Zacamil

Today Mike, Blanca, Angela and Leighanne went to the Zacamil, the hospital where we will be volunteering for an orientation with one of the assistant director of nursing. We were given a tour of the hospital and introduced to several of the nursing supervisors for the different floors. They are were very gracious and said they were excited to have the help. The usual nurse to patient ratio is 1 nurse to 15-20 patients if the patients are somewhat stable. If they patients are intensive care, the ratio is one to four. Some of the nurses explained that they usually work 14 hour shifts and if the oncoming nurse doesn´t show up, they have to work for twenty four hours. We will be starting actual volunteer work next week. We hammered out the details of what we would be able to do as volunteers. They said they would appreciate help with bathing patients, changing positions, cleaning, working with the occupational therapists and other therapy units such as child therapy.

June 9, 2008

In the morning we headed to CIPI. The volunteers split into two groups: one group working with the toddlers and the other working with the infants and mothers. The preschooler group had a successful day playing with sidewalk chalk, playing games, coloring and reading books.

One group stayed at CIPI during the afternoon and did glamour shots with all the girls and their babies. We hope to print the pictures and make frames for the girls to keep.
The other group headed to CISNA where we did activities with Hogar 2. We are getting the kids excited for our big fiesta-carnival this Friday. Stay tuned!

Next, we headed to LDS English. The teachers are all loving the opportunity to speak their own language! But don´t worry we love Spanish!

Posted by=Whitney Smith

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!