Update as of October 2021

It has been some time since my last update and much has happened. We finished our goal of building 100 Homes in El Salvador in the Spring of 2019. Marsha and I were there to see the 100th home be completed and celebrated with all those families who had received a new home from Operation Rescue Inc. We had a Mass in Teotepeque and ninety seven of the one hundred families were in attendance. The church was overflowing with people, over seven hundred attended the Mass and stayed for the Fiesta that was to follow.

Father John’s homily consisted of blessing our workers and placing their tools at the foot of the alter, one by one. He followed that by recognizing each of the families who had received a home and the donors who had made this possible. Marsha and I both addressed the attendees, me in English and then her in Spanish When we all finished there was not a dry eye in the building. Afterwards we met briefly with each of the families.

The ladies of the Obras de Caridad, (the council members for this region) had stayed overnight the previous evening and began preparing food for the celebration at 3:30 a.m. in the morning. They had prepared seven hundred foot long fried chicken sandwiches along with their special salsa, chips and refreshments for all. By the end of the day every sandwich was gone. Many of our families had to travel by foot over an hour away just to attend the celebration. It was a celebration praising God for all the good that had come from all the effort by so many people.

The following day we held our fourth consecutive “Lamina Day” where we provided bundles of roofing metal, enough to reroof an addition eighty homes. These were for families who had not received a new home but who disparately needed help water proofing their existing home. That moved the number of homes who have received roofing materials to just over 1,000 since we first began providing assistance.

Covid 19 hit El Salvador hard and the country has been close to visitors since spring of 2019 thus we have been unable to visit the region ourselves. The government shut our operation down completely for over an entire year now but we have since reopened and have completed a total of 125 homes.

Marsha and I have just completed our book depicting the journey we have have been on for the past seven years. It is named, “The Master Builder and The Workers”, and will be available on Amazon this October 2021. Please pick up a copy for yourself and your families as the proceeds will go to continuing our ministry. We use all donations (100%) for assisting these impoverished people as we continue to handle all administrative expenses ourselves.

Thanks to all that have helped us and the “poor” people in El Salvador. God Bless you all.