Saturday we spent the entire day in San Pedro. Considerable time was spent at the medications warehouse buying meds for our clinic. Having a nurse here regularly has required more time and money than we expected. We had lunch with a young missionary who is good friends with one of our friends in Tulsa. It was a real blessing. Turns out we have a lot in common; for example, she, Cheryl and I are all graduates of Oral Roberts University in Tulsa. Yesterday we had a really good meeting of the church leaders. Each of the half dozen committees was given just 15 minutes to make their presentation, but we still went on for 41/2 hours, adjourning just in time to get in the van and go pick up the members from El Sauce for church. During the meeting we invited the leaders to have lunch at our house on the Sunday when the team from Tulsa is here in February. There must have been some misunderstanding about that. An hour later Selvin was in the pulpit and invited the whole church to our house for lunch that day. Hmmm. Today was a busy day. We met with George (construction worker) re. extending and resurfacing the porch; with Dina (nurse) re. dispensing of meds; with Nelson concerning new teaching materials; with Norma about this year’s graduation dresses. The mother of a little boy that came to the clinic today said he as born with a severe heart deformity. There was much special prayer for him. She said the next time he was examined the doctor said his heart was normal.
Well, we got stood up by our lawyer yesterday and also by the air-conditioning serviceman. Unfortunately that’s a way of life here for many people. When there are exceptions you really appreciate it. We drove by Santos’s place yesterday and discovered he has poured the concrete forms for two more filters. He’s off to a good start. This morning we visited Gloria, the woman who lost her husband last year. We want to provide her with some furniture as she has none. Eight people live in a single room, and they have only three beds. We will start by having Alfredo build some bunk beds. Joel and Marcos are sanding and painting the metal “canaletas” under the roof of the front porch. Next they will do the steel bars that cover our windows. We hope to paint the building as well. Today we hosted registration for the ten students that are being scholarshipped to the private school. It started out as an enrollment exercise but developed into a very encouraging and inspiring service.
We had Nelson (English/computer teacher) and wife Sonia here for lunch today. We had a good time visiting about things such as the church, Nelson’s classes, etc. He has signed up 40 new students for this next semester. Today Cheryl and her crew finished putting together the 50 more Christmas boxes for the children. We were short that many after handing out the 1000 that were on the container. Jose Vasques, good friend, church member, and husband of the director of the private school passed away last Saturday. He had cancer. We have a meeting tomorrow with the lawyer that’s working on our tax exempt status..
The Oklahoma State University team was here for a week and left last Saturday. They had a very successful trip. Eric Lam, graduate engineering student, stayed on several more days to work on the water filter project. If he is successful in getting another EPA grant for the next phase of this project, equipment will be provided to automate the entire filter construction process. This would create jobs and make it possible to put a filter in every home. This morning we had a dental clinic. We also had a meeting with the lawyer that is working on our pastor’s visa. We submitted what documents we had and he gave us the next step. One of our students drowned last week. Reinaldo was a member of our church so we had a special service for him; his entire family came. Selvin put together a power point of his life since he’s been in the church.
Oklahoma State University Engineers without Borders are building a water purifier filter as they teach Santos, (Alfredo's brother), how to make one. The goal is for Santos to make them for his fellow villagers; help them get clean water, and make a little profit. Making water filters in El Sauce and then testing the water samples in the mission center.
Two days after the children received their gift they were running out to the OSU students showing them their gifts. So many of them coloring wherever they could find a surface (few have tables).
An assembly line with the OSU team, guards, Gary and bus driver formed to pass the gifts through the crowd in El Sauce. Greg Wilber, OSU School of Engineering, and Gary at the end of a long assembly line passing the gifts through the crowd into Flor's house where we organized them and then the people went in one door and out the other to receive their gifts Cheryl and I got back to Honduras last Friday with literally just a few hours before the Oklahoma State University Engineers Without Borders team arrived on Saturday. We finished grocery shopping on the way home from the airport and our workers were kind enough to work overtime in order to help us unload the bus when we got home. The OSU group got here at midday on Saturday and spent the rest of the day getting oriented and settled. On Sunday morning we took them on a long hike through Sies de Mayo and the countryside and on to the river to give them an idea of the area their work will impact. In the afternoon we had church and an excellent message by Selvin, especially to the students.
Monday morning the students divided into 3 groups. One group went to the private school and began what will become an education program for teaching parents and students the great importance of clean water. Another group began to assemble the tools and devices that will be needed to build the filters. The third group took water samples from many of the houses in Seis that have filters. While all of that was going on, a large crowd was amassing outside our gate in anticipation of the Children’s Christmas gift distribution. Cheryl started by having the guards permit only a few at a time in the compound to keep the crowd controlled. When the OSU students returned to the mission center, they all helped distribute the Christmas gifts to Seis de Mayo children. Nearly seven hundred gifts were distributed that morning. After lunch, the OSU students all chipped in to pack the truck and the bus with 350 gifts and headed to El Sauce; and by the end of the day nearly all of the 1000 gifts had been distributed. Cheryl will have to make some more gifts yet for those who did not receive one. Today was torrential rain and high wind. However the team still got the build site established in El Sauce and built the first filter. In our last blog Cheryl was explaining some of the problems we were having bringing in the container (with 1000 Christmas boxes for the children). Even as she wrote, Nicolas and I had been summoned to the dock to break the seal on the container and participate in the examination of its contents. This usually takes at least one whole day. That problem was made even greater by the fact that this was our last day before returning to the US. Finally, our sewing school graduation was scheduled for that same day as well as our employee banquet. It was almost certain that Nicolas and I would miss both of those. But Cheryl didn’t give up. She wrote a prayer request to our church that day, “We pray that somehow [they] could be back from the port to be a part of this.” I don’t know how it happened, but we were dismissed from the inspection; and we arrived back at the mission center for both events. Furthermore the container arrived at the Center at 3:30 that afternoon. We arrived in Tulsa last Thursday and will be here until January 3. A team from Oklahoma State University will arrive at the mission center January 4th.
Gary In spite of the heavy rains this last week-end, we had a full house for church. (This is not all of our congregation.) Our church, Iglesia Evangelica Emanual, in Campana, HN, waving to the church in the states.
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