We would like to send our sincere wishes to all for a wonderful holiday season and a prosperous New Year!! 🥳
Another wonderful Navidad/Christmas celebration for our elders at Place of Hope occured this morning. We have been preparing for today over the past several weeks. It really does take a village to bring this all together. We have so many to thank for all their help and donations. Yesterday several of our voluteers put together all the backpacks, it only took us a little over 1 hour to prepare 100 🥰 We just can’t say enough about how great all of our voluteers are. They do so much for us, hugs to all of you!!
Our deepest gratitude to all that helped to sponsor backpacks this year. Everyone was so happy to receive them. We also put goodies in each one: 1 jar of salve (made by Ginger Plov), a candy/cookie bag, 1 toothbrush, 1 mesh bag (they use these to carry their items for normal breakfast service), 1 travel size shampoo, & 1 pair of socks.
For the past few years we also gift a cooked 1/2 chicken with potatoes. One of our incredible cooks, Veronica Guaman and her husband Luis, spent most of last night cooking 50 chickens and then this morning Luis delivered them to us. Truly, these are the most delicious chickens you will eat. We only had 5 – 1/2 chickens left and they will be used for a meal next week.
Dessert this year were provided by Janette Sullivan & Jose & Karla, the owners of El Minero restaurant here in Cotacachi. Janette made 200 yummy cookies and El Minero made Mexican Tiramisu & Flan cake. Our elders eyes lit up when they saw dessert coming out. It is always such a treat. Thank you all for your kindness.
We had a ton of mandarins donated to us from Byron. He is the brother in-law to one of our voluteers. Thanks for thinking of us again this year, it is really appreciated.
As you can see so many help to make this day very special for the elders and we would be remiss without saying a very big THANKS to Papa Noel for taking time out of his very busy schedule and help us hand out gifts today. Hope you get some rest soon 😉