Wednesday, April 17th, 2013

As two new members of the El Hogar team, we were most impressed with the enthusiasm and compassion Claudia, the Director, showed towards the children during her morning address.  She was talking to the children about emotions.

After breakfast we were ready for the drive to St Mary’s Technical Institute, forty minutes from El Hogar.  All of us together in one van.....

En route we passed by mountains, valleys and cliffs with roads winding up the hillside before us.  Rick pointed out the housing developments that were built after Hurricane Mitch in 1998.

Arriving at the Institute we drove past a brick wall built by previous St. Luke’s volunteers  (done in 2012).  This scenic property was purchased by the El Hogar Ministries enabling the students to move from the crowded facility next to the church in Tegucigalpa to fresh air.  On the property we toured though the welding shop where Chris demonstrated his skills much to the delight of us all.  

 

The boys at the Tech School love to have visitors and always love posing for a picture.

Waiting for lunch after a busy morning in the shops and before they head to class.

 Following the carpenter shop, and the airy student residence, We entered the new beautiful chapel with windows looking out to the lush vegetation.

 Behind the altar was impressive mural painted by a previous student.

After lunch, we drove back to El Hogar in time to continue the painting project of the old manor which is now the office.   Manning the ladders were Rick, Chris, Michael and Alan while toiling below were Gillian, Janice, Louise, Darla and Lesley.  Note all the children relaxing and watching as we painted!

Ros and Lynn meet with the teachers in the morning and Jane continued the English instruction with the help of Erika.  

"Three little girls from school are we....."

 

The clothes donated by St. Luke’s parishioners were unpacked in the storage room for future use.

As usual we provided a craft for the children’s activities and this was the night we prepared a snack for all 104 students.

Hasta Luego,  Gillian and Lesley for the team!

Tuesday, Work Day 2

The mornings are lovely here.   If we can catch the birds’ songs in the trees just outside the guest house in between traffic noise, their sound is quite different and quite beautiful.  We all had a great sleep, ready for another day.  Last evening had been an emotional one for us and it was good to have each other to share the events.  We had been to hear the devastating stories of some of the new children from Directora Claudia.  These children have come from conditions and life situations that we just can’t even imagine.  She talks of the healing that has to take place and some of the difficulty that they have in adjusting at first.  She is able to give so much love to these kids and if we see her on the grounds during the day, she usually has to stop to give one or a dozen kids a hug and a reassuring word.   Shortly after this, we had heard of the horrific bombing in Boston.  So much to digest.  There was a lot of sharing together and we ended our time with a prayer for the team that Canon Stuart had sent in his congregational email about us.  Thank you Stuart.

Life at El Hogar starts early here and by the time we headed up to the Opening exercises at 0700, there was already several lines of laundry hung.  There several ladies in the laundry who work every day to keep 104 children in clean clothes.

Before we dispersed for the day to the jobs and projects that we were doing, we got to watch a video with Claudia of the election for the new school president that had happened just this past Friday.  It was run like a national election so that the children would know what to expect when when they can vote at 18.  Complete with election campaign, ballot voting and even scrutineers.  Quite impressive.  The best part of all is that the president who is a Grade 6er, was once a child who lived and begged in the street.  El Hogar has indeed been important in shaping his life.  He is also an honour student. 

Most of us where continuing work on the large main office building with our painting which took us all day.  Chris added his own creative touch for us. 

 

Lynn conducted an Anger Management workshop for the teachers here.  This is an incredible school  with dedicated teachers and they were pleased to have input from our expert.  Ros spent a fair bit of time translating for her, though some of the teachers do have some English.  There was also some sorting of all the contents of the packed bags we brought with us.  Some of it will go out to the Technical Institute and some of it to the farm.



Jane continued with several classes of conversational English today assisted again by Erika, and Gillian had another art class with three very talented young men.  One made a comment about Gillian - "She good art teacher". 

Our Art Teacher today - ready for a little building painting before she meets with the boys. 






You need to know that our talented teachers only found out they were doing all these classes and workshops on Sunday, so they have had just short preparation times and have done so well. We certainly never know what to expect until we get here.  Meanwhile the building is almost finished with it's first coat of paint!

The evening activities were the crafts we provided for the kids to do which they love and also the skipping and basketball and Frisbees. 

 We need to thank 13 year old Josh from Cambridge who bought and sent with us so many of the soccer balls, frisbees and skipping ropes for the kid's activities.  THANK YOU Josh.

 All of the children are so very precious and love to have fun!

 The littlest guys at 6 are having a visit with Jane.

 

 The time when we can all be together is for our devotional and sharing time in the evening.  We meet in the porch part of the guest house.  What a great group we have. 

 Looking forward to what tomorrow will bring.

Just to remind you, be sure to click on the picture to get full size for viewing. 

Honduras Day 3, Work Day 1

We woke with the sun at 6:30 this morning to get ready for work day numero uno.  Our timekeeper, Rick (aka Ricardo) made sure that we were all up at the meeting area for the childrens' Monday morning gathering. Gladys, one of the teachers, gave a lesson on virtues, they sang the Honduran national anthem and Directora Claudia "officially" introduced us to the kids.  The  newly elected School President, Junior, also thanked us for being here.  He told us we were like angels at El Hogar.

Our breakfast was pancakes, watermelon and strong coffee to get us ready for our first big project.  Instead of syrup we had Guatemalan honey.  Rick poured some honey onto his pancakes, and out came a bee!

After breakfast, we split into our various work groups.  Lynn is a special education teacher and she and Ros went to observe 17 children in their classes and spent the day researching and planning teaching techniques to help the teachers address these students specific needs.  Jane spent the afternoon teaching English workshops with three grades and Erika went to help.

The rest of the group spent the day filling holes and cracks in the outside wall of the main building of the school.  They started painting the trim so the bulk of the painting can be done tomorrow... In the 34 degree heat!

After some much needed showers, the group had an early dinner so we could meet with Directora Claudia.  Claudia told us many stories about new children who have just started at El Hogar.  The stories were difficult to hear, but it is the reality that they have experienced. We know that there is hope for them because now they have a home, an education and a family here at El Hogar.

Tonight's craft was enjoyed by 15 boys.  They enjoyed making their bugs.

Rick got into the googly eyes too!

We better rest up for another day of work (in the heat!) tomorrow.  Hasta Mañana!

The guest house was very quiet by 9 p.m. last night and we had a refreshing sleep after our long travel day yesterday.  It is Sunday and the busy noisy city outside the walls are relatively quiet for an early morning.  We awoke to the realization of where we were and we have already moved into a team rhythm and pattern.  Our breakfast was watermelon and cake which we have had other years.  We enjoy eating in the new dining room where the boys are, though we have a separate eating area as the noise level where the 100 children eat their meals is pretty high.  I'm sure you can imagine that! 

Raul came and picked us up for church and again we found it very friendly and most welcoming.  Such joyful worship and music though with all of it in Spanish, so much of it still familiar.  I was delighted when one of the parishioners came and sat down beside me to translate the sermon in my ear which made it all that more meaningful.  The priest talked about how we see God in ordinary things and events and while this is true, we feel that our presence and experience here is not particularly ordinary.  Though we feel blessed that in the ordinary people that we are, God has called us to be in a very special place this week.  While the culture and language are different, the children are children and they need attention and love and play time and hugs and we try to fill in some of this that they have not always received in their lives.  The church is vibrant with it's people and the music. We have also met up with a busload of the boys from the Technical Institute who come into town from the Tech School which is about 3/4 hour outside of the city.  Louise had been visiting the Sunday School and she and all of the Sunday School children (perhaps 75 or so) came in at the end of the service for communion.  Below:  the children lined up ready to enter the church for Communion.

We were delighted to be able to give Dean Alonzo four of the packages of baby clothing that Caroldean had made up for us to bring to Honduras and he will most certainly find a place for them in his congregation.

We went out for lunch - a Honduran version of KFC and 13 of the children joined us.  This was a special treat for them and was a reward for them because of good school grades, or good behaviour or leadership demonstrated during the week and we enjoyed interacting with them.

Thought we would just add a picture taken in front of the guest house after we arrived back from lunch and church as this may be the last time we are all dressed up considering tomorrow we start diligently in our projects.  More on that later.
Ooops, Rick is missing from this one as he has gone to find the keys to get into the work room to fine some tools to fix Louise's bed!  

The afternoon is free time for the children and some of them have family visiting, and it is good to see those bonds.  For the kids who do not have any family visiting or do not have any family at all, we try to fill in the time with these kids as much as we can.   They do enjoy activities and each of the team found a group of children clustered around them if they had something interesting to do - futboll or puzzles or games or drawing.  They love to draw something and then give it to us as a gift and we are touched.  The group playing soccer must be finding it pretty hot with the heat here.  We haven't told you about the heat - about 34 yesterday and it must be the same today.

As I write this blog in the hotspot on the property for the WiFi, I have several of the children come and visit and they seem interested in what I am doing and interested  in what is on my computer.  I show them the pictures of the snow we had this winter and they were fascinated. 

Ros and Lynne have met with Directora Claudia this afternoon and she has identified a number of children that Lynne, the special education teacher needs to observe and assess for the teachers.  Ros of course is the translater.  Here they are preparing their week and the 17 children they have to assess.  Do they look fatigued already?  And this is only 10 minutes into their planning time!

 Others are preparing for the craft times tomorrow and it seems that Jane will be teaching an English workshop for 5 afternoons, so one never knows what we are going to be called to do.

The theme of our sharing time is looking at the UN Millennium Development Goals and how El Hogar is working hard to accomplish many of them.  We have had some interesting discussions and this is only Sunday.  

Saturday April 13... We made it!

What time did you get up this morning?  Your El Hogar team was on the road around 3:00 am to make our 6:15 am flight.  With 1300 lbs of baggage checked, that included the generous donations from supportive friends, family and parishioners, we were at our gate in plenty of time to enjoy an early breakfast and cup of coffee.

Lynn joined us at the Toronto airport having driven from Ottawa a few days before.  We met up with Tom and Jane Habig at our stopover in Atlanta and arrived safely in Tegucigalpa by noon.

The Tegucigalpa airport is small and hectic, but we made it through customs and baggage inspection to be greeted by Raul, our work team coordinator and his son, Raul Jr.  There were no acrobatic feats this year to get all our luggage strapped on top of the 15 passenger van.  With all 14 team members arriving at the same time, they brought one van for our luggage and one van for us.  We bought our Lempira (Honduran currency) outside the airport from this "official" currency exchanger!

We arrived at El Hogar to be greeted by familiar faces of children and staff who welcomed us.  We spent the afternoon settling in to the volunteer house.  There was some discussion about who was going to get a top bunk and who was going to get a bottom bunk.  For some reason, nobody was jumping at the opportunity to shimmy their way up and down to the top bunk, so Darla and Erika took one for the team.

We walked around the school grounds to get acquainted or reacquainted with our home for the next week.  There was a baking class in the old kitchen, and some team members were lucky enough to try a fresh baked savoury pastry.

Some team members were lucky enough to enjoy some live music...

...And some team members needed to catch up on some sleep after the short night.  (Who took that picture?!)

Feeling at home and refreshed, we enjoyed a dinner of eggs, beans, tortillas and plantain.  We got to eat in the new dining hall for the first time!  The volunteers have a separate dining area from the children with a lovely view overlooking the city.  Chris snuck in some hot sauce to help spice up the beans.

Now we are off to bring out some activities to play with the kids.  We are happy to be here and to have a meaningful and fun filled week.

More tomorrow!