Guatemala
Here is our Mission of LOVE C5 Cargo plane loaded with 85,000 pounds of food, educational, medical and building supplies for our friends in Guatemala. Our Mission of LOVE building team will arrive March 21 to continue building WAY-bi ( HOUSE of DREAMS ) for the children who are dying of cancer.
Dear Friends of our Mission of LOVE,
Know that our Mission of LOVE building Volunteers have just returned from WAY-bi – Tecpan, Guatemala. Our Mission of LOVE Denton C5 Airlift arrived in Guatemala City March 17, consisting of building, medical, educational, food etc ( 85,000 pounds ) and this AID was on site when our Mission of LOVE building team joined hands with our WAY-bi friends to start the second phase of building WAY-bi, ( in Maya, Home of Dreams ). We together built, cried, laughed, shared and brought hope to the Maya people, prior to our arrival to Guatemala, they had no hope. The children showered us with their presence everyday and had no shoes or warm clothes, let alone food. ( Know that it was hailing and snowing while we were in Tecpan ) Their smiles were contagious and the children taught us that real suffering does exist in most of our indigenous world on a daily basis and that we had a responsibility to make a difference in their simple lives.
Our Mission of Love team has been to Guatemala three times since October. We have made a commitment to continue with our work of love and compassion to our partners, Doctors Edgar Moran and Claudia Moran. None of our work of LOVE could be done if we did not have the trust, commitment and sincerity of Claudia and Edgar. As in the past, it is important to build the community while we are on site building a structure of any kind. We do not want to just place a band-aid effect on this SACRED Mission of Love / WAY-bi Mission to build a home for the sick and dying children of Guatemala. I want us to go and rebuild the community of WAY-bi with a dental-medical clinic, transportation vehicles consisting of an ambulance and school buses. We are joining our efforts to create a school to train dogs for the blind and disabled, via WAY-bi / Bocalan. Our Mission of LOVE has made many promises that need to be fulfilled. I need your help more than ever! We are in need of monetary donations to pay for the building material that was sent on our last Mission of LOVE / Denton airlift and are in need of monetary donations to pay for the school buses and ambulance that we would like to send on our next Denton / Mission of LOVE airlift. We need to purchase additional building material to complete WAY-bi and build a medical/dental clinic. I would like to have these worthy Missions of LOVE completed by January of 2013. Please consider donating to Mission of LOVE, 2054 Hemlock Court, Youngstown, Ohio 44515 or via PAY-PAL on our website / www.missionoflove.org to accomplish these worthy goals that our Mission of LOVE Volunteers have set to accomplish in order to educate, heal and bring hope to the Maya’s of Tecpan, Guatemala. To obtain current information on our work of love, friend me, @ Kathleen Price on Face-book or go to our website / www.missionoflove.org.
Know that our next Mission of LOVE building mission will take place on Pine Ridge Native American Indian Reservation, June 15 thru June 23, 2012. Our plans are to go and build homes and an office building for the Lakota families on the Pine Ridge Native American Indian Reservation with Rusty Puckett as our foreman and Mission of LOVE volunteer. As with Claudia and Edgar none of our work of love could be done without the help and guidance of Rusty. WE need electricians, plumbers, builders and lots of hands and dollars in order to make this Mission of LOVE a SUCCESS. Know that we will once again to continue to build homes for the Lakota families in September. In October we will once again return to Metropolitan Hospital with a medical team to do surgeries on forty children who are in need of cleft palate surgery and also join with a Mission of LOVE building team to continue our work on WAY-bi, the Children’s home. Our efforts will complete the WAY-bi project upon our arrival in January, 2013 with another group of Mission of Love/ WAY-bi building volunteers.
Our work of love is cut out for us for the rest of the year. Know that for every dollar donated, our Mission of LOVE can generate $122 worth of goods and services, because we are ALL volunteers.
Attached is a letter of gratitude from our friend and volunteer, Edwin.
With love and gratitude,
Kathy
Mission of LOVE / Founder-Director
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Weaving loom donated from Elaine of New York finding its way to the Mayan Community of WAY-bi to make blankets. With the Mayan family is Kathy and Edwin |
Mission of Love Guatemala 2012
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My trip to Way-bi, TecPan Guatemala;
We became family, we all said goodbyes through
tears and promises of seeing each other again
and finishing what we started…the HOUSE OF
DREAMS ~ WAY-bI
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Guatemala 2012 Bob Price, Letter of Gratitude Karen Struder, Letter of Gratitude |
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Guatemala 2011 Amazing My experience of going to Guatemala: One Trip - One Mission Twenty-two Hearts - Forty-four Hands One Orphanage – One Goal My mission of love to Guatemala City - Amy Bush |
Letters of Gratitude |
U-tube Videos |
Mission
Accomplished
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Guatemalan Mission of Love Cleft Palate Surgeries |
Casa Guatemala Orphanage
2010
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Casa Guatemala ~ Mission of Love ~ Restore * Guatemala City
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| Installation of Casa Guatemala school
bathrooms January 2010 |
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2010 Mission of Love Casa Guatemala Orphanage 2010 by Rashid A. Abdu, M.D. On January 5, 2010, fourteen Mission of Love volunteers drove from Ohio to Detroit Airport, on a mission to Casa Guatemala, an orphanage with 250 children, ranging in age from 3 months to 18 years. Other volunteers came from Pennsylvania, Florida, and as far as Iowa, a total of 22, including Attorney Robert Price, Kathy Prices husband. I was the only physician. Ages of volunteers ranged from 21 years to 77, with different background, and each with special talent—carpenters, plumbers, electricians, farmers, artists, health care, and business. But Kathleen Price, the founder and director of the Mission of Love, made sure that regardless of background diversity or expertise, we all had only one mission and one goal: to serve the orphans, those beautiful children, and to show them that someone cares. Many of us were repeaters with the Mission of Love, the first timers thanked Kathy for the opportunity and hoped they would be asked again. The 6 hour flight, with one stop at Fort Lauderdale, Florida, was uneventful, not withstanding the usual hassle at the airports. Also, Kathy got the cheapest airfare for us with Spirit Airlines. However, if you needed a bottle of water or a cup of coffee on board, you had to pay $2.00 for it. I was afraid to ask the price of a small bag of peanuts! Upon arrival to Guatemala City, we went through customs without any problems. I think they know Kathy, who had been through that airport many times in the past, staring in 1992, when Mission of Love built the school at the orphanage. Since then, Kathy and Angelina Galdemez (Angie), who founded the orphanage 30 years ago, have become good friends, with common purpose—to help and care for those children. Over the years, Mission of Love has repaired torn buildings, furnished some, and last year, built a greenhouse. ....read more |
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Where there is love there is LIFE!
Happy New Year, Friends.
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2009 Mission Of Love |
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2009
How to Renew your spirit, Lose a little weight, in Ten Short Days - Bob Price (Click Link to Read)
Casa Guatemala - Mission of Love January 1, 2009
With sharing, comes love. With love,
comes peace!
Rashid Abdu M.D.
On a cold morning on January first, 2009, Bob Price picked me up early
in the morning, heading for our trip with the Mission of Love
to Guatemala. Kathleen Price, the Founder and Director
of the Mission of Love, had sent 75,000 pounds of building
material, medical/dental equipment, and other supplies to
Guatemala, some times in December. Kathy founded Mission of
Love about 20 years ago. During her travel with her husband, Bob, to
Mexico, she visited a clinic on the
Island of Isla Mujerus and found that she had more medicine in their
medicine cabinet at home, than there were in the clinic! From that
day forward, Kathy has dedicated her life to helping the poorest of the
poor in all parts of the United States and the world. This time,
it was the Casa Guatemala, an orphanage, of about 250 children, on
the shores of Rio Dulce, about 250 miles northeast of
Guatemala City.
It was at the request of another visionary, Angie
Galdamez, originally from Honduras, a widow, mother and
grandmother, who 30 years ago, visited an orphanage in Guatemala
City, and witnessed malnourished, and ill cared-for orphans, that
kindled the flame of love in her heart. Like Kathy Price’s
experience in Mexico, she decided to devote her life and resources to
those who have no voice and no hope, the orphans. It is
not strange that these two mothers and grandmothers became close
friends, each in her own way, making the difference in the lives of
those less fortunate.
The 15 volunteers with the Mission of Love came from Ohio,
California and Florida. Many of us
were repeaters. The mission was to build a greenhouse so the
orphans can grow vegetables, protected from the elements, including
vampire bats! The 15 of us volunteers, headed by Kathy Price and
her husband Bob, met in Houston, Texas, and then flew together to
Guatemala City, followed by a 6 hour drive across beautiful mountains,
and then by boat to the orphanage. There, all the lumber, that had
been delivered from Youngstown in
advance, in an Air Force C5, was in large piles at the
water edge, about 0.4 miles from the building site! Kathy has a
long standing arrangement with the Air Force to send large shipments
through the Denton program. The program allows a charitable
organization to send shipments to any part of the world, free of charge.
Through this program, Kathy has sent large quantities, including school
furniture and supplies, ambulances and even fire trucks! She is
the largest user of the Denton Program in the United States. Her
50th shipment, of 35, 000 pounds to Peru, was just before we
left for Guatemala.
On our arrival at the orphanage, our volunteers started to
work immediately, carrying the heavy lumber, including the 2”x10”x16’ to
the building site. There was also the extremely heavy 5”x4” by 16’
posts. Kathy purchased this steel-like post, locally.
This wood was so heavy; they had difficulty driving nails through it.
They called it “devils wood”! Our volunteers received help
from the locals, including the older orphans, who carried more than
their weight! They are hard working people with strength and
stamina almost unmatched.
The orphanage is a village-like setting, with several basic
buildings that house the administrative building, school,
volunteers and the orphans, who range in age from infancy to
18 years old. There is only two hour a day of electricity,
between 6:30 and 8:30 PM. The
small generator depends on gasoline availability. Consequently,
there is no refrigeration, so any fresh meat or fish has to be consumed
on that day. All the children looked healthy, and happy and
well cared for. Angie thinks of them as her own children.
All activities are geared for the children’s well being and safety.
There is a clinic manned by two volunteer nurses from Spain.
There is school with mostly volunteer teachers, or those with small pay.
After the 6th grade, Angie tries to raise fund for scholarships for
those qualified to go to high school and beyond. At the same time, she
owns the “Hotel Backpackers” with its restaurant, where many orphans
work and get the experience they need to function in the real world that
lies beyond the security of the orphanage. Angie knows where each
child is, what he or she is doing, whether their needs are met,
and what their aims and aspirations are.
Each child knows his/her duties within this great
“family”, according to ability and age. I was impressed to see
them engaged in those activities. They looked happy and proud of
what they were doing. I saw them washing their laundry in the
river and hanging it to dry on clothes lines in the sun. I saw
them work in the kitchen, preparing, cooking, and cleaning. I saw
little boys and girls standing around a galvanized sink, next to the
front door of the kitchen-dining room, like little brothers and sisters,
washing the after-breakfast plastic dishes without the slightest
discord!. I saw a little girl, no more than four or five years old,
filling a small water container in the river, carrying it to the balcony
of the office building’s second floor, and watering the many potted
plants. She looked so proud and happy that she was doing her job!
I saw them helping the volunteers, carrying lumber, and stones, and the
older ones pounding nails high on the building frame. But also I
saw them play like brothers and sisters, in the water, in
the school yard, and wherever the opportunity presented itself, and each
flashed a smile that was contagious and heart warming. Many
parents can learn from this orphanage on how to raise their children!
Besides our volunteers building an 90x30 foot greenhouse,
there were other volunteers, college students from
Colorado and
Wisconsin, who were building a classroom house. They too, were
hauling building material, including stones, on their backs for a long
distance. I was most impressed to see these young people come from
faraway places, at their own expense, building, teaching,
treating and nurturing these children. They come from all
over the world, because they believe in what Angie is doing, and want to
take part in this noble cause. It restores my faith and my hope in
the new generation that believes in sharing. With sharing,
comes love. With love, comes peace!
I met a young volunteer, from
England. He has been working at the orphanage, teaching and
working with the orphans on the village farm for a year and a half.
They plant corn, vegetables, fruit trees, and raise cows, pigs,
chickens, ducks and goats, for orphanage consumption.
He was relatively a well to do Englishman, but when he found Casa
Guatemala on the internet, he decided to visit. He returned to
England and sold his restaurant, and came back. His future plans
are to visit his parents in England once in a while, and after they are
gone, to return and live and work at the orphanage permanently.
Both, Kathy and Angie, have one thing in common:
Each is making a difference in the lives not only of those who are less
fortunate, but in the lives of those who discover themselves
through their work, like the hundreds, may be thousands of volunteers,
who were given the opportunity to see, to share and to love.
Perhaps we did help the orphans a little during our short stay, but they
gave us much more. The children made us better and our lives
richer, than before we arrived.
I will always be grateful for the opportunity. Thank you Kathy.
Thank you Angie.
Rashid A. Abdu, M.D.