Organization at its finest. GOT Ministries is back in Guatemala with our Occupational Therapy (OT) student from New Mexico University, Sydney. We arrived a little over a week ago, and are thankful for our time here. When we arrive, there is much to organize, coordinate, and communicate. All with the goal to empower and serve children with disabilities in Guatemala. We did start this trip with a lovely visit with a young girl named Sienna, who is blind. Sydney and I evaluated her skills and created a plan to support her independence in daily life, success in school with technology, and socialization with her peers. Because Sienna lives about 45 minutes away, we will continue to work with her every other week to support educational success and independence. From then on, oh the organization! When we arrived in Antigua, we organized and settled into our new temporary homes. Then, we journeyed up the mountain to Santa Maria de Jesus as soon as we could. The first day's goal was to finish organizing and cleaning our Occupational Therapy room on the third floor of New Life School, a school specifically for children with disabilities. Check out our beautiful Occupational Therapy clinic! A HUGE THANK YOU to all of you who provided gifts for therapy equipment, and for our Envision Trip Team who helped organize and make the room beautiful!  The next step was to organize the information we get from all of the amazing faculty at New Life School, and figure out our caseload of kiddos. So, we chatted with the teachers, psychologist and families to catch up on how the school year is going for the children we served in February through April. We then begin observing the children in the classrooms and ask more questions from the New Life School staff. This allows us to develop the complete list of children we will serve for the next three months through our amazing OT student, Sydney. Next week, we begin a full caseload and will be working directly with the kiddos from the New Life School in the morning, and younger children from the community in the afternoons. We teach adaptive strategies for daily living tasks like tying shoes or dressing, as well as modifications to help the children pay attention in class, increase their self confidence, and even socialize with their peers. With our little kiddos in the afternoon, we get to address things like communication, basic developmental milestones like rolling, playing and holding their heads up, and behavioral modifications like visual schedules or a reward system within the home. All of the organization, work, and coordination is so worth it when moments like this happen.....  Our friend Abner, who we have worked with for over a year, found us in an extremely large crowd in the market at Santa Maria de Jesus (during an Independence Day celebration) and ran over to us to say hello and to give us a hug! Given, we were the only "gringas" there at this celebration, but it was such a sweet moment for us :)
We love you and thank you for your partnership in this ministry through your prayer, financial gifts, and encouragement, because we could not do this work without YOU!!! Sincerely, Megan Lewis GOT Ministries Director
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