130714 ORPHANS ON THE STREET

HOGAR VILLA BENDICION

We visited the Hogar Villa Bendicion orphanage this week along with Sister Marsha Walker from Arizona and Tom Burke a Canadian living here in Santo Domingo, a recent convert to the church.  He married a Dominican and has one child.  Tom is the ward specialist to help us with a project for the orphanage.  He will organize some kind of member service project to benefit the orphanage.  We will purchase things the orphanage needs.  Sister Walker was along for the ride.

Unfortunately here in the DR there are abandoned children that live on the street.  Our guard recently was taking a survey for his Phsycology class about what should be done.  He went on to explain that every morning he walks through the Colonial Zone to work.  Many abandoned children gather in this area to try to beg money off of the tourists.  The typical scenario is that a mother remarries or gets a new boyfriend who does not want a child who is not his and kicks the child out of the house. There is an agency here doing all they can for these children.  The agency is called CONANI; we have done a project for them before.  CONANI tries to find a place to put a child in if there is no family to help.  Many children in this situation are of Haitian descent.  Hogar Villa Bendicion takes in as many as they can.  They are one of the few places that will take in Haitian children as well.

 

                                   

 

Tom is big on teaching kids music and gets along with kids really well.  Within just a few minutes he won a lot of friends in the orphanage.

 

                                       Edith and Sister Walker solving all the Dominican problems.

 BISHOP’S STOREHOUSE

On occasion we help at the bishop’s storehouse.  Sister Arias was having computer and printer problems so Edith tried to help her.  In the process Wallace copied some files onto a Sister Arias’ flash drive so he could print them off for her since the storehouse printer isn’t working.  Luckily Wallace caught a Trojan virus lurking on the flash drive before he infected his computer.  We are sure there are viruses galore on the store house computer because it doesn’t seem to have any protection program installed.
DAY 2 & 3 OF MONTE PLATA CHICKEN COOPS
We traveled to Monte Plata twice this week to continue building the coop at the Guerrero family lot.  We are learning a lot in the process of construction.  Wallace is making changes to the design and developing a step-by-step process with pictures and diagrams so in the future the members can handle it on their own better.  We are having a lot of fun.  Wallace works along with the members, but the members are doing 90% of the work.  Edith sits in the shade and studies Spanish when she isn’t taking pictures of the process or trying to converse with family members.

                                      

Edith and Sister Despain sharing a moment just before Family Home Evening on Monday night.