Internship at Hogar de la Esperanza (Home of Hope) & World AIDS Day

Hola Todos!

Tomorrow is my last day as an intern at Hogar de la Esperanza, a super cool organization that works with carriers of the HIV virus, and since today is 'World AIDS Day', I thought it was a good time to post about my experience these past 3 weeks at the Hogar.

            Hogar de la Esperanza was founded 24 years ago (yesterday was their birthday!) by M. Sc. Orlando Navarro Rojas in 1992, and currently serves 28 permanent residents as well as a women's group. The residents are all HIV+, but that does not mean that they all have AIDS or that they are all dying. Many of them are managing their condition and living their lives. Aside from HIV, the biggest health problem is smoking and drug/alcohol consumption among some of the residents.  Over the last 3 weeks I have learned so much, and I am so thankful for the opportunity to have met these people. During my time at Hogar de la Esperanza, I have done a few Bible studies with small groups, and each time I learn something new about the texts. We have studied the stories of, Amnon & Tamar, David & Bathsheba, and Rahab.

Some Information about HIV:

It is NOT AIDS, it is HIV

It is NOT a death sentence, it is a life opportunity

It does NOT exclusively affect homosexuals

It is NOT a sickness, it is a health condition 

It is NOT caught, it is transmitted

Today we had a special meeting and we read and discussed various Bible passages, including: Proverbs 19:1-8, Psalm 41, and John 12:20-26.

This was taken by Daniel Espinosa (the administrator of Hogar de la Esperanza), and I may or may not have stolen it from his Facebook page J

This is the picture that I took J

Today we made Christmas decorations... with glitter. I still have some glitter on me, and somehow when I was done with two pictures, I had glitter all the way up my arms and I felt like a five-year-old.