.

Jennifer has started crawling now! I will put up a video of her newest accomplishment soon!

Sorry, I don't know how to flip it around! You will have to turn your head sideways.

I have decided to stay with For His Children for another year. Over the past couple months I have had countless conversations with friends and strangers about how it’s so right for me to here. I truly feel like God has made it clear that this is where I need to be at least for another year. My job description involves leading international groups and volunteers, the child sponsorship program, as well as fundraising for FHC. I will be doing some traveling in the States throughout the year and speaking at different churches/organizations. I am excited for this opportunity and all of the interesting people I will meet. I will be coming home to NY mid-August and will be in that area for a little over a month. I am excited to spend time with my family and visit some friends. This summer is going to fly by as I have five different teams I am leading as well as many interns. Just in the month of June, we’ve had 12 full-time international interns comes. I organize their schedules and help them plan trips to visit some interesting places in Ecuador. Throughout this summer we will have interns from the US, Canada, Germany, and Denmark. Each intern brings something unique to the orphanage. This week I will have some high school students from Pennsylvania coming for 1 week to help with different work projects and they will do different activities with the kids. It is busy but I really love the work I’m doing here.

Roles

One of the little baby boys who I brought home from the hospital almost 2 months ago, was in the hospital for a while because they found a mass in his throat and he was having trouble breathing. He had a trach inserted and came home a few weeks ago. He has to be in his own room so that he doesn’t get any infections from the other kids. I laughed to myself the other day as I had scrubs on, complete with a mask and gloves, and was suctioning his trach. Am I qualified for this, probably not! I love all the different roles I get to be in during the day here. Sometimes I’m psychologist; I worked with a family who came with their adopted children who are now teenagers just to visit their birth country. In the course of their visit, we located their birth mother. I worked with preparing the teenagers for this visit. Sometimes I’m social worker; a few weeks ago I went to investigate where a birth family who abandoned their children was living. Sometimes I’m tour guide; leading individuals and groups around the country. Sometimes I’m physical therapist doing different activities and exercises with the kids. Every day is different that contains new experiences.

Some more fun recipes....

we made some lips with apples,peanut butter, and marshmallows for the teeth

Cooking class continues to be a highpoint for the kids during the week. Every time I see the toddlers throughout the week, they will say, “Tia Jennifer, are we cooking tonight?” After two years of trying out fun recipes we have pretended to eat every insect imaginable and have used food dye, sprinkles, and lot of chocolate to make our recipes more interesting.

Our cooking class has evolved into not only cooking but about 10 minutes of singing too. The 13 kids range in age from 2-6. Some favorites that they have learned this year in English are the peel banana songs, the ants go marching, and the wheels on the bus. The kids are so cute during this time and their attention span is amazing. They stay focused during the whole class. As soon as they see me outside the house coming in for the class (many times with 1 or 2 other volunteers) they start yelling “Tia Jennifer is here!” It’s a highpoint of my week too.

New Babies

Welcoming Ismael to his new home

In the past two weeks I have gone to the hospital to pick up three different abandoned children to welcome them to the orphanage. I also received a three year old little girl the other day who was brought to our orphanage. Two of the children were in a local hospital and one of the children we had to travel to the border of Columbia, a five hour bus ride with a newborn baby! Today I went with the social worker to pick up a baby girl who will be going to our orphanage in the city of Latacunga. We arrived and the social worker had to rush off to another appointment. I was left with the newborn baby, 3 huge bags of donations, a camera, and important paperwork. I was given very quick instructions of where I needed to go with the baby as well as what to do with the paperwork, etc. I got into a taxi after carrying this huge load, to bring the baby to a clinic for a doctor’s appointment. As we were driving the taxi driver said he couldn’t drive any further because the street was blocked off. So I had to get out of the taxi, carrying all of these things a few blocks until we arrived at the clinic. I then met up with one of the caregivers from Latacunga and I was able to go make copies of all the paperwork. What I thought was just going to be a 1 hour event, turned into a 4 hour event. I love welcoming the new children into our home. It’s really a blessing for them to be placed within this particular orphanage. The care that they receive is truly extraordinary. With so many new children, we are looking for people to sponsor some of these kids. Since I am also in charge of the sponsorship program, please contact me if you think you might want to sponsor one of these kids!
Scrubbing up


Receiving Ismael from his nurse

Rosa Leaves for the US

After 5 1/2 weeks of being within the country to complete the adoption process, Rosa and her family headed back to the States on Wednesday. Rosa's family's time here has not been easy as they have had to learn how to deal with some of her different negative behavior and communicate with their new 16 year old daughter in a language they don't speak. It is amazing to know that Rosa has a permanent family who is loving and so excited to invite her into their family. Their story is amazing and they have had to overcome many obstacles in order to adopt Rosita. But they have seen God's hand in this whole process and have completely trusted in Him. I brought over some brownies on Tuesday night to celebrate their departure. I love this picture that I got with Rosa. She is looking at the camera and smiling, which is a major miracle in itself! Congratulations to Rosa and her new family!

Galapagos!

Last week was my big adventure in the Galapagos. I went with my friend Amanda from college and it was a most interesting experience. We landed in Galapagos at the smallest airport I have ever been to. It had one landing strip and everything was outside, covered by a tin roof. We got off the plane and were met by hotness and humidity, it felt great! Our first day was a little rocky as Amanda thought she had Dengue Fever (she just got back from 2 ½ years in Uganda). Her bones ached, her stomach hurt, and she had a fever. She spent most of the first day sleeping back at our hostal, while I went out to explore the surrounding area. I went on quite the lengthy walk to get to an absolutely beautiful beach – white, smooth sand and such blue water! As I was walking (and looking out into the water) I almost tripped on a huge land iguana. After getting back in town, I went to the pharmacy to get Amanda some pills. You don’t need a prescription for anything here in Ecuador. So I had 3 different pharmacists come to try and help me figure out which pill Amanda needed. I left with four different pills after about a 45 minute discussion. The next day Amanda was still not feeling well so we went to the local hospital. We cut the line of about 40 Ecuadorian women and their children and were ushered into the emergency area. As acting translator, I went into the room with Amanda and the doctor told me to look down her throat and observe some weird white bumps while Amanda gagged. She was diagnosed with a bacterial infection. We went back to the pharmacy I visited the nice before, returned our old pills in plastic bags, and were given new ones to help her.

We left for our cruise that day. There were 13 other people on our boat – Australians, Italians, English, Canadian, and Columbians. Our fellow passengers were an interesting lot who made the trip even that more memorable. It was a rather small boat which made for some very interesting travel at night. There was a lot of rocking and pitching back and forth. Being on the top bunk, I held on so I wouldn’t fall out during the night. We got to visit about 5 different islands; all of them offering us a new animal to see. We learned about and saw the Galapagos turtle, sea lions, the blue- footed, red-footed, and masked boobies, the frigate bird, finches, albatross, lava lizards, a whale, and sharks. Every day we got to snorkel and it was amazing what you could see underwater. We swam with the sea lions and sea turtles, saw some huge sting rays, and tons of fish.

I went down into a lava tube cave and got to explore the inside which was pitch black. Our first full day on the boat we visited an area called Post Office Bay. According to the old whalers’ tradition, a letter would be left without a stamp to be taken by the next person passing through who was traveling to the destination of the letter. They have continued with this tradition and now tourists write postcards to be hand delivered to other tourists. I found a postcard addressed to Smithtown which I will take back to NY with me.

It was truly amazing to be able to stand right beside all these animals and sit along the most beautiful beaches I have ever seen.