Love & Hope Children’s Home is blessed to be located in a community with a lot of culture. For example, during Holy Week, our city boasts a huge display of “alfombras” or rugs made out of salt and sawdust. The rugs cover the city streets in vivid color and depict Biblical scenes. There is also a special art and restaurant district in our city that features great food, a few shops and a hostel. On weekends, the streets in this area are closed to allow for foot traffic, street musicians, living statues, and many tents that serve traditional food and sell handicrafts.
Our city also has an awesome fine arts academy which several of our children attend. We now have living at Love & Hope (and soon to be famous), a painter, a guitarist, a pianist and an actress.
Our artist has created many original paintings. He really has a talent for drawing and painting and is very creative. Apart from his formal art class, he doodles on everything. Many visitors to Love & Hope Children’s Home have taken home his original artwork. To teach him a bit about being an entrepreneur, we made a deal with him that he can sell his paintings to visitors, but he has to buy his own supplies!
Love & Hope’s resident guitarist has been learning for over a year now, after a very kind couple recognized her interest and sent her a beautiful Fender guitar. Even though her progress is slow, she loves going to lessons and practicing at home!
We’ve all been very impressed at how fast our pianist has learned. He already had his first recital and a few months ago even performed for the mayor of our town at the inauguration of the Academy of Fine Arts! After seeing how dedicated he was to learning the piano, we bought him a small keyboard to practice on at home. He has also tried to compose his own songs…a master in the making. Click here to see a video: video-1472497519.
One of our girls recently began a theater class. For a girl that loves to talk, it was the perfect fit! Sometimes, she breaks out in her warm-up enunciation exercises at home. She and her classmates are currently deciding which play to practice and perform. We can’t wait to see what they come up with!
We love that several of our kids have embraced the fine arts. All four are very motivated and very talented and we can’t wait to see where their newly acquired skills take them!