Dear Family & Friends,

I bet you were wondering if we were ever going to give you a new update. I am so sorry it has taken so long. I guess it is a good sign in a way.

October & November were sort of just doing our normal daily thing at Casa Hogar Orphanage & AGAPE Home for Abused Girls.

Casa Hogar

Lots of new construction and remodeling as they use the $500,000 matching pesos from the Jalisco Governor. They have lots of deferred maintenance.  Of course this makes it very difficult to sometimes hear and the dust and smell of paint just add to problem. Because of the construction the DIF (Social Services) has stopped bringing children to the orphanage and the number of children has fallen off to about 42. Remember that these children for the most part are not orphans but instead are abused or just plain neglected. Mid-October we were blessed to have our Japanese daughter, Junko visit us for three weeks and love on the kids. This was a treat as most of the children had never seen an Asian girl. Well, you had to see Junko take to the water like a duck. It was difficult to pull her away when we were finished teaching as our daughter (34 years old) was being chased and chasing the kids. She just loved the kids to pieces and them also in return.

We also had Raquel, and also Deborah and her friends join us while they were on vacation. And of course, Freda who is becoming a once a week fixture with her beautiful smile and Texas accent. Then Sandi arrived from Canada and also fell in love with the kids. Also Patrick & Tammy, Scott and his son and daughter Andrew & Ashley. Thank you all for sharing your vacations and busy schedules to love on the kids. We love to have visitors as it allows me to pair up a volunteer with a child that may be having difficulty learning to count to 10 or other simple tasks. Remember to be qualified to help us you have to speak English. Hehe. If you can speak English and have ten fingers and toes and love precious children you are qualified. Call us at 322-113-0205 home and we will make sure you are picked up and delivered.

And what a fantastic job Yael and Adriana are doing helping the children with their homework and English. Adriana has really organized Casa Hogar’s educational program & staff responsibilities.  All the kids are really starting to learn in leaps and bounds.

Faye’s kinder class is really fun to observe as she has the children singing & repeating English words. And Faye just completed teaching her children to sing “Jesus Loves Me” in both Spanish and English. They also greet me with a “Ho Ho, Ho” as I enter to bring them their snacks. As we draw closer to Christmas and my beard gets longer it just adds to the fun of serving. Speaking of snacks, Faye & I make sure the children get protein and iron by serving nuts & raisins and also a fruit juice. Otherwise the diet in Mexico is starch, starch and more starch. We also make sure that they say grace before they receive the snack.

AGAPE Home for Abused Girls

This home is a real home where the girls are blessed daily by the care also of volunteers. Because Faye & Yael and I only have a few girls to teach it is easier than Casa Hogar. Most of the girls are in school unless it’s a holiday and then we get all of the girls. The girls we are teaching are those unable to attend because of no birth certificates or no prior education. It would be very difficult to take a 12 year old girl with only a 3^rd grade education and put her in the 8^th grade. She just wouldn’t fit in at all. But that allows us to build more intimate relationships by working in smaller groups. Just like Casa Hogar the children come and go depending on whether DIF can find a family member to take over custody which is a good thing but sometimes sad for us.