May news

Well it has been a busy month here. It started out scolding hot and now the rain has begun, and yes that means that it is raining from about noon till the next morning. But this is a great thing for all the farmers and such who depend on the rain and weather. Last year there was such terrible drought, the worst Guatemala has experienced in over 30 years and affected over 2.5 million people. So we will continue to pray that the rainy season stays for these important months.

 

Just this week in Barrio la Cruz Enrique was able to plant all the coffee plants that were purchased for his farm. There will be pictures and a post to follow. Another great reason  for the rain!

There has been a lot going on in Pastores. The children have now finished their first trimester of school and there was a group of children who did extremely well, in the top 10%  of their class. Of course there were a decent amount of children who still need to improve. It has become a struggle to tell the child that they need to try harder when the parent can not be of much direct assistance. We hear constantly ‘how can I help my child in school when I never went, or I don’t know anything?’ But we are at least telling the parents to encourage their children, to follow up with the schools to see how they are doing, find someone else who can help them and of course to let us know to see how we can help. We hope that has time goes on, the children will improve more, the parents will take an interest and we will have people to assist in the community.

 The first Saturday in June we will have a meeting with all the people in the program. For the families who children excelled they will receive a supplement bag of food and supplies and the children will also receive a supplement bag of school supplies. We hope that this will be an incentive for all to do their best.

 We continue to follow up with families and see the overall well-being of the family, there is much to be done. Also, we have met with more families about stoves and filters and hope to have more training underway soon. We have two men coming to spend some time in the community the first week of June. We will visit families, talk with others about filters and fire safety and meet with all the children and also will be doing a distribution of toothbrushes to everyone in the community.

Please continue to support Paso a Paso as our needs are great, and if you would like to be a new supporter please email us and let us know in what way you would like to help.