Gardnening

Behind our building is a small piece of land that we want to keep kids out of because it goes down to a creek, which is always trouble for kids. The teachers came up with the idea of making 4 small plots - one for each class. Each child brought something to plant and it's fun to watch them come early each day to water their plants. Pictured are a few of the kids from second grade.

And for fun, I'm including a link to a video of the second graders singing a song I made up to help them learn their colors in English. Red es Rojo

Why haven't you been in school?

Like most schools, we have students who, for a variety of reasons, miss more school than they should. In this very poor area, the reasons vary from "My mom makes me sell because we don't have any money" to "I don't have shoes". The difficulty is finding out and trying to rectify situations.

In this case, Mercedes (left - 13 year old in 2nd grade) and her sister Katherine (10 and in first grade), and their kindergarten sister had not been in school for a week. Well, you can't really send an email or call, and after several trips to the home (pictured with our second grade teacher Maura), we found out that they don't have shoes.

Simple solutions - we got them some shoes and they should be back.

Appreciate your prayers. May God richly bless you.

Parent involvement

Even in a very poor community, parent involvement is crucial for a child's education. Tonight we had a parent's meeting with parents of 50 of our 80 students attending - not as much as we want, but better than expected. We did regular announcements, a teaching on parenting kids at different stages of their development, and then we elected our first parent committee (pictured here), to help oversee activities.

Last week we also sent home with the kids a questionnaire to see if the parents would be interested in adult education. We gave them 4 options, and their responses indicated the following priorities: 1) Family classes 2) English 3) Bible classes 4) Literacy. In mid-May, we will do a trial 3 night series on basic Bible principles of marriage and family. If that is successful, we will continue with the other areas.

We pray that God richly bless you all in every way.