The work continues – for the visiting team, they are pushing to get things DONE now that their work days are down to 3 days. Tammi Wolfe is doing things in the chapel to help out the school year while Joe Landis continues to weld in the carport. And yes, we hang out the clothes the old-fashioned way. After more than a week here, everyone is in need of something being washed – even if it’s just to prevent the dorm rooms from becoming too scented by sweaty clothes.
Hayley and Shanna started a rhythm group today while the gentlemen started to put the panels on the carport. Just a few minutes ago it rained quite hard so I am guessing the men on the roof were pushed to take a break. God knows when they NEED to stop to prevent them from overdoing it.
Annette has been presenting some really good lessons in the morning chapel time. We are thankful for her hard work in preparing – very different than for a hearing class. OOPS there is that rhythm photo again! Pray for Betsy’s attention deficit – she has a cold/cough this week and the medication is not helping her to focus!
Lastly, the older students are spending time with Danny Vidal, former student who graduated in May 1986 from ESD. Danny has been on a recent mission trip to a Deaf church in Portugal and the students are learning some Portuguese signs and about life after high school… maybe one or both of them will catch the vision of serving God as missionaries or at least serving God in their local churches.
Pray for all of these and all else that God puts on your heart for our school. Without your prayers and support, we would be struggling. WITH your prayers and support, we are praising God and strengthened for more again tomorrow.
We had a soft opening this year with a new 6-year-old student coming on Monday and a trial run for an 18-month-old student on Wednesday. The full compliment of students arrived on Thursday.
How fun to have a Calvary Bible Church-HanoverPA work team here with us. As the tough guys work in the carport roof rebuild the rest are working on gardening, nurturing students, and creating meals for everyone.
It’s been a great week and we are SO THANKFUL to God for His provision at this time of Back to School!
We look forward to a great school year and many more happy photos to share the work that God is doing here.
While many people don’t understand it, or believe it, Puerto Rico DOES have a “winter” season. We don’t have snow but our temperatures do go down… on the average to the high 70Fs (21C) in Luquillo and to the low 40Fs (4.4 C) in the mountain areas. Some lovely quilters from New York state sent us three boxes of quilted blankets and throws and wall hangings. In the photo about, you will see how one student immediately adopted a blanket as her own. One former student took a quilted blanket home for his mother who hugged it and cried. Thank you quilters for your gifts of love!
The work to return the school campus to it’s pre-hurricanes (P2H) state of functioning is continuing. As God brings us workers (from left above) from various places like Calvary Chapel, independent families, and the local Internet installer, we are slowly beginning to get the grounds and infrastructure back to P2H normal.
A special group of workers has worked this past month to rebuild our sport/storage room as well as our awning at the dining room entrance. Additionally, some of the men in the group from Ontario Canada had some electrical savvy – they were able to work through the wires and restore power to parts of the dorm that were not powered up and were able to configure a solar backup for the school kitchen (not for every day purposes but in case of a power outage, we can now use the solar power system to run the fridges and freezer). Their inventiveness will save us many headaches from generator issues in coming years… assuming their power cord remains aloft.
Oh and the phone line to the school office is now working again! AND the CableTV company has restored the service to the TV in the school library – a donation of their service for educational purposes.
Mail is arriving as it had been P2H and our little corner of the world is fairly back to normal.
Please do not misunderstand me, the rest of the island (and our little part) still carries the scars and still has delays. Since the FEMA satellite link ended, it has taken a few weeks to get back online so our e-giving donors have not heard from us this month (yet). We will be working on that this coming week.
Trees remain broken and the ones that will grow new leaves are working on it. The DTOP guys are out there trying to get the traffic lights working to restore order – yesterday I was in Carolina and after a few blocks of non-functional traffic lights on the business roads, I was glad to get back to the autopista and take the bypass from all of the tangle.
Some stores have not re-opened and some have announced that they are not planning to reopen. OurSam’s Club is one of them. The two nearest Sam’s are both about an hour’s drive away so we will have to rethink the cost effectiveness of that choice. But, meanwhile, we have plenty of fresh produce again. Plenty of meat in the grocery stores. Plenty of options to enjoy choosing from. And the students have been enjoying choosing the Monday Make Your Meal Menu option that has been given to them this year.
Thank you for your prayers and for your assistance and your parcels and your partnership in our ministry.
The island and infrastructure is beginning to recover. A small percentage has electricity. We do not. But we have a generator and hope for the day when those trucks come here and restore our lights.
What we really could use are small self sufficient teams of 6 or less WORKers.
We need to pressure wash and paint parts of the buildings.
We need to remove dead trees from the field and perimeter where we left them after the storm.
We need to do some indoor painting.
We need to put up new rain spouts.
We need to build a new wall and block in a door that blows out too often.
We need to do general maintenance on the grounds and buildings – repairing leaky places and revisiting the hot water solar heating units.
But we don’t have electricity yet. So keep that in mind.
The dorms are your choice of (a) smelly and noisy from the generator but you’d have lights and fans or (b) dark and quiet with an extension cord to run some appliances.
The school kitchen has limited refrigeration space but you could share. And we have a propane gas stove for cooking (i.e. boiling water to add to dehydrated meals).
Contact Betsy at emhoke@cscdluquillo.com or cscdluquillo@gmail.com to arrange a date for your hard workers to come and lend a hand with us.
Oh I wish you could have seen the kids on Thursday, May 25. They were magnificent in their presentations of their science projects. I was excited and amazed by them. The two boys pictured above presented Plants and Colors respectively. Great stuff there.
The older two students presented their findings on Bows and Arrows and Bamboo Music. Very good work all around. The families enjoyed watching and learning along with their students. And Edgar, pictured below with his brand new glasses, could not keep his eyes off his awards and his science project. His smile and enthusiasm were priceless.
Pray for the students at home this summer. Pray for the bell choir as we prepare to leave on Thursday June 8 for our trip to Toronto Ontario. Maybe we will see YOU there?
We started the semester with several visitors – two of them were specifically classroom apprentices. Hayley Bowser (left) came with her dad (center) and Jason Veil (right) came on his own. Hayley did this and that including some crafts, some tutoring and some other work while Steve helped with some computer quirks we had happening. Jason came to lend his hands in the classroom.
Pictured below, you see Jason and Hayley carrying out Jason’s lessons on job ethics and how to apply for a job with two of our students. During the remaining time of their work days, Hayley and Jason helped in the classroom as the students learned more about English, Spanish, Science, Social Studies, Bible, etc.
Thank God with us for young volunteers and pray for the future teachers God will bring to the school.
Someone’s family member died. Someone’s car is not working. Someone has a medical appointment. Someone has an appointment for educational testing. But TWO students have been in school this week. Since these two are a little ahead of the others in their linguistic development, we have been taking the time to work on problem solving skills, musical literacy skills and handbells, Bible and life skills, and of course written language skills. It has been a nice quiet calm week. Of course tomorrow is Friday and God alone knows what Friday will hold for us!
Tomorrow night is social night and we are hopeful to have a full house of friends coming by for games and conversation. The Adult Bell Choir will be rehearsing and hopefully honing our skills.
And then there is the weekend. We have been under a rain cloud for several days now. We also have a team of workers who were hoping for some sunshine. Sorry. Today we sent them to the south side of the island. Tomorrow they may hit the north-west corner. Saturday they may WORK doing some odd jobs that have accumulated. If there is any break in the rain, maybe they will hike into the rainforest and enjoy the wetness there.
For now, we are thankful that God is sovereign and has given us a peaceful start to our semester. Pray for the broken car, the medical appointments, the educational opportunities, the understanding of our students in the face of these situation. Many times, they navigate without an interpreter. Many times, they come back with questions and want some help with figuring things out. Pray for our insights and wisdom into situations we do not understand!
With the first week of classes behind us, we are getting ready for a four day school week with our visiting Missions Team from Calvary Bible Church of Hanover PA. Keep up with their team blog to see what their team members think of their time here.
Team leader Steve with his head submerged in the waves 🙂
The four day week was planned by our principal – the school staff can use a break; the three dorm students can use the long weekend to be at home a little longer; and the work team needs some time to debrief, pray, think and then clean the dorms and gather their belongings into suitcases for their trip home on Saturday.
Two of the residential students have already expressed their opinion that they should stay to hang out with the team on Friday. Yea. Relationships are growing and good-byes are so hard. So this week as you are praying,
pray for those relationships between team members and staff members,
between team members and students, and
between all of the humans interfacing at CSCD.
As far as we KNOW there are no issues, but prayer helps to prevent potential issues 🙂 you know what I mean.
The SUBMERGED theme of the week is beautiful! The students enjoyed the introduction to the Bible school program on Friday. Our principal particularly liked the way God led us to a fun Wednesday afternoon of pier jumping in which we were physically SUBMERGED in the ocean as many overcame fears so that on Friday we could discuss what it means to be SUBMERGED in God’s will and word.Read Betsy’s Blog to stay up to date with her musings too.
Thanks for taking time to dive into our news this week!
The mission statement of the Christian School and Chapel for the Deaf, Inc. is to “Nurture Deaf Children to Think and Live Biblically.” We can only begin to do this. And we can only begin to DO this as we ourselves explore biblical precepts.
This summer, Lora, Tess and Betsy (three ladies in the center of the photo) are reading Discipling Nations by Darrow L. Miller for their summer THINKing material. Of course, we hope they will be reading their Bibles and other edifying literature as well.
During the past school year, the CSCD lady staff (those ladies picture above PLUS a few others) worked through the book How People Change by Timothy Lane and Paul David Tripp in a weekly evening Bible study. Some weeks we had lively discussions. Other weeks we were drown into thoughtful and prayerful moments as we discussed personal struggles and our perceptions of how God would help us to overcome, grow deeper into His character and live out the biblical standards we were learning.
We completed that book at the end of March and then began a series of readings related to Ending Well (as three of our six Bible study members were leaving and all of us were ending the school year). Our studies included reading the Ken Boa’s Finishing Well series, and excerpts from Coming Home by Howard and Bonnie Lisech. Spending this time together perpared us to say “goodbye” to our good friends and co-workers as well as helped us to see that our school year’s end was simply a transition into the NEXT thing that God is preparing for us.
Twice during the past school year (November and April/May), we prayed through Andrew Murray’s Helps to Intercession guide. Rosa commented that having repeated this guide several times during her three years of serving at CSCD had helped her prayer life in that Mr. Murray reminds us to pray for things that we often don’t pray about.
If you are looking for something to read this summer, and you should choose Discipling Nations, let us know. We would love to hear how God is working on your worldview and how you are learning to think and live in a more biblical manner. Also, if you have a favorite book/Bible study to recommend, please let us know!
As a SCHOOL staff, we make sure to never step away from learning for ourselves. As Christians working in full-time ministry, we make sure never to step away from our Lord Jesus Christ and His awesomeness. As teachers desiring to instill a hunger for learning into our students, we constantly discuss ways things that impede our learning and understanding and we attempt to plan our classroom, dorm and study times so that we can remove obstacles to our students’ learning as well.
For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? – Mark 8:36
