We spent time this week at a wonderful orphanage for handicapped kids. The profile of their 70 children is remarkably similar to those who live in CRPN. The physical premises is excellent and the children are very well cared for. They have 14 neneras who stay on premises for 4 days and then rest for 4 days. In many ways this is far preferable to our employee scheduling, though I am sure it has it's drawback's.
They are currently raising money by raffling off a car. Like so many missions they struggle with finances. Most of their finances come from donations by local Guatemalans and they have an extensive program for Padrino's (One on One donating to specific kids). They have an office in the capital that they use for administration and have very nice people in both sites.
Cadanino looks forward to getting to know them better and finding ways to help the center. BTW- they are ideally set up for missions trips so let us know if you'd like to take a group to an idyllic setting for your next missions trip.
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Sunday, January 30, 2011
Friday, January 28, 2011
More Neneras or less? (footnote - Neneras means Nanny in English)
As you may remember, our ministry consists principally of hiring local women to give additional care, love and exercise to children. Our approach has always been to hire more nannie to help the kids. Our frustration with the Government management is that they don't provide sufficient Nenera staff to help the kids. This has been an increasing issue the past few months. The director of the center and I have a close personal friendship and I have significant respect for his managerial skills. We openly discuss when an initiative should be funded by the Cadanino foundation and when it is an obvious expense that should be born by the government social services.
With recent turnover of our staff and the kidnapping and subsequent resignation of one of our Neneras; we are continuously evaluating how God wants to use this ministry. I have been studying Judges 6 & 7, and thinking a lot about Gideon and how God used him to defeat the Midianites, yet make sure that the credit goes to the Lord and not Gideon.
As Gideon prepares for Battle the Lord tells him that the 32,000 troops he has assembled is far too many. He reduces the number to 300 by a test in the way they drink their water from the river. In the night, Gideon sneaks up on the Middianites and listens to them conveying their fears and prophecies in the form of bad dreams. Clearly their faith in Baal is minimal and they are weak at heart. After Gideon's confidence is bolstered the Lord sends him and his 300 men to three points near the Midianite camp. They sound their horns and light their lamps. The Middianites stampede in their haste to run from the more powerful (and real) God of the Israelites. It is clear that the success belongs to the Lord and that He alone is sovereign.
WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH NANNIES (NENERAS)
If the Battle belongs to the Lord and he instructs us to send more nannies we will do so. If he instructs us to listen to the "enemy" we will do so. We are in our listening and preparing for battle phase. We will not throw the Fleece before the Lord (look it up...) We will follow His guidance.
Gideon's Bible and the Battle Belongs to the Lord
With recent turnover of our staff and the kidnapping and subsequent resignation of one of our Neneras; we are continuously evaluating how God wants to use this ministry. I have been studying Judges 6 & 7, and thinking a lot about Gideon and how God used him to defeat the Midianites, yet make sure that the credit goes to the Lord and not Gideon.
As Gideon prepares for Battle the Lord tells him that the 32,000 troops he has assembled is far too many. He reduces the number to 300 by a test in the way they drink their water from the river. In the night, Gideon sneaks up on the Middianites and listens to them conveying their fears and prophecies in the form of bad dreams. Clearly their faith in Baal is minimal and they are weak at heart. After Gideon's confidence is bolstered the Lord sends him and his 300 men to three points near the Midianite camp. They sound their horns and light their lamps. The Middianites stampede in their haste to run from the more powerful (and real) God of the Israelites. It is clear that the success belongs to the Lord and that He alone is sovereign.
WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH NANNIES (NENERAS)
If the Battle belongs to the Lord and he instructs us to send more nannies we will do so. If he instructs us to listen to the "enemy" we will do so. We are in our listening and preparing for battle phase. We will not throw the Fleece before the Lord (look it up...) We will follow His guidance.
Gideon's Bible and the Battle Belongs to the Lord
Puritans may not have been much fun, but they certainly knew how to pray.....
" I thank Thee that many of my prayers have been refused. "
"Confession and Petition
Holy Lord, I have sinned times without number, and been guilty of pride and unbelief, of failure to find Thy mind in Thy Word, of neglect to seek Thee in my daily life. My transgressions and short-comings present me with a list of accusations, but I bless Thee that they will not stand against me, for all have been laid on Christ. Go on to subdue my corruptions, and grant me grace to live above them. Let not the passions of the flesh nor lustings of the mind bring my spirit into subjection, but do Thou rule over me in liberty and power.
I thank Thee that many of my prayers have been refused. I have asked amiss and do not have, I have prayed from lusts and been rejected, I have longed for Egypt and been given a wilderness. Go on with Thy patient work, answering 'no' to my wrongful prayers, and fitting me to accept it. Purge me from every false desire, every base aspiration, everything contrary to Thy rule. I thank Thee for Thy wisdom and Thy love, for all the acts of discipline to which I am subject, for sometimes putting me into the furnace to refine my gold and remove my dross.
No trial is so hard to bear as a sense of sin. If Thou shouldst give me choice to live in pleasure and keep my sins, or to have them burnt away with trial, give me sanctified affliction. Deliver me from every evil habit, every accretion of former sins, everything that dims the brightness of Thy grace in me, everything that prevents me taking delight in Thee. Then I shall bless Thee, God of jeshurun, for helping me to be upright."
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Let the Swim Lessons Begin!!
The water is just right and we think we have two swim instructors lined up. This pool is at the Center called Alida Espana where several hundred Guatemalan kids go every day for remedial education and physical therapy. About ten of our kids at CRPN participate and now with this new swim program we plan to send more kids more frequently for aqua therapies!! The three month pilot program is partially funded, but we still have a small gap. Please consider a small gift to give kids some physical excercise!!
Monday, January 17, 2011
The New Year... fresh opportunities and fresh perspective.
I've been back for a week and tried to sort out priorities. First off I owe you dear reader a year end report. That will have to come another day. The days and nights have been fast and furious and tons of tiny details and challenges are presented everyday. Most are left unresolved but not for lack of attempting to address.
Our big news is that one of the foundations employees was kidnapped and assaulted last week and barely escaped with her life. After two days in the hospital she is resting well at home. The known details are too sordid to account in this format, suffice to say it is deeply disturbing and quite frightening.
The constant high level of both petty and violent crimes appears at least annectodatally to be increasing. The offered statistics confirm that but dramatically under-report most crimes. It is the start of the presidential electioneering cycle and the President's wife is going to try to change the Constitution so that she may run for the Presidency. Law and Order is on the minds of most citizens and this administration has been deliberately lax on law enforcement.
We are trying to transfer a young man to a permanent Catholic facility in order to better treat his various handicap. Julius is 14 years old and has an extremely low intelligence, profound epilepsy and severe autism. He is a sweet natured kid, but rarely ventures out of his own autistic world. We visited his step grandfather today and got a lot more detailed analysis of his childhood prior to instituionalization two years ago.
STOP READING here if you are squeamish. This is frightening stuff. Even if only half is true, it will break your heart. We believe that his Mother attempted to abort Julius during the pregnancy. When the liquid abortion failed she gave birth to the boy and somehow managed to keep him alive till he was seven years old. Supposedly, she was visiting her Mother (the grandmother) and she left him for "just a minute" to run to the corner store. She never returned for him. The Grandmother who was in poor health and great poverty tried to help the boy for five years before pursuing goverrnment help for his condition.
Again, please stop reading if you like.... it gets worse if that is possible. We believe that his Mother is a lady of ill repute, but still is alive and living in the capital city. The boy's torso is covered with scars. The best case theory would have the scars be the result of bug bites that were infected and scratched. A more malevolent possible scenario would be cigarette burns or the like. Additional evidence indicates that Julius was abused sexually and perhaps in child prostitution. It does not get much worse than that.
The step grandfather is my hero. He provided for the boy and the grandmother for 5 years and is also a weekly visitor to our center to help feed and nurture the boy. His step grandfather does more than almost all family members of others kids at the center. Not only that but the Mother and Grandmother have not visited him even once.
We have an appointment with a Judge in the near future that will give Julius the opportunity to possibly spend the rest of his life in an excellent Catholic Hospital that helps kids like him.
He has rallied recently and is doing much better in his circumstances with us, but fluctuating levels of government support as well as his specific diagnosis lead us to the firm conviction that his life will have much greater chance of success in the aforementioned Hospital.
Dear Reader, I have left out and changed names in this note. I assure you that most of the facts as I know them are accurate. I have come to be extremely skeptical of what I hear and even sometimes doubt what I see. I know that Jesus loves this little boy and in some weird way He must love the Mother too. Though nearly overcome with anger and disgust towards this woman that I have never met, I know that I too must pray for her: even though I don't want to.
For those of you who have visited or volunteered here, you know the boy I am talking about. Feel free to contact me with additional questions or prayer warrior activities.
Our big news is that one of the foundations employees was kidnapped and assaulted last week and barely escaped with her life. After two days in the hospital she is resting well at home. The known details are too sordid to account in this format, suffice to say it is deeply disturbing and quite frightening.
The constant high level of both petty and violent crimes appears at least annectodatally to be increasing. The offered statistics confirm that but dramatically under-report most crimes. It is the start of the presidential electioneering cycle and the President's wife is going to try to change the Constitution so that she may run for the Presidency. Law and Order is on the minds of most citizens and this administration has been deliberately lax on law enforcement.
We are trying to transfer a young man to a permanent Catholic facility in order to better treat his various handicap. Julius is 14 years old and has an extremely low intelligence, profound epilepsy and severe autism. He is a sweet natured kid, but rarely ventures out of his own autistic world. We visited his step grandfather today and got a lot more detailed analysis of his childhood prior to instituionalization two years ago.
STOP READING here if you are squeamish. This is frightening stuff. Even if only half is true, it will break your heart. We believe that his Mother attempted to abort Julius during the pregnancy. When the liquid abortion failed she gave birth to the boy and somehow managed to keep him alive till he was seven years old. Supposedly, she was visiting her Mother (the grandmother) and she left him for "just a minute" to run to the corner store. She never returned for him. The Grandmother who was in poor health and great poverty tried to help the boy for five years before pursuing goverrnment help for his condition.
Again, please stop reading if you like.... it gets worse if that is possible. We believe that his Mother is a lady of ill repute, but still is alive and living in the capital city. The boy's torso is covered with scars. The best case theory would have the scars be the result of bug bites that were infected and scratched. A more malevolent possible scenario would be cigarette burns or the like. Additional evidence indicates that Julius was abused sexually and perhaps in child prostitution. It does not get much worse than that.
The step grandfather is my hero. He provided for the boy and the grandmother for 5 years and is also a weekly visitor to our center to help feed and nurture the boy. His step grandfather does more than almost all family members of others kids at the center. Not only that but the Mother and Grandmother have not visited him even once.
We have an appointment with a Judge in the near future that will give Julius the opportunity to possibly spend the rest of his life in an excellent Catholic Hospital that helps kids like him.
He has rallied recently and is doing much better in his circumstances with us, but fluctuating levels of government support as well as his specific diagnosis lead us to the firm conviction that his life will have much greater chance of success in the aforementioned Hospital.
Dear Reader, I have left out and changed names in this note. I assure you that most of the facts as I know them are accurate. I have come to be extremely skeptical of what I hear and even sometimes doubt what I see. I know that Jesus loves this little boy and in some weird way He must love the Mother too. Though nearly overcome with anger and disgust towards this woman that I have never met, I know that I too must pray for her: even though I don't want to.
For those of you who have visited or volunteered here, you know the boy I am talking about. Feel free to contact me with additional questions or prayer warrior activities.
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