Friends Arrive and Preparing for Kids

For the last week there were just three of us – Sammie, Vania (interpreter) and Tamara. Over the weekend our team grew by seven people for a total of ten. We are small but powerful and will work together all week, until we expand next weekend. We are: Rick Aldred, Alan Donaldson (OT), Maren Nelson (OT), Trish Toole (OT), Scott Valentine (tech), Ed Looby (tech), and Michelle Nicolalde (interpreter). We arrived this morning to an assembly for the first day of school at Yancana Huasy. The wheelchair kids are all ready for school as the Yancana therapists assessed and fit their wheelchairs a couple weeks ago.

We spent today unpacking materials and assembling wheelchairs in preparations for seeing kids beginning tomorrow. By lunchtime the parish auditorium had been transformed into a wheelchair workshop, complete with two sewing machines, power and manual tools, foam and tools to cut it, and a “hood” to contain spray glue fumes and splatters. After lunch we identified the wheelchairs assigned to the children we will see this week, unboxed and mostly assembled them. This is harder than it may sound, as we searched through large boxes that in some cases were stacked so the name labels were not visible. Wouldn’t you know – several were way at the back or the bottom of a stack but in the end we found them all. And shoving boxes around is good exercise!