FYI on Rach and Ry: Hogar del Niño Orphanage

Hogar del Niño Orphanage

We love El Salvador. I spent my first summer there in 2005 as a volunteer with HELP International. I volunteered with various community organizations, but I was particularly drawn to an orphanage for persons with disabilities, and I fell in love with the children and adults who live there. I asked the orphanage administration if Ryan and I could come back and volunteer there for the first few months of our marriage at the beginning of 2006. They said, "Sure! You could even live here!" Thus began the adventure of a lifetime. You can read about it here.

When Ry and I returned to the States, we started fundraising for the orphanage and recruiting volunteers, and I now oversee a volunteer program that sends two college-aged volunteers to live and serve at the Hogar for three-month shifts. We are always looking for qualified, passionate volunteers, so if you know anyone who might be interested, please send them my way!

Hogar del Nino Project Blog
Hogar del Nino Project FAQs and Application

I have been lucky enough to be able to return to the Hogar many times since, and I love it there. Below you will find links to some of the posts I've written about my experiences at the orphanage. It is an amazing place.

I'm Going to El Salvador
This Is What Love Feels Like
Lift Where You Stand
Feels Like Family--Summer 2009
An El Sal Birthday
Mural Project--Summer 2010
If there's one thing I love about El Salvador, it's the rain

I hope to go back during the summer of 2014. Can't wait to see these smiling faces again!

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Favorite Quotes

"Don't you quit. You keep walking, you keep trying, there is help and happiness ahead...Trust God, and believe in good things to come." Jeffrey R. Holland

"I believe that the first test of a truly great man is his humility...he sees something divine in every other man and is endlessly, foolishly, incredibly merciful." John Ruskin

"God is the gardener here. He knows what He wants you to be." Hugh B. Brown

"You must do the thing which you think you cannot do." Eleanor Roosevelt

"In this life, we cannot do great things--only small things with great love." Mother Teresa

"If you would not be forgotten, as soon as you are rotten, either write things worth reading, or do things worth writing." Ben Franklin

"It isn't as bad as you sometimes think it is. It all works out. Don't worry. I say that to myself every morning." Gordon B. Hinckley

"A man filled with the love of God is not content with blessing his family alone, but ranges through the whole world, anxious to bless the whole human race." Joseph Smith

"Come what may, and love it." Joseph B. Wirthlin

"Oh the comfort, the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person, having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but pouring them all right out, just as they are -- chaff and grain together -- certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and with the breath of kindness blow the rest away." George Eliot

"If I were sunk into the lowest pit of Nova Scotia and all of the Rocky Mountains piled on top of me, I would not be discouraged, but hang on, exercise faith, and keep up good courage, and I should come out on the top of the heap." Joseph Smith

"Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people." Eleanor Roosevelt

"After the bare requisites to living and reproducing, man wants most to leave some record of himself, a proof, perhaps, that he has really existed. He leaves his proof on wood, on stone, on the lives of other people." John Steinbeck

"That which we persist in doing becomes easier for us to do; not that the nature of the thing itself has changed, but that our power to do is increased." Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?" Mary Oliver

"Face your deficiencies and acknowledge them. But do not let them master you. Let them teach you patience, sweetness, insight." Helen Keller

"She had always wanted words, she loved them; grew up on them. Words gave her clarity, brought reason, shape." Michael Ondaatje

"All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware." Martin Buber

"Be softer with you, you are a breathing thing, a memory to someone, a home to a life." Nayyirah Waheed

"...and with all thy getting, get understanding." Proverbs 4:7

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Hogar del Niño Orphanage

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