Our Trip to the Orphanage

Hello All!

Everyone had a great time today! We started the day at For His Children Orphanage.

We had a lot of fun touring the facility and making crafts with the children. The facility was beautiful and the children were happy and friendly.

The orphanage has two locations in Ecuador. The special needs children are being moved to the other location and they are selling their current toddler house and moving those children into the former special needs house. We were fortunate to help them along this process today.

We were also able to work with the children to make sun-shaped crafts. The toddlers really seemed to like it. You will be able to see examples of their work in the exhibit in Roberta's Art Gallery starting January 20 (with a reception on January 24).

After craft time the children sang songs for us and we were able to donate lots of fun stuffed animals to each child.

The "Tia's" or Aunts at the orphanage were very friendly and spent a lot of time with the children. We helped by reading to the children, playing with them and looking in the mirror identifying body parts and helping them recognize themselves.

After lunch part of the group went to tour a Catholic University while the other part of the group continued to assist at the orphanage.

The orphanage group feed the children, cleaned the facilities and continued to play with the children.

The group at the University had a great time learning about Ecuador's education system. They were also able to see a special Frog Laboratory. There a group of individuals is trying to conserve species of frogs that are diminishing in the wild. It was quite the project.

We finished off the night by attending a Folkloric Ballet, which was fantastic. it was interesting to see all of the colors and costumes from the different ethnic groups in Ecuador.

Check out our photos from the day!