We’re the Scatliff family and we’ve been working in Guatemala for about a year and half now. We’re serving kids and adults with special needs, with a huge range of diagnoses including cerebral palsy, Down’s syndrome, autism, traumatic abuse, and many others. Most of the kids are struggling with a profound level of disability, and have trouble walking, feeding, or even communicating. 

They live in loving homes, where a family of house parents has 10-15 kids, all placed with them through the Guatemalan foster system. There are so many myths and superstitions about kids with special needs here, that most have been abused and/or neglected all their lives before ending up with us. We interact mainly these days with about 3 houses of kids and one more of adults. 

We serve through MissionGO ( missiongo.org/scatliff) and partner with another organization, Hope for Home ( hopeforhome.org), that runs the houses.

Our initial intent was to provide logistics and support for the kids in terms of wheelchair maintenance, communication devices, and adapting the environment to their needs. But when we landed, the number one need every home expressed to us was that the kids needed friends. So we go play with them regularly, set up activities like water days, rocket launches, zoo trips, gardening, and anything else we can think of and have the resources to pull off. 

And the biggest joy is that the whole family gets to be involved. I (Tom) do most of the technical work (although my older two boys help with that), Candice does a lot of the planning, and we all get to play and enjoy the kids’ company. Our kids consider many of these kids good friends. 

Our favorite part of the week is the church service for the kids on Tuesday afternoons. It’s for the ministry kids — it may be the only church service in Guatemala specifically for kids with disabilities. We do a short memory verse (in Spanish and Guatemalan sign language), a song to reinforce it, a time of prayer with the kids, and then some praise and worship music. Whole thing is about 30 minutes. 

In short, ministry here is life-giving and joyful. Obviously lots of hard stuff. But really experiencing joy in the middle of that. 

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