ended up at an orphanage in Honduras following a series of seemingly unrelated, yet connected, events that led me to a Team Effort youth mission camp in North Carolina in June of 2010.

I was there chaperoning for a church mission trip when I met one of Team Effort's amazing youth leaders, 20 year old Liz Presley from Gainesville, Georgia.

Liz Presley

On the first day of the mission trip, Liz and I had talked for maybe 20 minutes about how we both wanted to help orphans in our very different lives. I had felt a strong to help orphans for three years. The problem is I had no idea how or where.

During the week Liz felt she had been called to put together a mission team to an orphanage her Church visited every year in Honduras. So on the fourth day she sat down across from me at a lunch break and said "I think I'm supposed to ask you to go with me to Honduras." I replied "I think I'm supposed to say yes."

I'd be lying if I said I found some inspired way to explain this idea to my wife, co-workers and friends on the 15 hour drive home to Wisconsin. Well you see, I met a 20 year old girl and I'm going with her and a few other people I've never met to volunteer at an orphanage in Honduras. They thought I'd lost my mind. That was June.

Liz called on September 5th. I remember the day because it was primary day in Wisconsin and I was at Scott Walker's campaign headquarters in Milwaukee. She sounded despondent.

I really thought this was supposed to happen, but I'm going to have to cancel the trip. I thought it was supposed to happen too, and I asked if her church still going to the Orphanage in January and did she think they'd let me join their team? Yes and yes. She gave me their phone number and an hour later a stranger from Wisconsin was added to a mission team from Gainesville Georgia. Apparently I was the one who was supposed to go.

Six months later I was on a bus in Tegucigalpa embarking on a rocky four hour trip to Orphanage Emmanuel with daughter Keeley and a 17 member mission team we had only just met in Atlanta that morning.

We spent two weeks with the amazing children at Orphanage Emmanuel in Honduras. Many had been abused. Others had witnessed horrible things. You wonder, how they can love at all? But to look at them you'd never know. They smile and laugh and play. When you hold them in your arms they tell you they love you. And they mean it. You know what you have to do. Everything you possibly can.

From that point forward I knew I finally had found the path I'd been searching for. Within a week I had filed the paperwork for the World Orphan Fund with the IRS and we were on our way.

Since then we've been to Honduras 5 times and Guatemala and Kenya once and visited nearly 2,000 children at 7 orphanages. Our formula is simple. Figure out where a game changing project or program is needed and convince people to help us pay for the solution.

Last year we paid half the cost of building a toddler house at Emmanuel in Guaimaca. This year we funded a new well there. We're breaking ground for a new special needs house at an Rancho Santa Fe so the orphanage can continue accepting and caring for special needs orphans. We send funds every month cover half the cost of feeding 27 orphans and are repairing a well so they can have clean water at El Refugio orphanage in Naco. We're funding a new 3rd Grade Teacher at Hogar Suyapa in El Progresso. And we're helping help keep a school for 80 children open at Hogar Renacer in Confradia.

And if Liz Presley had never been born? If she had never joined Team Effort. If she'd never asked someone she had just met to go to Honduras?

There would be no World Orphan Fund.

$22,500 in funding never would have gone to build a toddler house at Emmanuel.

We wouldn't be building a special needs house at Rancho Santa Fe, and they would soon would be forced to turn children away.

There would be children in Naco without a source of clean water and not enough to eat.

We wouldn't be funding a new third grade teacher in El Progresso.

And we wouldn't be helping to keep a school open in Confradia for 80 children.

Sounds like the same Frank Capra Story to me. Happy 23rd Birthday Liz. You've already changed the world.

Visit our website at www.theworldorphanfund.org and our Facebook page at facebook.com/worldorphanfund.

Iraqi Orphan Leaves Judges in Tears

While surfing the net looking for inspiration for a video we're working on for the World Orphan Fund I came across this story about Iraqi Orphan Emmanuel Kelly. The video below aired in September 2011 on X Factor Australia.

It's a heartbreaking yet in the end inspiring story of the effects of war and the power of love.  Kelly was a victim of chemical warfare in Iraq and was adopted by an Australian mother. How perfect that he performed John Lennon's Imagine. Good on ya mate.

Orphanage Profile - Hogar Suyapa

Founded in 2004 in El Progresso, Honduras, Hogar Suyapa is a permanent home for 41 children who often have been removed from their families for reason of abuse, neglect, or the criminal activity of their parents. Most of children who arrive are under the age of 4.  They accept some children slightly older if they come with younger siblings or have special circumstances.  For example the oldest girl is 16. 

 She arrived at the age of 13, dying of diabetes. No other center would take her.  Both of her parents had died of AIDS.  With proper medical care she is now a healthy, beautiful young woman, has her disease under control, and should have a good long life.

Children are often received at the Hogar on a temporary basis.  Police will remove children from a potentially dangerous situatino, and there is no facility in town for them to stay while the authorities investigate what is going on in the home.  Stays for these children can last for one or two nights to as long as a month. Even those staying for just a couple nights leave with new clean clothes, shoes, a toy and a feeling of being rested for just a while.  As these children come out of such chaos, just giving them a bath, getting rid of lice and parasites, and giving them a few days of good food can make a huge difference in their lives. 

The stories of the children are both heart wrenching and inspiring. Meeting them, you would not suspect the tragic circumstances that brought them to the Hogar.

At two weeks old, Maria Guadelupe arrived at Hogar Suyapa with dried glue around her mouth and face.  The policeman who carried her in was well known at the orphanage as a very tough and strong character who dealt with criminals on a daily basis. But as he entered the Hogar, tears were streaming down his face. 

Director Ana Aleman couldn’t imagine what had moved him until to her horror she saw the dried glue.  You see, drug addicts sniff glue in order to stop hunger pains or to get high.  The mother had evidently forced the little baby to sniff glue in lieu of feeding her.

Glue causes severe brain damage as it basically kills brain cells. When the child was taken to the neurologist, they were told that the damage was severe and to not expect the child to either walk or talk.

For the first year of her life, Maria Guadelupe was a quiet and withdrawn baby.  She would not smile nor look directly at anyone. She basically just lay in her crib.  Staff continually stimulated and talked to her but with little success.

The orphanage staff refused to give up. Two nannies were assigned to be with the child 24 hours a day. They were told to rock the child, sing to her, tickle her, and do everything they could think of to get her attention.  After two months of intensive contact, the child finally began to respond.  Today, at age 5, Lupita is a friendly little girl.  She smiles and laughs, talks and sings, and has a great empathy for the younger children, loving to help feed them and play with them.  All the nannies adore her and she knows that she is safe within her Hogar family. 

  

 The Hogar has an on-site primary school, Escuela Santa Maria de Suyapa, which teaches through the second grade. In 2013 the school will expand to the third grade. In the fourth grade, children move into the public school system.  The goal is to give the children some years of intensive schooling within a secure environment.  After the traumas that many of them have endured the orphanage feels it’s critical to keep their early life under observation and control.  By the fourth grade they are more emotionally prepared to deal with the ¨real world.”

The World Orphan Fund is raising funds to pay for the new third grade teacher. The cost is $6,000 per year. If you would like to donate to this project, visit our donation page and select "Hogar Suyapa" from the program designation menu.