The most tiring week of my life<3

At eight years old this little girl was the mom of the house. She would take care of a five month old baby, a four year old, a five year old, a seven year old, cook, and clean the clothes. Of course this was way too much for her and the baby was not getting the care she needed. So ever since I was 10 years old I’ve loved little babies, just like any girl of that age. But I never took care of them long enough to find out what a big responsibility they are. I would hold them, feed them, and occasionally change their diapers, but nothing like I’ve been through this last week. Jostina weighed 5 pounds at 5 months old. She was a tiny baby, the size of a newborn. I constantly had my hands full when I was taking care of her and trying to get school done too, but it all paid off. She gained a lot of weight, hair, and can now hold her head up by herself. Even though she had a rough five month life she was constantly smiling and laughing. In the night my dad would take care of her so I could get some sleep. And then in the day time I would take care of her, and attempt to get school done. I fell pretty behind in school that week. But one of the hardest parts of taking care of her is that we didn’t have diapers for babies. In the clinic we found a ton of adult diapers, but we didn’t have any ones for Jostina. So what we ended up having to do was cutting the diapers to make them fit her and then tape it around her. This really wasn’t the easiest kind of diapers for her, but it was better than nothing. That was a very tiring week, but it really taught me responsibility and I loved every minute of it…okay that was a lie not every minute, but it was worth it.

<3

My second trip to Guatemala was 2 years ago, Dylan and I came when I was 2 and Dylan was 5, but we didn’t remember anything from it. So we came when I was in the end of 6th grade. We were here for 2 weeks, but I didn’t really get it. I wanted to go so that I could hang out with my cousins who I didn’t see much of at all, about a few times in a year. I also wanted to go so that I could miss a week of school. I didn’t really think about going there to help the people. I don’t really remember much of that trip now, but I remember I had a lot of fun with my cousins. So when my dad asked if this was what we wanted to do with our lives, I said yes. I didn’t really think about my friends I was leaving behind or my family I wasn’t going to see for a while or all the work and sacrifices you have to put into being a missionary, I just thought about the new adventures that awaited and how much fun I was going to have. So we got there and it was so different from our normal life style. I never relieved it, until last year but Americans take so much for granted. I mean in America everyone drives around in there big fancy cars. When they get home they just walk over to the fridge, grab a Coke then position themselves right in front of their big flat screen television. Here, in Guatemala the people would dream of even having enough money to own a car or even have electricity to be able to plug in a television. We complain when were too hot, or too cold. Here, when its hot, the people here can’t just walk inside and turn up the air conditioning or when its cold they can’t just put on their thick fur jacket and gloves. When we haven’t eaten for a couple of hours we say that we are “starving”, while there in the mountains some of the people and kids are dying from starvation but you don’t hear them complaining. Since we’ve been missionaries I’ve realized how lucky we are and how much we take for granted.