Casa Bernabe

Week 2 of project trips in Guatemala has come to an end. My Costa Rica team, several volunteers from the States, and I just completed a week long project trip at an orphanage in Guatemala City called Casa Bernabe. This mininstry has been around for several years and has a really cool organizational model for their orphanage. There are about 8 different houses (casas) on the campus into which the 100+ orphans are divided up by age and gender. Each house has a couple bedrooms with several bunkbeds, a kitchen, a living room, and a set of devoted house parents. The kids eat, sleep, and live with their respective families. The model shows a lot of promise... but is it of course not free of struggles.

All of us that came to work for eMi on this project got a small glimpse into what it means to be house parents at Casa Bernabe. On Monday night the orphanage sponsored a special speaker to encourage all of the adults on campus. In order for everyone to get the chance to enjoy the speaker, we were asked if we could watch over the kids in each of the houses. I was assigned to Casa Lamar which houses the older girls (ages 9 to 15). After the house mom left, we put on a movie and relaxed. When 7pm rolled around... it was 'bed-time' for the house. So, we turned off the movie and pointed the girls toward their beds. However, 'bed-time' seems to be more of a polite suggestion than a rule. It was constant noise and complaining and chaos until after 9pm. By about this time it seemed that house had finally hit the sack. I was able to do a few dishes and clean up just in time for the house mom to arrive. I was so glad that my time had come to head back to my child-free, careless life! The rest of the eMi stand-in parents had very similar experiences in their houses. All of us really gained an incredible respect for the work and energy that all of the house parents put in everyday!

Anyways... about the actual project. The assignment at hand was to design an addition to the school building on campus. The site engineer had the vision of building directly on top of the existing school. It seemed good enough in theory, but we were very adament about really testing if such a project was realistic. After determining that there really weren't many other possible locations, we decided to take on the challenge. In addition to the school expansion project, the ministry also requested that we survey actual locations of buildings on campus and the existing sanitary sewer system in order to make recommendations for system upgrades.


I worked with a young Civil Engineer named Emily from Illionis. Emily was a past intern at the Guatemala office and has been working in industry for about 3 years. We worked with a couple of the other interns in order to create an accurate map of the orphanage campus and the sewer system. Our work was very labor intensive since we only had an 'old-school' theodolite to complete our survey work. However, it was a great review for me and took me back to my sophmore surveying class. By the end of the week, we had completed all of the necessary site work and the architect and structural team had completed a good deal of the school design. The staff at Casa Bernabe seem very happy with the work to date and are eager to get started on the construction of the building.

The most enjoyable part of our time at Casa Bernabe was Friday night. On Friday night we had the opportunity to spend time at the older boys' house. We ordered several pizzas and enjoyed getting to know the boys over games of cards and a movie. They were quite enjoyable!

Although Casa Bernabe has many victories to celebrate, there are still daily struggles. On Friday night alone, 3 kids ran away from the orphanage (one with a laptop), and Steph's camera was stolen. There are a lot of broken kids in this place that need your prayers! Pray also for the ministry staff, the house parents, and the daily provision that the orphanage needs to survive!