preparing the floor

The Cleveland Diocese has had a presence in El Salvador for nearly 25 years, through times of war and times of peace. Sister Rose has spent much of that time in Chiltiupan, a small farming village on the top of a mountain range with an ocean view and a cool breeze. We first met Sister Rose at the November 2008 Millard and Linda Fuller Blitz Build in El Salvador. About ten months later the connection was remade and a mutually beneficial relationship was formed.

On January 22 we finished the third day of work on the first Greater Blessings project in Chiltiupan. Generally the Fuller Center is in the business of building new homes but the Greater Blessings program allows families with existing homes to receive basic repairs or improvements. Sister Rose identified a family who had the title to a piece of land with a large “bajareque” home (one constructed from poles held together with a clay/straw mortar) and an uneven dirt floor. She asked us to pour a new concrete floor.

We spent the first day leveling and exploring how the job would be done. The second day we poured the floor for the first room with Sister Rose’s visiting team from the Church of St. John Neumann in Cleveland, Ohio. We brought our cement mixer and passed buckets down a line through the house. On the third day we poured the second and third rooms to finish the house with the help of the family and a few local volunteers.

the door to new life

The family included a grandfather and mother, their daughter and husband, and three young children who all help to grow corn, oranges, and other crops to sustain themselves. They are extremely active and dedicated to the local Chiltiupan parish and continually giving of themselves to those in their community.

The project was such a success that we are going back to do a second floor for another Chiltiupan family on February 10, 2010.

Check out the rest of the photos!

The group of HFTH and Fuller Center volunteers have been sleeping in tents and living on pasta for nearly a week now. Within the first few days in Haiti the group had many difficult experiences. The team drove at least one truckload of critically injured people to the airport in hopes of getting the U.S. military to care for them. They have witnessed first hand the need for over 400,000 permanent homes to be built around Port-au-Prince. Thousands of Haitians walk the streets with no where to go as the backlog of aid waiting to enter the country grows. They have begun working with Fr. Ricks on the first of 18 heavily damaged street schools that used to provide educations to over 6000 kids.

Correspondence from Rob Beckham:

A Full day.

We loaded trucks and got to the site.
View Haiti in a larger map

There were 45 to 50 people that wanted to work.

I told them we needed 15 people.  I only had 15 Tshirts.  They negotiated which 15 would work.  That was interesting. They can be pretty vocal. More people could be hard to control.

Once the workers were chosen they all got shirts. We brought out the tools and started working. At one point Fr Ricks staff came by and told them the rate.  An aggressive discussion occured. Haitian discussions are a bit … well … Chaotic and loud.  A new higher rate was arrived at and cheers of Haitian victory went up.

This crew then continued work with with passion. Pretty exciting! Our crew cleared the rubble in front and half of the back. One guy began telling me how with St Luke they had hope.  Without St Luke they were lost.

Tomorrow we finish the ground and begin thinking through how to safely clear the roof while saving the first floor.  We have to see the top after it is cleaned.