Washed away...

Just got word from Day Felix that there were homes that were washed away last night in his barrio.  He lives in a canyon and lots of people have built on the hillside.  He told me that instead of coming here this morning, his wife & Freddy's family are doing their laundry with the rain water they've captured.  He said there is a lot of damage back in his neighborhood.  We haven't heard yet of any injuries. 
Every day brings a new challenge to these people. Their local school has been closed for 2 weeks due to various things and with the additional problems of gangs, drugs, robberies in broad daylight, crop failures, fires, floods, lack of dependable utilities, police refusing to help...it just goes on and on for them.  I'm amazed by the resilience of these friends of ours.
Day Felix lives far enough back in the canyon that the paved road ends about a kilometer before his house.  Even in good weather, we don't drive back there due to the terrible condition of the road...lots of really deep holes, big rocks, muddy spots.  During the rainy season, Felix can't even ride his bicycle down that road.  I can only imagine how it must look this morning.  We need to add good roads to our list for which to thank God...I would suspect that even the worst road in Barry County is better than some of the road conditions many are facing here this morning.

Stormy weather...

There are so many things I want to write about…big things, little things, current things: the building project, the kids at CINAFE, our visit to some friends in another town. All are things that I want to share but God has put something else on my heart tonight. I’m supposed to be getting the kids’ English lesson ready for tomorrow in Tipitapa but God won’t let up.

It has been raining hard off and on for 4 hours now. We have numerous wet spots on our ceilings throughout our house. We just had workmen here a few weeks ago who were supposed to have repaired the roof…obviously, they didn’t. I have towels down in front of the bathtub as the water is now seeping in around it. Jim and night Felix have been taking turns sweeping the water away from the front door so it doesn’t come on in to the house. That happened yesterday.

The rains have been tremendous at times the last few weeks. We’ve not only had torrential rains, we’ve had some of the most magnificent lightning and thunder that I’ve ever witnessed. It has been both beautiful and frightening at the same time. The wind the other night was so strong that it blew down one of our platano trees…that usually only happens in the dry season as well as blowing the rain in around our window frames. The phrase, “God’s fury unleashed” comes to mind…but I know that this couldn’t even compare to what that would be like.

The heavy rains and the problems they are bringing with them for us are minimal. But we have friends who are on my heart tonight. Our employees all live in homes that are most likely flooded tonight. Several have dirt floors. I can’t imagine what they are dealing with as I write this. Day Felix has a roof that leaks when it rains and so do Danelia & Arturo, Miguel & Elizabeth, (yes, Elizabeth is back…that’s another story for another day), Teresa, Esmereyda, Margarita, Myrna, Claudia, Martin, our students in Tipitapa, our neighbors out back and on the hillside…so many.

A leaky roof in the houses of Felix, Danelia and Arturo (and the others) is far worse than our leaky roof. They will be having water running in through the holes in their roofs. All have old zinc roofs on their houses and have numerous rusted through places. I just can’t imagine what tonight must be like in their homes and I’m worried for them.

Life is so hard here for so many people…actually, for just about everybody. It’s just a matter of degree. The neighborhood where Freddy and Felix live is without water and electricity. The water company said it will be 5 more days before they get the well repaired. The electric company said they might be able to repair the blown transformer on Monday. Meanwhile, we’re loaning 5 gallon jugs filled with water for them to have drinking water. Tomorrow morning, I have no idea how many people will descend upon our house as I told Freddy and Felix that their families could come here and do laundry. We will do another water run tomorrow afternoon when we get back from Tipitapa.

This kind of weather is very hard on the elderly and children as they are the most vulnerable for respiratory illnesses and right now, that’s running rampant. Even some of the kids at CINAFE are experiencing bronchial problems. I know that next week, we’ll have folks who are sick with fever, cough and sore throats. It’s a tough cycle.

The rain is letting up some now. I don’t know if it’s over or if it’s just a period of rest between the tempests. So, I think I’m going to go to bed now that the sound of rain is not quite so deafening on our roof. But before I do, I would like to ask you for a favor. When you get ready to retire for the evening and you are able to walk across a clean, dry floor and can crawl in to a nice, clean, comfy, dry bed, please thank God for such a blessing. If you’re reading this, you obviously have electricity wherever you are, thank God for such a luxury. When you turn on your tap and you fill your glass with clean, uncontaminated drinking water, please take a moment and thank God for that ability. If you should have a cough and you take something to alleviate the discomfort from it, thank our heavenly Father for His provision of medicine.

And finally, please take a minute to pray for our friends who don’t have the same luxuries that you and I have and that we so often take for granted. Please pray that God would protect them, their families, their homes and their belongings. Not everyone will sleep as well as you and I will tonight.

There are some things you learn best in calm, and some in storm.

Willa Cather

Dog Day Afternoon...

I started this Saturday night but didn’t get it posted until Sunday morning…

It was so hot at Danelia’s this afternoon! We were missing five kids in class today as there’s still so much sickness going around. But the 20 kids who came to class ensured that it was nice and toasty in her living room. Danelia’s little ceiling mounted fan wasn’t on and without any air moving, it was like an oven. I was so hot that the “glisten” just poured off of me, often running in to my eyes! Yuk! When we get the addition built for the kids, we are buying a pedestal fan that can blow at hurricane force and I’m going to park myself in front of it every Saturday afternoon! Not really…we’ll make sure it’s an oscillating fan and I’ll share the goodness with my little cohorts.

The heat today didn’t seem to bother the kids much though. They were all ready for class and they love sharing what they’ve learned. Most of them now know basic greetings, basic good manners, several introductory phrases, eleven colors, numbers to twelve, several emotions, the parts of the face, plus their vocabulary words of apple, arm, ant, banana, ball, bear, clown, cat, carrot and today, they learned dog, duck and dinosaur. They are so much fun and I think we’re all having a ball!

Each week, we review what we learned the week before plus random parts of other previous lessons. The kids love this part as it’s become a game as to how fast they can respond with the correct answer. There’s no doubt the kids learn much more quickly with oral review versus the written word. We have found that correct spelling is not a priority in this culture. Information is still passed on orally much more frequently than through the written word. And even though Spanish is a phonetic language which makes spelling much easier to learn than in English, I’ve had to learn that if we can get down the oral skills first, we can work on the spelling later as many of these kids still struggle to read simple words in their own language.

Working on their dictionary page

We recently began making a bilingual “picture dictionary” and each week, we have a new letter that’s our focus. Obviously today, we studied words that began with the letter “D”. The kids have their dictionary page which always has 15 pictures with both the English and Spanish descriptive words. The kids color those pictures and then on the other side of the dictionary page, I have some sort of corresponding exercise for the kids to do. It may be a word find, a choose-the-right-word, a fill-in-the-blank or a dot-to-dot but it’s always something that requires the kids to work with some of their new words. They have to turn their dictionary page back in to me as I’m saving them to make a booklet out of their pages when we’ve completed the alphabet. We also usually have at least one other type of coloring or worksheet page that goes along with that day’s theme, whether it’s the letter of the day or another subject that we’re studying and those, they get to take home at the end of class time.

Creativity!

And a "howling" good time was had by all!

Proudly showing their puppets!

Today, we made lunch bag dog puppets as “dog” was one of our “D” words. The kids had so much fun making them and each one’s dog looked a little different than their neighbor’s …just like in real life. Some ears went up, some out and some down. Some tongues were hanging straight down, some cocked to the left and some to the right. Some had close set eyes and some had a dog that had one eye higher than the other. All were beautiful in the eyes of their maker…much like we are in our Father’s eyes. It really was such a fun activity that it made last night’s late-night cutting out the parts well worthwhile. The kids were so excited to be able to take these puppets home with them.

While we were working on the puppets, a little boy who looked to be about 10 years old or so, came to Danelia’s door and just stood. She went to talk to him and then called me to the doorway. She asked me if I still had any packets of the antibiotic cream she knows that we keep in our first aid kit. I told her I did and asked Jim if he would please go out to the car and bring some packets in. Jim went out and I asked Danelia why she wanted the packets. Evidently, the little boy had come to see if the gringos had any medicine for his hurt leg. I looked down and saw on the inside of his calf, two large, really nasty looking burns that already looked to be infected. It almost made me sick to look at it. I asked Danelia if he had been to the doctor. She smiled a sad little smile and shook her head “no”. She said that his mother probably wasn’t at home enough to take him.

Jim came back with the packets of ointment and Danelia took them and told the little boy he needed to wash the burns out really well. I felt queasy even hearing her say that. I asked if he burned his leg on a cooking fire and he told me that he burnt it while riding on a motorcycle. It looked to be a really bad burn. I reiterated that he needed to go to the clinic as soon as possible and be treated because his leg was infected and the infection was going to spread. I told Danelia and him that the cream was not powerful enough to heal the burns on his leg. He nodded his head okay and left with the antibiotic ointment.

I wished I could have tried the burn cream that Karen and Dwane had brought with them from Honduras but the little kid wouldn’t have anyone to be able to help him clean and change the dressing in the manner and on the regimen that it needs to be changed. He’s pretty much on his own and wanders the neighborhood. I can hardly bear thinking about how badly his leg will become infected before someone will do something with it. These kinds of things continue to be the things that bother me so much.

Back to the kids at school…last week, we studied the parts of the mouth and also talked about how important it is to brush their teeth every day at least twice a day. They all know that but the reality is that toothpaste is a costly item here as are toothbrushes. Some of these kids didn’t have brushes of their own. We had bought enough tubes of toothpaste at Pali (a small box type grocery store chain) to give each child a tube plus a new toothbrush. It was really something to see how pleased the kids were to get these things. One of the little boys, Serghi, seemed to be especially happy with his new possessions. He hurried out after class to his father who was waiting in the road and eagerly showed him his new toothbrush and toothpaste. His dad smiled and lifted his hand in a wave of thanks.

Jim forgot to take pictures that day but let me assure you that every child was just as excited as Serghi. I thought about how something that most kids in the States take for granted, these kids viewed as a gift of value. Those kinds of moments are so humbling.

I’m sure you can tell that I love being with the kids in that little neighborhood. They are so precious and are such a delight to teach. I can’t help but think about how wonderful it is going to be when we are able to move the Rayitas de Luz Ministry in to the new addition. And each day brings us even closer to making that a reality. We have been praying for wisdom and guidance with this project and God has been so faithful to clearly confirm that this is the direction He wants us to go. We know that unless the completion of this building is in God’s will, then it won’t happen. And this is what we’re making clear to Danelia and the parents. We want them to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that it’s not “Jim and Lynne” who are building the addition, but rather that it is God who is working through the giving from so many of His children to build it.

We have 3 parents so far who have committed to help with the building of the addition. That’s not a great number but it’s something. We’re praying more will come forward and help in one way or another as the building actually progresses. They had asked if we would provide food for them if they worked. We told them “no, we’re providing a place for your children to come to be safe, to learn about Jesus and to help with their education.” At first, I was annoyed that they would ask but then I realized that this country’s culture is all about asking. I wondered what message God had in that for me…

We are planning on breaking ground next week. Jim is supposed to have the final figures on the building by the middle of this week and if it gets a thumbs-up on our end, then we are asking the contractor to get started on it. Our plan is to get it finished before we return to the States in September and we’re trusting God to finish providing the funds to do so.

We will almost double the current space we are in which will seem almost luxurious to all of us. The new addition will be 23’ x 11’, long and narrow like the side yard it will sit in, but still much bigger than our existing space. I am so looking forward to the day that we can actually walk around a “classroom” without having to ask someone else move out of the way. Currently, Jim can’t be helping one child without me having to ask him to move to the side so I can get to the end of the table to help another. One day soon, we will be thinking our classroom is so spacious!

Crunching numbers...

We are also putting in a septic system so that the kids will have a sink and a toilet…again, a wonderful luxury for this neighborhood that has only outhouses. We do not have to do this according to the mayor’s office but since the laws tend to change from day to day - especially with a gringo project - if the city should ever decide to come check out the facility, we will be ahead of the game in already having an enclosed bathroom with running water and a flush toilet. Plus, we are going to have to redo Arturo and Danelia’s outside concrete shower as the new addition will take that space.

We were hoping to be able to build this for not much more than what it cost to build the little house in Los Cedros last year, which measured about 14’ x 14’, but material costs have skyrocketed this past year and we’re also wanting the addition built to withstand the frequent tremors in the area. We have had various local people who have quite a bit of construction experience to give us pricing estimates and all are very close with the cost. So I guess it is what it is. What that amounts to is we are now hoping to be able to build the addition for about $2500.00 (including labor) plus another $500 for furnishings – such as tables, chairs, shelves, a teacher’s desk and assorted supplies.

A few years ago, with a monthly paycheck coming in, that would have sounded pretty cheap but living here now on faith, that figure can some days seem like an impossibility to attain.  Still, we believe…no, we know, that with God, all things are possible. As a matter of fact, He has already shown us His faithfulness to provide in some of the most extraordinary ways. In the last few weeks, we received word that a very generous donation was made to Deep Water Ministries which we will apply towards this building fund. Plus, the Lone Star VBS kids donated their offering to us which is also going to the building fund. Then, we had some high school and young college-aged girls here who had the opportunity to visit the kids in Tipitapa and several of the girls also made donations. We even had someone who gave us their Nica change as she was leaving to return to the States…this change amounted to a little over $3.00. I have to say that I was as excited and as thankful for that $3 as I was with each of the other donations. Each “cordoba” we receive, is another sign that God has this well within His control. Those recent donations mean we have now reached almost half of our goal and that’s a week before we are to break ground!

Some would panic about that…I think it’s exciting to see God working in this way and I know that God’s timing is perfect. Because we have accumulated ½ the money, Adrian, the contractor, is willing to build the building ½ way and then wait until we have the remaining funds to complete it. It’s a benefit to us to go ahead and buy as many of the materials as soon as possible in order to try to keep the material costs down. So, the way I see it, when God sees fit to finish the funding, it will be the right time to finish the building!

Of course, Jim and I talk about this opportunity a lot. We are both so excited about the potential uses this new concrete “box” will provide for the families in that neighborhood: Bible studies, the classes for the kids, neighborhood events, and so on.   We truly believe this is going to be a concrete sign of change and hope for a people who have seemed to have lost the ability to have either. 

One of the things I’ve been thinking about is a way to provide some storage capabilities for materials for Danelia. Jim and I stopped at PriceSmart today on our way back from Tipitapa and I found a really cute plastic cubby set which will be perfect for Danelia to keep supplies in. Initially, I thought about buying two of them so that each one of the kids could have their own cubby but that would only give us 24 cubbies and we usually have more students than that on Saturdays. I also wrestled about going ahead and buying an “interior” thing when we don’t even have an “exterior” built but there were only three of these cubby sets left so I decided I better get it while the getting was good. I have been almost giddy all night just thinking about how great this colorful little piece of plastic is going to look in that new classroom! Who knew I would ever be so excited over plastic?!! The kids will love it…and so will Danelia!!!

All in all, today was a wonderful day. The kids were so much fun with their dog puppets and the finding of the cubby rack was a great surprise. I absolutely delight in how God shows us His faithfulness and His love like He has today. I also am reminded of how God works in so many ways and through so many people to accomplish His plans. It really is very humbling and at the same time, very exciting to be on this end.

I’ve never become comfortable in asking for help but I am asking that if this project is something that God puts on your heart to support, we would be deeply grateful. We also want to stress that when we receive a donation that is earmarked for a specific use, we honor that request. Otherwise, if we receive a donation that is not necessarily designated for anything specifically, we then direct those funds to the area where we happen to see the most need or where we feel they can best be used. I want to be very up front with you about this. Right now, this addition is very much a priority with us. That’s not to say we no longer give in other areas, as we do and some of those recipients will be mentioned in this month’s newsletter, but for right now, the addition is an area where we will be directing much of our “unmarked” funds. If you would like to help specifically with the building addition, you can indicate that to Mandy, our daughter who handles our finances on that end (address on the right) and if you should choose to do so, please know that you are making an investment in the future of these children and the local community of Danelia's neighborhood. We are praying God will multiply His blessings upon you for your giving and that He will stretch the funds to cover all that is necessary. We’re excited!!!