Mary is a Big Help!

We have a new volunteer that goes by the name of Mary Nicewander. Mary is a physical therapist from Michigan who spends her days working with the children on an individual basis. She has a daily scheduled routine with them in which she provides them with flexibility and mobility workouts that are designed to help the children improve their motor skills, range of motion and strength.

When she is not doing physical therapy exercises with one of the children she works with them individually or in small groups teaching them to do crafts, such as bead necklaces, and puzzles, things to improve their ability to reason and recognize patterns. My wife, long ago realized how beneficial a jigsaw puzzle can be for a child's cognitive reasoning developement. She noticed that the adult workers at House of Hope could not even begin to do a 30 piece puzzle while the children, with whom she had done lots of puzzles, could sit down and fire out a 30 piece puzzle in 5 or 10 minutes.

Mary has been to Dominican Republic and Haiti on previous short term mission projects and therefore the living conditions and poverty don't tend to shock her and rend her incapable of working effectively the way we have seen them effect others. She is a blessing to House of Hope and to Katrina, especially, since it is Katrina they call when a problem arises if there is not someone as responsible as Mary on the campus already. So Katrina's phone is not ringing off the hook as much anymore.

She also said she was very pleased with the accomodations in the new Guest House that is almost finished. House of Hope will be able to host small groups and/or individual volunteers in the future without them having to stay in a room next to a crying infant or a bunch of playing children.