Spoiler alert: If you receive my monthly email updates, this is part of what you’ll be reading tomorrow.

Sometimes I’ve questioned if we’re on the right track in the development of our new curriculum for training rehabilitation promoters. The curriculum development can be hard, tedious, and discouragingly slow. At the end of July we started a new class of rehabilitation promoters in Canilla. Feedback we’ve receive from our students and others confirms we are on the right track.

“Thank you for treating us all the same,” said one of our indigenous female students. In Guatemala, women are often treated as property, and indigenous people in the rural communities can often be seen as less than by the Ladino population in the cities (Ladinos, not Latinos, are those of Spanish descent or those that have accepted their ways). It confirmed we are reaching those we need to with this training.

“I can tell you’ve put a lot of thought into this curriculum and are sharing your heart. This is a work of love. Some of the stories have made me cry,” commented the woman translating our training from English to Spanish.

“You are a professional, but you are taking the time to teach us. You do so in a way we can understand, even repeating things and letting us practice so we learn the concepts. Thank you,” said another participant.

“I’ve learned that we need to treat people with disabilities as equals, to help them feel better, live a better life, and discover all they can do.”

We will finish our class for Module 1 on November 3rd. Next January we will continue training this great group of students on how to work with specific adult and pediatric patients. I look forward to seeing what God will do in and through each of them.