(Father Keane sent me a reminder the other day that on a previous post I promised more details about each project inaugurated during the summer. Needless to say, I completely forgot to update, so Father sent me a few comments about each project. Let’s begin with Nuestra Señora del Refugio).

On August 10, 2007 we inaugurated three classrooms and a covered stairway at the school of Nuestra Señora del Refugio in the town of Refugio in the Department of Ahuachapán.This school has over 380 students from first grade through ninth grade.The total project cost $17,000 and we were able to build the classrooms on top of their existing classrooms so as to conserve their extremely limited space.

The Covington family and several other donors were in attendance and we were all moved deeply by the wonderful presentation by the students and the skits and songs they performed for us.They gave us each a rather large statue of either Jesus or the Blessed Mother as well as other tokens of their deep appreciation.

It was decided in the same day to build them a fence to surround and protect the school from vagrants and gang members and also a covered play area.The local mayor happened to be in attendance and he promised to supply labor for the future construction and we are getting close to beginning this new phase of construction. We wish all of our donors could experience the outpouring of extreme gratitude that was manifested by these children.

The pictures have been up for a while, but if you haven’t seen them, click here.