Mission to Guatemala 2012
by Allison Toole

Today we woke up in beautiful Antigua!  Its safe to say we all got an amazing night of sleep after a hard day of work yesterday in Tecpan!  I was part of the team that spent the day at the JT Children’s Foundation and it was such a rewarding experience! We saw 5 patients in the morning and 4 patients in the afternoon.  It was amazing to see the teamwork between us and the clinicians there in Tecpan.  The parents of the patients we saw were so open and wanting to understand how they could help their children out even more at home. We started out by assessing their children and ended each session with educating the parents on exercises and strengthening techniques they needed to do at home.  We stressed to the parents that most of their children will not get better unless they continue doing their exercises at home.  Overall, the teams had a very rewarding experience at the JT Foundation and felt very blessed for the opportunity to work with such beautiful children.

After our team finished at the JT Foundation, we got on the bus and headed over to the where the other team had spent the day building steps and installing a rope.  I was completely in awe when we pulled up and saw the numerous amounts of kids that lived in this part of the village! They were SO loving and immediately hugged and greeted us as we got out of the van.  After talking with the other team for a while, I was told that the kids were very eager to help out with their project and were an integral part in helping build the steps.  It warmed my heart to know and see how hardworking these children are… that isn’t something I am used to seeing every day.   It was a very humbling experience to see how grateful these children were for all the work we did.

I can’t believe how fast this week has gone by! I feel like I have learned and grown so much in such a short amount of time. My heart is completely on fire for this beautiful country and I cannot wait for future opportunities to come back and hopefully continue these projects we have started here this past week.  Today is zip lining and shopping in the market and we are all very excited to explore the market and get some good shopping in (including the delicious coffee!!)