Padre Vito

6-10-08
today was amazing just like every other day. we were lucky enough to have all the volunteers come with us. each volunteer splits off into groups with two or three people and worked with them from playing dominoes, to making bracelets, to talking with them or dancing, etc.
a brief description of padre vito:
it was started by padre vito, a man who wanted to give handicapped children a second chance. there is currently over 150 adults and children with disabilities, ranging from new borns to middle adulthood. we are so blessed that we have this wonderful oppurtunity to work with these individuals, and we learn so much from their special spirits.
-love whitney hansen

June 2, 2008

Today we went to CIPI in the morning we worked with the toddlers and the nursery children. We taught the toddlers about the animals. They love when we come! Right when we walk in, they all jump on us and are so excited that we are there! They all have such sweet spirits and different personalitys, it is really fun to get to know these children. Today there was a new boy that arrived and it just broke my heart because he cried almost the whole time, screeming, “mama mama” Who knows when the next time he will see her. These kids just need love and it is so awesome to be there for them and give them the love they have always dreamed of!

Today we made mask with the boys. They loved it! We each gave them a paper plate and paint and they created these sweet masks. We thought that paint would get all over the place but it ended up staying under control which was wonderful! These boys have a lot of personality and are so so fun to work with!! It is always such an adventure coming here!

LDS ENGLISH rocks! From 5:00-6:00 every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday we teach English! It is so much fun! The people are so excited to learn English! You always have to be at the top of your game because you never know what kind of question they are going to ask you! It is a really good review for my owwwn Enlish  J/k

Aventuras in El Salvador!

HOLA to all! This is Blanca G. Rodriguez, one of the Country Directors for the HELP International El Salvador group of volunteers. We have had the first wave of volunteers for almost 3 weeks! Can you believe it!!!!

Did y’all know that El Salvador is the only country in the world named after the Savior? It’s an amazing thing to see the Savior’s name everywhere. I wonder, though, how many people realize that the Lord’s name is being used everywhere and also that they themselves are named Salvadoreños or “People of The Savior”.

We have started a variety of projects, but I just wanted to touch on two of those. We will be having other volunteers and CD´s update more information about activites cooresponding to the variety of projects.

We have been able to work with CISNA and CIPI, organizations under the government organization ISNA that takes care of orphaned, abused, or delinquent children. There are four homes at CISNA that include the ages of 7-10 years old, 11-14 years old, 15-18 years old and a home for new boys in the complex. It’s actually really funny because the first home with the youngest children will see us walking into the complex and they’ll start chanting: “gringas, Gringas, GRINGAS! GRINGAS!” Meaning “white girls!” – it made me laugh SO hard the first time as we were walking in because when they start yelling in unison all of the complex knows we’re here and everyone comes out to say hello…what an entrance…I feel like a Salvadoran movie star! Jaja! No, just kidding. But we will be starting to teach the oldest boys at CISNA there business principles by teaching the BEST game. This is a game or business simulation that helps present certain basic business principles such as accounting, competition, supply/demand in a market economy…things like that. It’s really fun and will be useful for these older boys since they are in workshops or talleres that teach them how to use industrial sewing machines, to bake bread in the panaderias, and teach them to tailor. This allows them to leave the complex with skills that they can immediately use to make money instead of resorting to delinquency or gang activity to survive from day to day. This will be such a fun experience.

With CIPI, we work with young mothers and girls who have been abused in different ways and have been pulled out of their homes and placed in CIPI until they can safely be returned to their homes or placed in an alternative home. These include girls that have been involved with prostitution. The second wing at CIPI we work with is the preschoolers. These are either children that have been abused or children of the girls in the complex who have been removed from the homes as well. Lastly, we have a group of infants that we work with and play with. These include babies that have been abandoned at hospitals and left unclaimed. Also, these include the babies of girls in the complex. This is the toughest wing to work in because you see babies with hydrocephaly or other illnesses that are only a couple of weeks old that have been completely abandoned. There are even perfectly healthy babies that are just left at hospitals. I appreciate the efforts of the government to establish such a place for these children and young girls. We are working hard to help raise the self esteem of the girls, and give attention and love to the little ones.

So, in conclusion, I thought it would be a good idea to include a couple of do’s and don’ts of being in a Latin American country:

DO remember to wear spandex or shorts under your skirts, because sometimes the Salvadoran buses come whizzing by and cause you to have a certain Marolyn Manroe moment in front of a lot of people.

DON’T play soccer barefoot, because you never know when you’ll have to kick the ball off of a wall of bricks and miss the ball and end up kicking a brick wall instead…owie!

DON’T eat questionable meat – Montezuma’s revenge is not pretty.

This is us eating at Fashion Rabbi´s house - her and her husband are from the U.S. Thank heaven for those that can barbeque for us!This is us at a Mother´s Day ward activity. We sang some primary hymns, and the rest of the ward presented breakdancing and latin dancing...we felt really cool.

Blanca & Christine say HOLA!!!

Hey guys! We are your El Salvador Country Directors! We are totally excited to get to work with our volunteers! We will write more personal info soon, so you'll get to know us better!

2008!

OK, I just wanted to post and let anyone who is still checking this site know that we have our new Country Directors for 2008. They are Christine Weiss and Blanca Rodriguez!

Time is running out!

The work is going forward in a big way down here. Unfortunately, time is running out so fast and we only have so many hands. I can't believe how quickly our time here has gone. We've picked up some new projects with our partner organizations; fixing a kitchen roof at the Emiliani boys' school, furnishing some books and wheelchairs for the hospital, establishing mentoring for the kids at CIPI and preparing a zoo day for the preschoolers. Hopefully we haven't bit off more than we can chew in the remaining work days. It is great to see the focus and social entrepreneurship of the group's members, they've really stepped up to the plate.

Singing time For CIPI

For the last two weeks the HELP Volunteers have been focusing on painting a mural on the wall of the Special Ed room and one in the Pre-school room at CIPI. Every other day I have been going to help paint. This is the experence Deborah, one of our volunteers had during this last week.

We first did the mural in the Pre-school room and then moved on to the special Ed room. In the special ed room we weren’t able to move the kids out as we painted. So we were there painting as Trisha, one of our volunteers who specializes in special ed and works at CIPI with the special needs children regularly, was doing activities with them. About two days ago I had a wonderful experience with the children. (Actually I have been having special experiences with them regularly but this is the one I thought I would share this week.) Trisha had planned a singing time and needed our help to include all of the kids.
I have not had very much experience with children who have disabilities as sever as these children and I have had a bit of hesitation in the past during the few times I have interacted with such individuals. Working at CIPI with the children in the special needs room has helped me understand so much more about how things really are and how truly choice these children are. As it was time for singing time to begin we started to pick up all the children and lay them in a circle on mattresses on the floor or in our laps. We sang all of the children songs we could think of to these kids and helped them move along to the tunes. Every now and then we would switch the kids in our lap to give the ones on mattresses a chance to be held. It was so much fun to see their huge grins as they listened to us sing and struggle to harmonize. The last song we sang was a song I learned as a child in church. I never really understood the true meaning of it until I was cradling a four year old boy who can’t walk or communicate very well with the world around him.

Trisha was the only other person in the group who knew the song so she and I sang it as a closing song to quiet things down. The words go like this:

If you don’t walk as most people do
Some people walk away from you
But I won’t, I won’t.

If you don’t talk as most people do
Some people laugh and talk at you
But I wont, I wont.

I’ll walk with you
I’ll talk with you
That’s how I’ll show my love for you.

At that moment, as I sang those words to this precious little boy, it really sank in deep how much it actually meant to him and the other children that I was there just then doing what I was doing and how important it is to show love to those who are not as physically or mentally alert as others. I am so grateful for the smiles and the laughs from these kids that build me up daily and remind me why I am here doing what I am doing.