NATIVITY
2008

The New Year 2009 will be difficult for everyone. Hopefully, this will bring our hearts closer to God, the Giver of all goods and will oblige us to live a more sober and austere life style. God willing, we will not have to face major difficulties and will be able to help those in need.

At our HOME we have been making reasonable changes to be able to confront this crisis too, especially since we live out of your generosity.

This year of 2008, we had a “stable family” of children, with the advantages brought by stability. Our teenage boys are going to a boarding school at Ak-Tenamit, five hours away from us. Our detailed NEWS are in our Website www.hogarafaelayau.or and are kept there for you to enjoy.

The "adoption law" passed by our Congress a year ago marked a new stage in the history of our Home. Therefore I am enclosing a small historical summary:

• 1996 The Guatemalan Government entrusted the dilapidated centennial Orphanage of Guatemala City which is located in a one and a half city block in downtown, to the Monastic Community of the newly founded Antiochian Orthodox Church to regain the original purpose of it being a home for children in need.

• 1997 The Guatemalan Government transferred on the same day from another depleted orphanage 115 boys and girls of all ages, with the order to place those who had no families in adoptive homes, to return those lost back to their homes, to keep those whose families did not qualify as “good” because of vices, and receive as many children in need as possible.

So what we did during these ten years:

• We welcomed over 1,000 abandoned and orphaned children.

• Made about 300 national and international adoptions.

• Returned to their homes (after careful investigation, spiritual and health care and schooling) about 600 children.

• At present, we have under our care about 100 children of all ages, of which three have graduated this year from High school and are going to the University next school year in January.

On the other hand, the new “unicef” Law of December 2007 brought opposite decisions from the Guatemalan Government:

 We are forbidden to make adoptions and cannot receive children from the courts if we do not sign their one-way contract, which we cannot do.

• Therefore, we have become a private home-boarding-school for our children and welcome those that are brought voluntarily and the few babies left at our doors. We have become a big stable family of 100+
  Orthodox children.

We had decided in 2004 to begin the construction for the home for the older boys at the Monastery, so in November of that year we had the ground-breaking and slow beginnings with the help of many.

On March 2006, the Grant of the Virginia H. Farah Foundation made possible a big advancement of the construction of the home.

On December 2006, a “prostitution law” favoring this business around the orphanage and all downtown, brought the decision to transfer all our Orthodox children to the Monastery due to the extremely worsening conditions: mainly street violence, smog and noise pollution. Therefore changes on the construction plans had to be made to enlarge the facility. Because of your financial support, we keep building slowly and you can see the advancement of the project in our website too.

External situations have brought about changes and we try to see God’s blessings through all of them, to discover His loving hand bringing us closer to Him and to receive Him that visits us daily, constantly.
May this blessed Feast of the Nativity fill us with His gentle love, the only need we really have and bring us to share it with all those near us.

In His love,

Igumeni Inés, the Mothers, the children and staff with me in Christ, the New Born Child.