Septiembre 19 - 30, 2011

"The Lord opens the eyes of the blind;
the Lord raises those who are bowed
down;the Lord loves the righteous. The Lord watches over the strangers; He
relieves the fatherless and widow;
but the way of the wicked, He turns
upside down. The Lord shall reign
forever - your God, O Zion, to all
generations." Psalm 146:8-10


Hola! Gotta few more days in this report than usual, but this gives me an op to put the rest of September under September; I'ma glass is half full kinda person!

We continued to seek the "fix" needed for the cistern problem, and even after our new friend, Isidro the plumber, came to offer his expert help, the water situation needed attention. Seems the float he's adding in this foto has ("had" hopefully) a mind of it's a own and wasn't kicking in the filling system when it was supposed to. Then just yesterday, 3 weeks!! AFTER this problem began, the pump didn't turn off! Thankfully, I just happened to be in the area to see water pouring out of the top!
We've discovered that a big and TIME CONSUMING part of the challenge here in Guate is finding the right parts to fix things. So many items have been re-rigged in very creative yet non-long-term-ways that 1st one needs to figure out exactly what part is needed; then you need to find the tienda or store that has them, and this search is always complicated by varying lunchtime schedules, not to mention random days off for any reason whatsoever. So just buying the part you need can and often does take many days.


My planner says the 1st day of autumn was 23rd September, so here are some doctored-up fall fotos cuz we are the land of eternal spring, thus no genuine autumn leafs! Triste. Top foto we have,from left, Gilda, Ana Gabriela complete with Indian face paint, y Marta. Notice that both ana y Marta are STILL wearing their hairnets, a wondermus implementation of chef Angelica that's still holding! Yea! They were tortillando this day.


And even tho we don't have fall, per say, we did have a harvest of mandarin oranges FROM OUR YARD which the kids LOVE! Thank You, Jesus, for such simple pleasures!

SAY, DID YOU KNOW YOU CAN CLICK ON ANY FOTO AND IT'LL GET BIGGER? TRUE!



Carolina FINALLY got to celebrate her cumpleanos on Saturday, September 24th! This dear girl has been asking for months when it would be her turn to have her day. Her celebration was a wee bit short as Saturdays are school days for the older girls, so her cake and prayer ceremony was after dinner!

Sunday the 25th was supposed to be the day we could have our once-a-month visit with Tatiana at Casa Alleluia, but she had bad behaviour so we were cancelled. I've always wanted to see how visiting day goes for Rosa de Amor, but since it's on the same day as Tatiana's, we hadn't had a chance,until now. We think it was absolute providence that we were at Las Rosas. One of the newer girls got her first visitors, and I'm still not sure if it was her parents or foster-type adults. The rules state that you must stay in sight of Rosa and her staff at all times; no going to a room to visit or off to another part of the yard. This man and woman took the girl to the plastic playset, where the woman proceeded to take the braids out of her hair while the man walked all around the playset. He was carrying a large poncho, and after he went full circle and came near the girl, he opened the poncho and held it like a curtain...in between them and where everyone else was. Seeing no staff immediately,G began to call very loudly for Rosa while I ran thru the house to get her. G's call prompted these adults to stop and look at him, then Rosa came out very quickly, spoke to them, and drew them back to where they belonged. This precious girl has already had way too much abuse in her short life; my entire gut was yelling that she was in harm's way, so we were so grateful to have been there to not let that happen "on our watch".

Monday, the 26th...Floridelma goes to court and is removed from RDA. Please keep her in prayer.

Tuesday, the 27th...G digs too much with one side of his cuerpo and hurts his back. Having a lot of difficulty getting around the rest of the week.

Wednesday, 28th...dinner at Mark Richard's turns into a new "assignment" for G especially; he'll be going to Chuya, the Richard casa out in po-dunk Guate a few days each week while Mark is in the states.

Thursday, 29th...SAW A FIREFLY IN THE YARD!!! (a pretty good replacement for fall leafs!)

We round out September with Gilda's birthday! She and her sister, Sonia,with her in the middle foto, have only been with RDA for 3 weeks, so what an honour to get to celebrate her so soon!

All the kids had been at Iglesia Elim all day Friday celebrating the Day of the Child(10/1) and each girl came home with a crown; isn't that a delightful way to celebrate them??!!(They also all got official Elim sweats...tops and bottoms!!)Anyway, it was such a wondermus thing to see that for her special time, no other girl had her crown on, only Gilda! These kids are so fabu!

FYI, Gilda selected a vanilla cake with whip creme frosting, topped with strawberries and chocolate drizzle; sound good?

How Miguelito managed to get into every foto, I'll never know! I do know this however comma that he loves to pray for others, which is what Lidia is doing in the bottom foto, praying for the birthday girl!

DIOS LES BENDIGA!