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.
