Archive for children’s village
Finally, Our Move to the Children’s Village
Posted by: | CommentsFinally, after months and months of waiting, on February 19th, 2009 we began our move to Parramos and our new home. Still no electricity and running on a new propane generator and solar we made the big move. One can only imagine, and now there are a lot of us with first hand experience, in moving 50 children and all their stuff. Truck load after truck load and nobody, that is anyone who was of walking age, got away without helping. The work was exhausting and back breaking and took days and days to get things organized. We are still working on getting things put away but the home is beautiful.
The kids are happy. Running and playing on our 3 1/2 acres. Total freedom. They get very, very dirty but I have never seen them so happy and having so much fun. There is still lots to do, painting, gardens, fencing and more but we have time.
A huge thank you to everyone who helped fund this new home for our kids and to those who worked so very, very hard to make the move happen and in many ways against all odds!
The Veggie Garden Grows
Posted by: | CommentsThe kids are learning to grow their own veggies from tilling the soil to eating their product. For two days the big kids were in Parramos working the soil, fertilizing and planting seeds. We have our two expert gardeners, Juan Jose and Benjamin, who are also excellent teachers. We can’t wait to eat our tomatoes, cucumbers, radishes, lettuce and just about every type of vegetable seed I could find. Watch this space as our veggies start to grow.
Monty Roberts To Visit The Children of Semillas de Amor
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Even those of you who are not “horse people” most likely know who Monty Roberts is. The famed horse whisperer or as he would rather be known “the man who listens to horses” is coming to La Antigua, Guatemala on the 27th-29th of November. We are so fortunate to have Monty visit our children’s home and the children of Semillas de Amor. What an honor. A number of our children already are riding, as are my kids. Monty has been a foster father to many, many children and will honor us with a visit on Thanksgiving afternoon.
Tickets are still available if anyone will be in town. Several of our children will attend the event. Monty Roberts’ presentation is not only about horses but non violence. This is a very exciting event for Guatemala, a country so devastated by violence. Thank you to Club Equestre La Ronda for sponsoring this much needed and wonderful event.
A little about Monty Roberts:
The call was from the offices of Queen Elizabeth II, the reigning monarch of England and an avid horsewoman. She had heard about Roberts’ work and invited him to come to her country and show her staff his Join~Up® method. The Queen was so impressed by his demonstration she urged him to write a book. That book became “The Man Who Listens to Horses”.
Published in 1996, “The Man Who Listens to Horses” became a full-blown phenomenon. The book went on to sell nearly 5 million copies. Suddenly, Roberts and his training methods had skyrocketed into the limelight. The phone lines were jammed at the farm and the media was clamoring to get an interview; but more importantly, hundreds of thousands of horse lovers heard the message that there was another way.
The PBS and BBC television networks aired documentaries about his work, four more books were published and became best sellers, and countries throughout the world translated these materials, sharing his message that violence is never the answer. Over the past several years, Monty has toured the United States and has raised over $1.6 million for horse-related charities, including 4-H and therapeutic riding organizations.
Monty still demonstrates Join~Up® across the globe. His fourth book “From My Hands to Yours: Lessons from a Lifetime of Training Championship Horses,” is a textbook format of his Join-Up training principles. His academy, the Monty Roberts Equestrian Academy, located at Flag Is Up Farms, trained more than 140 students last year using his non-violent methods. MREA is run by the nonprofit organization, Join~Up® International, Inc. which has set out to ensure that Join-Up principles will be available for generations to come.
Monty never forgets the lessons he learns from the horses. In his fifth book, Monty recounts the stories of his best loved horses, chosen from the tens of thousands he has worked with throughout his lifetime. The Horses in My Life is a celebration of the horses he has learned the most from, as well as those that have impressed themselves most indelibly on his memory and in his heart. His sixth book, Ask Monty is a compilation of solutions to the 150 most common horse problems.
Today, Monty remains steadfast to his goal; “to leave the world a better place than I found it, for horses and for people, too.”
For more information about Monty please follow the links below.
http://www.montyrobertsenguate.com
http://www.montyroberts.com