The week of November 10th in review.
The week of November 2nd was one of relationship building for the Leedy's in Santa Rosa. Each day we visited the Hogar de Ninas to visit the younger girls and teens in the orphanage. The older girls finished finals during the week and are done school until February and four young ladies going into our program will graduate November 22. The younger girls finish November 14th. Most evenings were spent entertaining visitors. Two separate evenings we invited young women who are no longer in the program for dinner with three of them bringing their young children, and of course we had forgotten the concept of child proofing. Most evenings after dinner was spent with young ladies from our program and Marta and Osiris from our apartment complex playing dominos and talking. Yeny, who was in Wisconsin for two years and is now back in our program has been a God-send in overcoming the communication barriers. The highlight of the week was Letty and Erik's wedding. Letty was helped by Joe for four years before we started Team Up and has been out of the orphanage for seven years. It was the first wedding held in the Hogar de Ninas chapel of someone formerly from the Hogar. It was beautiful and full of tradition. Osiris and Marta along with Kelsey who is Osiris' niece were in the wedding. There were about 250 people at the reception including many former young ladies from the Hogar. The reception lasted until 5:00 A.M. although Laurel and I only lasted until 1:30 A.M. Last night we hosted the weekly Sunday dinner for those in our program. It was Yeny's turn to cook and she and Laurel made Mexican tacos. We had cupcakes and ice cream to celebrate four birthdays in November as we concluded a great week of nurturing relationships. Even the weather got better with the last five days sunny and in the mid 70's.


