The last two days have been interesting at best. The team divided into two groups. One group went to the wheelchair factory and prepared for the next distribution which will happen next week by a team from Lyndon which arrives on Saturday.  The team I was on spent the good part of the day at the Hermano Pedro orphanage providing some relief to the disabled children there. We held children that would have otherwise been left most of the day without any attention other than there basic needs. Also, some of the older kids are taken out of their beds and put in wheelchairs and set in the hallways and courtyard of the orphanage until they are put back in bed. I really hurt for these kids and it seems like we are doing so very little.

Jesus said something about the “least of these”, well again, we experienced the least of these… My heart is sad for these kids. We hopefully made a slight difference and maybe  made their day a little brighter.

There is some good news, however. This is the third year I've spent time at Hermano Pedro, and I feel the care has improved some. There are a couple of kids we've visited every time we've been there and at least two of the boys are using computers! One boy with very involved CP is actually using his feet to run the computer... I have pictures. When we got there he was downloading music from iTunes!

One other thing you might find interesting is that our part of the team was actually allowed to take three older kids to lunch. We wheeled them across the cobble stone streets in Antiqua to a place called Pollo Comparo. It is a chicken chain much like Kentucky Fried Chicken. We fed them lunch -- (literally) and you would have thought we'd taken them to Disneyland. Pretty small task for such big rewards... The smiles on the kids faces was worth all the challenges it took took to give here. We hooked up with a couple of college students who are spending their summer in the orphanage and they assisted us too. I 'm pretty proud that we we're trusted to take the kids on our own without supervision from any staff. The teacher, Nanette, has a heart of gold and trusted us.

We got the kids back to the orphange at 2:00 and then did a little shopping as we walked back to the Lutheran Center. Met up with the rest of the group at 5:00 PM.  It was a great and rewarding couple of days as we did what we were sent here to do.

Ted