So many years, people have commented -IT’S NOT REALLY CHRISTMAS UNTIL I HEAR THE BELLS. We are well into our Christmas music practices and looking forward to presenting our bell choir offerings beginning December 2! To me (Betsy) Christmas has already begun!
An amazing team from Elmhurst IL has come to bless us with energy and work ethics! First Congregational UCC, Elmhurst – 235 S Kenilworth Ave, Elmhurst IL 60126 (630) 832-2580 (elmhurstucc.org)
They are power washing, painting, cleaning, and replacing some rain spouts and roof tiles that were in need of attention. WOOHOO! Thank YOU!
During the month of November, we have been writing our THANKFULNESS on leaves and hanging them in the school chapel. The challenge was to NOT REPEAT but to write something new everyday. Today, Monday November 22, the leaves are being removed by a work team from Arrowhead Bible Camp and replaced with Christmas lights and decorations because SCHOOL IS CLOSED for the week of American Thanksgiving and we have a work team to do this job for us.
We celebrated THANKSGIVING on Thursday November 18 when friends from the Palmas Community Church brought us turkey and the WORKS! We are still respecting Covid19 restrictions but allowed those who felt comfortable to sit together indoors. Some of our Deaf ladies have found the stash of perler beads and are enjoying making crafts with them – they took time to eat but then returned to the craft table in a classroom.
Our workteam visitors are WORKING – and we are THANKFUL for the sound of pressure washers and trimmers and mowers and the scent of paint on the gate and the laughter coming from the ladies. Jack, the team leader, is working solo and so far, not laughing.
I pray that YOUR weeks are always filled with giving thanks and that as you take time this week (for our USA friends) to Give Thanks with your families, you will remember to THANK GOD for everything – because even pandemics, natural disasters and unplanned events can be used by God to bring about blessings above and beyond all that we could dream of.
Click above link for a printable flyer.
June 8, 2019. 3:30 p.m.
Bob Rumball Centre of Excellence for the Deaf
Toronto Ontario Canada
Speaker: Gilberto Martinez,
former student of the Evangelical School for the Deaf
This month, I have had more time on my hands to do office and school administration work. We have only 4 students! HOW can I have so much admin to do?!
School insurance needs to be kept up. The school license documents need to be prepared for our renewal of license. Reports need to be written. IEP (Individual Educational Profiles) need to be kept current. And then there is the accountant and his questions about accounts and payments. Tax season!
So the extra time has been good for the administrator (me) but the extra time has meant that the teacher (me) is not as content as she would normally like to be.
THIS GIRL above pictured has been in a hospital for 2+ weeks now. She was in hospital 1 for a week, released for 24 hours, returned to the emergency room and was ambulanced to hospital 2 which has better facilities to take care of the complications. She’s in the Pediatric ICU. I’ve been doing “relief” work so her mom can get home to take care of the other kids a little. The ICU has good nursing care too which makes it easier for her mom to feel secure in leaving her alone in the hospital for a few hours.
This one thing I KNOW:
The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases;
his mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.Lamentations 3:22-23
So as I drive to hospital 2 (it’s an hour’s drive away) and as I stand in hospital corridors or sit in hospital chairs and listen to whomever is nearby or talk with Larimar (sometimes she just wants a story and I love to story-tell) this is in my head, in my heart pounding away – the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases… so even though the new results seem worse than the previous study’s results, we are trusting the heart of our ever loving Father in Heaven.
In addition to this saga, my boys are both not in school today due to medical appointments and/or health issues.
Well, Deaf children are often multiply-challenged and so are these. Part of this day and age of working with children is addressing their specific needs in individual ways. Working out how to get a boy who gets dizzy from lights to do online-work from home… maybe we need to resort to paper and pencil but he’s often too weak or dizzy to use his eyes… so I resort to prayer and seeking God’s peace for HIM (my student and his family) and me.
Pray for me as I walk alongside these families and their children with special SPECIAL needs. May I bring God’s peace and love to the situation. May “a merry heart do good like medicine” (Prov 17:22) and may my merriness not insult the gravity of the situations.
Yesterday I was kidding with Larimar and she started to cry! NO! Then her mom said, “What did you say?”
I had said, ” seriously, if you wanted to avoid a book report, we could have made a different plan”
Her mom said, “Don’t lie! What did you say to upset her?
Larimar said, “She’s telling the truth! (cry cry cry)”
So I found a new subject and we had some more smiles… I left her smiling last night!
Pray that she continues to smile today!
Betsy
February is often a month of guests and Feb 2019 was just that.
We started with 8 visitors from Pennsylvania (we enjoyed an afternoon with them at the beach and lots of fun times in the dining room)
followed by our principal’s mother (above photo far right, lady in the center in the white sweatshirt) and sister who also came to visit (purple shirt person). While they were staying at the school, our friends Tim (center photo adult red shirt) and Pam also came to the island (they rented a place off of the school grounds) and while they were hanging out with us, we had our own Bible Challenge Week with Brother Dan Knickerbocker and his lovely wife Anne Marie.
Brother Dan spoke with us the last four afternoons of February – challenging us to think wisely, speak Biblically, and to share our faith effectively. We enjoyed having Dan and AnneMarie for lunches during the week and some time to chat with them. Dan and AnneMarie have been ministering to churches on the island having been invited to Maranatha Baptist Church for a weekend of special services.
God’s goodness to us is amazing over and over again. We are SO THANKFUL for the ways He provides and protects our ministry here. Continue to pray for workers – teachers, a cook, people to work along with us as we develop outreach programs with our Deaf adult friends and for teens in need of tutoring and discipleship. The work is great and the laborers are few and aging! We are trusting God to send younger workers who will carry the ministry forward as our older workers begin to think about lightening their workload.
Meanwhile, we are praising God for the strength He gives our bones and our muscles!
thanks for visiting today!
The BIG NEWS of the day is NO CLASSES NEXT WEEK! Monday, November 19 is the celebration of Columbus’ arriving to Puerto Rico, thus we are closed. Thursday is American Thanksgiving so we are closed Thursday and Friday. The public school system did not see it necessary to open for 2 days so we are closed for the week. SO Friday, November 16 we had a small Thanksgiving lunch with the students. Diego was underwhelmed…he thought we were having a grand party. THAT will be November 30. If you in the area, come on by!
Now for an entertaining moment:
A theme around the school is NOT TO PLAY WITH. We use it regularly. Natalia, our tiniest student, has learned that Roxy the brown dog is NOT TO PLAY WITH. While doing a photo shoot for the school calendar (see ABOUT US/OUR CALENDAR), Roxy snuck up on Natalia and licked her cheek. Look at those pictures. Does Roxy look like she was trying to get away with something there?
Later Natalia was seen closing herself into the classroom behind the security bars. We thank God that she was inside the NEXT day as it was rainy. The large bull seen in the next picture frolicked in a panic through the courtyard mid afternoon. He is still in the lower field… maybe we don’t need to buy a new lawn mower after all!
For your amusement, our puppy Hephzibah (we call her Zyba) was last seen gnawing on conch shells she has removed from the plant beds. We toss them back into the foliage, she wrangles them back to the courtyard. Funny pup.
As I sit here in the school chapel, with two dogs snoozing on the platform and the generator purring around the corner, I am contemplating Christmas Eves of the past…
Today, I am of mixed emotions. Our hurricanes of September still effect us today – hence the generator purring in the background. My gift bag is packed and I am contentedly digesting the church’s Christmas lunch and mentally processing the evening’s possible foods at the Christmas Eve party I will be attending.
I am a little on the melancholy side thinking of
As I think of YE FAITHFUL – I know there are readers whose relationship to the school precedes mine and I’ve been around 33 years. I think of YE FAITHFUL who have prayed and cared for this ministry since 1957. I think of YE FAITHFUL who were praying for Deaf ministries before that! I think of YE FAITHFUL who have responded to hearing about a hurricane by sending supplies and money for more supplies and calling to volunteer your hands and sweat to work with us.
I think of YE new FAITHFUL who are praying TODAY about serving God and about when and about where. Here’s the challenge: we need YE new FAITHFUL for the next thing God is doing here.
As I think of the song, O COME ALL YE FAITHFUL… Well, is it YOU who God is calling to come here? And what has kept you from responding? Is now the time to send that e-mail (emhoke@cscdluquillo.com) or make the contact (well, other means are so less reliable these days so stick to e-mail for now? or snail mail HC-01 Box 7111, Luquillo PR 00773).
I am SO thankful for YE FAITHFUL and praising God already for His work to bring in the YE new FAITHFUL who will carry this work into the next 60 years (because our first documents are dated 1957 so that was the first 60 years.) God is preparing this property for YE new FAITHFUL who will be coming. Kind of like John the Baptizer preparing the way for Jesus’ ministry years. The preparations are happening, now, who is coming to carry on the work?
That’s my Christmas Eve 2017 pondering. Pray with us for YE new FAITHFUL ones and their coming.
Excited to see what God does with us, through us and around us in the coming weeks, I am your servant and the school director, Betsy Hoke
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.
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.
Most schoolday mornings, I hear HOOT HOOT from the mail man and say RUN!
The kids love charging to the gate and carrying back the parcels that are coming in.
I have to tell you, YOU and your boxes are making these kids lives (and MINE) so much fun. And FUN seems to be a little lacking. We are still in the shadow of the storm… trees are just beginning to grow leaves again. Stores are beginning to have meat again. Some people have electricity —intermittently as it shuts down again for another reason or fault in the line.
But a box arrives and WOW! LOOK! Beef jerky was once a foreign word and now it’s a great delicious surprise inside the larger box. Trail mix!! Who knew that would go over so well? And we mix our own from the tins and jars you send when there is no “trail mix” in the box. A few nuts from New York. Some dried apricots from Kansas. M&Ms from Pennsylvania. Cashews from Maryland. All tossed into the classroom container. Then someone’s mother says, “Hey that looks good…” and a ziplock baggie of it is given to the family!
Batteries! We still collect them – AA for some flashlights, AAA for others, D for the larger lanterns. When our collection overflows the confines we have delineated, we give the overflow to people in our churches, the students’ families, random visitors who mention the need.
I took several packages to church one Sunday with baggies of Starburst candy. Imagine a child being more excited for the batteries than the candy! One little girl held up the 4 pack of AA batteries and said, “Mommy look. My flashlight stopped working last night and now I have new batteries for it!” Praise God for YOUR generosity in sending.
Stores are not stocking up on batteries. They are sold out almost as soon as the boxes are opened. School lunches are most often dehydrated foods or rice and beans supplemented with canned meats or ‘refrigerate after opening’ meats.
Thanks for making the morning mail run so much fun! You brighten the lives of our students as you serve God with your creative parcel making. We are trying to respond to each parcel received – the students are practicing HOW TO WRITE A LETTER and so is their teacher because while is it more blessed to give than to receive (Acts 20:35), we as receivers feel SO blessed and want to give you our thanks.
