Santa Rosita School
The school at Santa Rosita was a dark, one room, dirt floor school house with no electricity. Through the work of our team, a new school was built with glass windows and screens, indoor bathrooms, a kitchen, a water collection system and a garden. The children now have a safe, functional, clean, beautiful learning environment.
How did this come about? Read the letter below……..
Dear friends,
I “share” a special relationship with the people in Santa Rosita, Honduras. XO laptops developed by MIT’s Negroponte were given to the children one summer with continued training each year. I go at a different times to this community to… to watch. That is my great “ministry” in Santa Rosita: I watch. It is a bit embarrassing. There is no great preparation for doing nothing. Every single year before I leave I ask myself why in the world I am going. I don’t even speak Spanish well enough to carry on the conversation of a responsible adult. I don’t take anything. I don’t even drive while I am there. People say, “Oh, you do something?!” No, not really.
In fact, the first time that I went to Santa Rosita, I didn’t even plan to go. Some team members had done public health puppet shows with the young children. They were excited about how wonderful Santa Rosita was, despite the facts that the “school” was made of sticks and mud and the children had no textbooks. They said the teacher was great, the parents dedicated, and the children joyful. I had to see it. Some one drove me up the steep mountain for an hour and a half. She said that we were “climbing to heaven”.
One year, a mother said that she had been praying for eleven years for her children’s education. My breath was taken away. Another year, a subsistence farmer stood to describe how he went against his family’s wishes to give land for a new school for the future of the children. It was truly sacrificial giving. I was and am humbled and amazed.
Another year, there was a beautiful new school on a hill-GOD made this happen. Seeing the delighted children with laptops that looked like toys, I was and remain confounded. This does not begin to touch the list of the wonders that I have witnessed.
Let me repeat. I did nothing. The parents prayed, kept the faith, sold tomatoes to pay for the teacher, and cleared land. Mark and Sally raised the money, wrangled with the MIT people, and gathered a team which trained the teachers and children to use the laptops. The curious children explored the XO, read, wrote, and solved problems. The Diocese of West Texas donated much of the monies for the school construction. Oscar Ochoa Mendoza led and organized. Josephina and her sister Aida worked for one year with the builders to make sure that Santa Rosita would be the only mountain school with glass windows and screens, a tiled floor, light, bright rooms and so much more. With each member of the Body of Christ doing his part, Santa Rosita doesn’t have just any school. It is the best mountain school, and its getting even better.
Was it all more than the mother could have imagined, more of a future than the generous farmer could have guessed, more than the Americans would ever realize? Yes. Yes. Yes.
Do I say to you, “Sing to the Lord, all the earth, proclaim His salvation day after day.”?
Yes! I go “on mission” and have seen “his glory among the nations, his marvelous deeds among all peoples.” It is breathtaking. I cannot help but declare it.
Don’t be distracted by all of the inconveniences, the delays, the superficial “differences”, the work, even the poverty, for there is never poverty of spirit. Watch. Listen. Be present. You are on holy ground. He is at work.
LMC