Sharing the Dream

Thursday, October 25, 2007

We started the morning with planning meetings. At 9:30 Lubia, Rosemary, and Roberto arrived. Lubia is Rosemary's mother and is also the mother of the three sisters with a neurological disease. Roberto is Rosemary's son. A church in Wyoming helps support the three sisters. We talked with Lubia about the needs of the sisters and worked out ways to meet these needs. They need alot of medical care so we always have those expenses. The 3 sisters now spend most of the day sitting on a cement floor in the room when you come into the small house. This is not the best because of dirt etc. Lubia wants to put a door and a window in another room so the girls are out of the draft. We suggested maybe the floor in that room could be tiled so it can be kept clean. Lubia was very excited about that.

Rosemary has completed high school and would like to go to college to study interior design. We talked with her about finding a school and making a plan for getting through school while also caring for a small child. Roberto is three months old. We also talked about how important it is for Rosemary to get an education because once her parents are gone, she will be supporting her sisters as well as her own children. This was a very emotional discussion for Rosemary and Lubia as well as for all of us. What a responsibility for a 19-year-old woman!

Diego and Juana from Ruth and Nohemi arrived with some new products and stock for us to look at. We gave them some suggestions about quality and design for the new products, purchased some of their stock and made an order for January. Sharing the Dream also supports several students connected to Ruth and Nohemi with scholarships. We talked with Juana about the needs for the scholarship program for next year. This year we have required all scholarship students to do 4 hours of volunteer service in their communities. Some of the Ruth and Nohemi students have helped make crafts and one student helps her mother when the group meets at her house.

Diego and Juana ate lunch with us and we spent the afternoon meeting with Virginia and Diana. In the late afternoon Peggy went with the taxi driver to meet Roquelle Steen at the airport. Roquelle grew up in Spearfish and has been in college in New York City. She plans to spend a few months volunteering in Guatemala. She brings many skills to us--playing the guitar, massage, an interest in working with children and a willingness to try new things.

We spent the evening looking at the scholarships we provide for Mayan Hands groups. Diana is in charge of all our scholarships so we went through each student, how they were doing, their goals etc. The Mayan Hands scholars are all older students who are either in high school or college so they are quite spendy. Diana meets with them every 3 months and does presentations with them.

After this we fell into bed..... it has been a long 6 days.

go to Oct 26