March
5, 2007
Hola
Amigos (Hi Friends):
From
all the cards, letters and e-mails we’ve receive it’s obvious there is a
lot of mission interest back home in the USA. We are so very grateful there
are people and congregations that pray for missions and missionaries.
Prayer is ALWAYS good and needed.
Thank you for your prayers and mission support.
We
want to share some of the recent happenings with the “Give Ye Them To Eat”
program. It is a busy life at the
Tree of Life Training Center for Integrated Development where the GYTTE
program staff host a variety of activities. Staff members also supervise
village groups where rural families have started their own development
projects and teach workshops and classes in villages, schools and churches.
The winter schedule has been a full one and we anticipate this spring
will follow the same pattern.
A
Christian Education workshop on learning styles and age-appropriate teaching
was taught at a Methodist church in Veracruz. The staff also hosted several
groups at the Center for the daylong introductory class on appropriate
technology. As the people listened to the theory behind the
technologies, toured the Center and saw low-tech methods put to use for
agriculture and livestock endeavors as well as for home use, they
had a lot of questions. Many people signed up to take courses this
spring so they can learn how to put some of these technologies to use on their
land and in their homes.
Villagers
living in the vicinity of the Center have been coming for monthly classes on
health issues and hygiene.
The men and women are very enthusiastic about taking these classes that
help their families have improved health.
A
two-day workshop on the construction and use of Solar Cookers was given to
students from a rural vocational school. This technology is simple
and economical. They are made from used cardboard boxes from appliance
stores and re-purposed for home cooking. The total cost to make one solar
cooker from used boxes, newspaper, tin foil, glue, cotton cord and a pane
of glass is only $15.00 dollars. On a sunny day water can be
pasteurized and food cooked without searching for firewood or spending
money on gas. So you can see why these students are eager to teach
this technology in their own communities.
A
medical team from California came to serve at the Good Samaritan Clinic at the
mountain village of Tatoxcac. GYTTE-trained
health workers went along to teach about heath issues to the patients waiting
in the lines to see the physicians and dentists.
There will be three more medical teams serving at the two conference
clinics this spring so more community-based, primary health workers will be
invited to share health information with the villagers who come in need of
health care.
In
January and February volunteers from Pennsylvania and South Carolina and teams
from Nebraska and Kansas came to the Training Center to serve and thaw out
from the cold winter weather back home. Everyone
worked really hard on a number of construction projects. They also
worked on contour terracing on the hillside and garden plots that not only
will produce vegetables and feed for the livestock but will serve to
demonstrate soil conservation methods and gardening options for agricultural
development classes.
Two
staff houses and a small shop were painted and a ceiling plastered.
The natural paint made with quicklime, water, prickly pear juice and
yellow soil gave the new shop a warm mustard color that looks great and cost
next to nothing!
The
rock, reinforcing wire and barbed wire used to fence the front of the property
have given the entrance to the Training Center an esthetic and effective
boundary to protect the grounds from open grazing. Hungry livestock wandering
through the area during these months of drought have destroyed the lands and
agricultural endeavors of many farmers. Although labor intensive, this fencing
method clears acres of excess stone, and provides an economical and effective
protection for productive farmlands.
Flagstone
from Tlancualpican was laid on the seating area cut out of the hillside
surrounding the sports court and paving stones were laid around the four sides
of the court. Basketball backboards and hoops were made and put into place.
Possibly there has never been a court as striking as the Samuel Hartman
Memorial Sports Court!
Another
project this winter was the palm branch-thatched roof that was built over the
mud oven that was constructed last fall by another team.
Although the oven was made for bread baking it is bound to have a
Mexican style pizza made in it occasionally.
The oven and roofing system are two more technologies that villagers
can adopt and adapt for their own needs.
Besides
the various work projects and learning experiences at the training
center the teams and volunteers repaired a church parsonage, visited a
livestock project and observed a
class on High Blood Pressure taught by GYTTE-trained health workers.
While visiting a primary school the Kansas team noticed the backboards and
hoops on the playground were
broken and in danger of falling on the children. Being the team now had
experience in making basketball backboards, they decided to make new ones for
the school. A couple days later they installed them for which the students and
teachers in the village of El Limon were very grateful.
These
are just some of the activities in which the GYTTE staff and we, your
missionaries, are involved. Thank you for helping us to continue this
outreach ministry in the rural sector of Mexico. We are grateful to you
and for you.
Your
Mission Partners,
Muriel
and Terry Henderson
School Kits
for Children in the
Dominican Republic
By Sue Higgins
The
Dominican Republic
is part of the
island
of
Hispaniola
, located in the
Caribbean
. The other half if the island is
Haiti
. Dominicans are a very happy people. They
live simple lives in a very poor country, and yet they seem to enjoy a more
laid-back lifestyle than most Americans. Many
Dominicans speak English fluently.
Schools in the
Dominican Republic
are usually small cinderblock buildings. Many
have no electricity or running water. Children
wear uniforms—usually light blue shirts and navy slacks for boys, while
girls wear light blue blouses and nave blue skirts.
The children need transportation to their schools, but they do not ride
buses as we do in the
United States
. They are often picked up at
their corners by a truck or a motor scooter.
It is not unusual to see 10 – 15 students in the cargo area of an old
pick up truck, or 3 or 4 children on the back of a motor scooter.
Their ride to school is very bumpy because many of the roads are not
paved, so there are deep ruts and potholes everywhere!
One teacher may teach various age levels in the
same classroom. That teacher also
teaches two “shifts” because students go to school either in the morning
or in the afternoon—not all day like our children.
School supplies and books are sparse and classrooms are equipped with
minimal teaching aids. Some
schools have a basket ball net and a ball in their “playground area” but
many do not have any playground at all.
On
our first trip to the
Dominican Republic
, we learned of the poverty in this country, and we vowed to return with
things for the children the next time we came back.
So, when we returned a year later, we took coloring books, tablets,
pens, pencils and crayons, and gave them to our housekeeper for her children.
The third time we went to Punta Cana, DR, we took along two other
couples from our church. Each of
the couples, were also involved in some way with Mission Central, and we
decided to ask if we could take some Mission Central/UMCOR school kits with us
for the children of the
Dominican Republic
.
Harry
Overholtzer, the Executive Director of Mission Central, sent us off with 60
school kits, which we each packed in a donated suitcase from Mission Central.
We were able to send the school
kits through the luggage handlers at the airport.
As we gave the first child a school kit, he
opened it and immediately began to share the contents with the other
children—passing out the pencils and paper to the other children.
When we explained that each of them would get a whole school kit for
themselves, they were amazed! Their
willingness to share was so touching. All
of the children wanted a school kit, from the very little ones who were only
about three or four years old, to the older teenage girls, who were already
young mothers. It was such a
blessing to be able to give these little gifts to the children of the
Dominican Republic
. Your gifts of school
supplies will bless the lives of children just like these pictured here.
Thank you for sharing with them! Jesus
tells us in Matthew 25:40 that whatever nice things we do for others is just
like we did it for Him! What a
privilege!
