Graduation Trip- June 1, 2017

Good morning!!! 

I have decided this trip, since I’m staying st the house, I want to be more intentional about blogging about my time spent here and the stories to share. I know many of you are looking for updates and when I have teams here, it is important to me to spent time with them, which often means I don’t get time to write. I got in late last night and was created by the family and queso frito y yucca. I spent the evening checking in which each person and of course, following Felixs lead, even made time to prank Luis. Sorry I wasn’t able to get it on video (he put vinager and salt in his water). It is exciting to hear news of what God is doing in the life of each person. 

This trip I was able to bring the 3 boxes of tutus donated by Traveling Tutus (http://www.travelingtutus.org), an amazing organization which takes donations of tutus and donated them to places all over the world. Sairy and Janella went through each one and named kids in the different communities they thought would enjoy the tutus. Today we will take them to Cuesta Arena to see if we can use them in the graduation on Saturday.

Sairy updated me on some of our projects. The teachers salary has been fundraiser through Advance the past 4 years as well as a government grant they received for a year which covered half the salary. The grant ended and the Advance project was transitioned to the Leadership Development project and denied. This means whatever funds we have in the bank are all we have for our teachers salaries. I will investigate what this looks like and when we expect to run out of money so we can prepare and fundraiser appropriately. If you are interested in details, please email me.

As for our gutters, which were donated by Christ UMC in Venice, Florida and installed in March, they are saving us money. In 2012 (I think) we received a grant from the international rotary to complete our water project. We have since been stretching the money to purchase water each week for our distribution. Since the gutters have been installed and rain has been filling out cistern, we do not need to purchase water!!!  Thank you Christ UMC for moving this project to be more self sustaining (at least when the weather is right!). 

Today, we will be traveling to Cuesta Arena for the weekly bible study and visiting with the moms in the school to prepare for graduation. It is hard to believe it has been 5 years! What a difference this school has made in the lives of this community.