House of Hope

Today (Wed. October 20th) we went to visit the kids at the House of Hope. The House of Hope was funded for under privileged children with mental disabilities. There are currently 6 individuals in the House of Hope with the youngest at age 6 and the oldest at age 53. One of the girls has cerebral palsy and can only lay on her back. She cannot move her limbs very well and needs to be carried from place to place. There are also two orphans sisters that are around the ages of 38 and 40. These two girls are not able to take care of them self and they did have a mother who loved them dearly and did not want them being cared for by anyone else. She passed away not that long ago leaving the two girls behind with no care. Another little girl is blind in both eyes and also cannot walk. She can sit upright but tends to sway back and forth trying to keep her balance. There is a 6 year old girl in the house who had previously lived in the hospital for 5 years because her mother had just left her there. The last girl in the house is the oldest of them all (53 years old) and has some sort of a mental disability that they are not quite sure exactly what it is. At a young age she had just stopped growing and is very tiny. She used to live with her sister until her sister could no longer take care of her anymore. We brought with us a bunch of supplies to donate to the kids at the House of Hope such as books, magnetic letters, crayons, dry erase boards, diapers, flash cards, etc. The kids seemed to really love the bright colors of everything we have brought so we decided that next wednesday on our last visit, we are all going to take turns teaching the kids some sign language words while the rest of us will decorate and paint the walls of their rooms. Right now the rooms are all white and since they love color so much, we all thought that this would be a great opportunity to give them something more to look at and enjoy. A few of us also all took turns feeding some of the kids lunch. We would help out and spoon feed the little girl with cerebral palsy who could not move at all and also showed her some of our colorful flash cards that we had brought with us. None of us really knew exactly what to expect from visiting the house of hope but now I think we have gotten a much better understanding on just how much care these children need and so for our next visit, we will do all that we can to brighten up their lives and give them as much of our care and support as we can.
-Sara-