Two weeks and counting...

Well, I am off on another adventure and this time I am going to keep a blog, so that all my friends and family can hear about my endeavors from afar. For many years, it has been a goal of mine to volunteer abroad long-term, and now I am finally embarking on that dream. In a few short weeks I will be heading south to Honduras, Central America for 14 months where I will be volunteering through an organization called Friends of the Orphans at a children’s home run by Nuestros Pequeños Hermanos (NPH, Spanish for "Our Little Brothers and Sisters").

Friends of the Orphans provides financial and volunteer support to a network of nine NPH orphanages throughout Latin America and the Caribbean. NPH was founded in 1954 and now cares for over 15,000 orphaned, abandoned, and disadvantaged children in nine homes. The children’s home that I will be at, outside of Tegucigalpa, Honduras, cares for 600 children, ensuring that they receive love, shelter, food, healthcare, and an education. The children are raised in a Christian Family environment based on unconditional acceptance and love, enabling them to grow into caring and productive members of their communities. After many years of searching for a long-term volunteer organization, I am very excited to have found one that seems like it will be a great fit.

I will be volunteering as a Registered Nurse in both the internal clinic on-site that serves the children, staff, and other volunteers, and in the external clinic that provides affordable healthcare for local Hondurans who could not afford care elsewhere. I am thankful for the wonderful year-plus of nursing experience that I now have under my belt, as it will be very beneficial in helping me adapt to this new nursing environment where I will be working with limited resources.

As my departure date on December 26^th draws near, I am filled with many emotions of excitement, nervousness, wonder, disbelief, and a readiness to step out of my comfort zone into a new culture and lifestyle. During my first three weeks, I will be staying in Copan Ruinas, Honduras with a host family and attending a language school to brush up on my conversational Spanish, vocabulary, and learn some Spanish medical terminology. Then I will travel 7 hours by bus to the NPH children’s home, “El Rancho Santa Fe,” just north of the capital city Tegucigalpa, and begin my 13 months of service on January 16^th.

I will do my best to keep this blog updated once or twice a month, depending on my internet availability. If you would like to be notified by email when I update my blog, email me and I will add you to my mailing list. Otherwise, check out my blog “Heather in Honduras” at your leisure; or not at all, that’s fine too. I will also have internet access, so feel free to keep in touch via email: heather.a.brook@gmail.com or Skype: heather.a.brook. And I also love letters! My mailing address is:

Heather Brook

Nuestros Pequeños Hermanos (or just NPH)

Apdo. Postal 3223

Tegucigalpa, Honduras

Central America

If you would like to learn more about the organization I am volunteering with you can visit http://www.nph.org/ or www.FriendsoftheOrphans.org. There are also several YouTube videos: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjrpPraR3yk shows what daily life at NPH Honduras is like and http://www.youtube.com/user/nphinternational#p/search/0/pIZ8n0iOuPw entitled “Love without Limits” shows NPH at all the homes and talks about the organization’s values and mission, and how children come to the homes.