The Challenge : Poverty in Guatemala

Can you imagine living on a budget of one dollar a day per person in your family? What would you eat? What happens when you need a doctor? By Arwen McGilvra- In Guatemala, nearly 8 million people live in rural areas, and of those, 57% live in poverty, which means they have a budget of about one...

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Seeing Poverty

Poverty. It’s ugly. So ugly, in fact, that we shield ourselves from it. In the U.S., a person making less than $11,344 a year falls into the poverty category. Yet in Guatemala, the average income is around $2,800*. Poverty is rampant in Guatemala; it’s one of the poorest countries in...

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Year-end Reflections

By Pablo Villagran- One of the highlights of this Christmas season was the visit this past week of a team from Crest Baptist Church in Creston, Iowa. Director Alejandra Diaz says the entire staff appreciates the love they and others demonstrated for our children this season. Through the years she...

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New Playset Video

We had a great team from Connecticut come to Dorie’s Promise and build our new playset for us. Watch it come together from the ground up in this video. The kids love it! We are so blessed to have volunteers and sponsors who give of their time and money to make these things a reality. Thank...

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Phase One Complete!

  By Pablo Villigran-   With summer almost upon us, we were overjoyed to see phase one of our backyard reconstruction project completed in late April.   The work started last summer before a sinkhole interrupted progress and sent us back to square one—making this...

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A Real House

By Alejandra Diaz- As part of our mission to help Guatemala’s children, Forever Changed recently built a one-room house for a single-parent family that has been living in the ghetto for 16 years. Three mission teams worked on the home, which took about three months to complete because of a...

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Backyard Update: Green Grass Again

By Alejandra Diaz- Although a sinkhole that developed soon after we started backyard renovations last summer sent us back to square one, two mission teams recently helped us put down new grass. First, a group of missionaries visited from Dec. 3 to 12 to help with this as part of their projects. We...

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A Special Christmas Connection

By Ken Walker- We welcomed two special guests this past week from Bethel Memorial Church in Princeton, Indiana. They brought Christmas gifts for residents of the ghetto, our Special Mothers, and our children. We are doing our best to keep the latter a secret, since the children’s Christmas...

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The Guatemala City Dump

By Paul Kvinta We stand at the edge of a steep ravine, and our tour guide, Fredy Umberto, encourages us to study the scene below. “Welcome to Guatemala,” he says. “This is the reality of my country.” Beneath us, for as far as the eye can see, thousands of people swarm over and around endless...

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The Maria Teresa Ghetto Project

Guatemala City has plenty of slums and sketchy areas, but you’d be hard-pressed to find a more challenging place to live than a neighborhood called Maria Teresa By Paul Kvinta Guatemala City has plenty of slums and sketchy areas, but you’d be hard-pressed to find a more challenging place to live...

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