New Flooding in the Rieles

Video UPDATE! Flooding continues to affect the Rieles Community:

The call came in this morning, the Rieles community area was flooding again.  Pastor Gemuel was calling to let us know that between four and five this morning many families awoke to two feet of water in their homes.  The waters were now receding and people were busy trying to salvage their belongings, and cleaning their

Flooding and Frustration

The Rieles area has flooded again.  How much frustration can you put up with?  How much frustration can families in Los Rieles put up with?  It has been 5 years since tropical storms Olga and Noel hit this community.  See this link where our media team (Elias Castillo and myself) posted a video of the event. It is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IklcwXCef2E These families should have moved elsewhere.  They didn't because they couldn't afford anything else.  Only a very few moved away to a better area.

Yesterday at about 10PM we became aware that because of torrential rains, some of the church kids from the Rieles area had decided to spend the night in the new sanctuary.  However, after our van waded through hubcap deep waters to get to the church.   We had brought with us seven mattresses, some sheets and blankets, and some clothing.  We discovered that there were actually 21 families spending the night on the floor in the church.  Our Sunday school addition has not been finished yet and so there are still no bathrooms  working in the facility. No floors down yet either in the new kitchen and dining area, or for that matter in the four classrooms.  For a lack of $8000.00 US, we were not ready for this emergency. That was a little frustrating.  I had hoped that by now the project would be finished. The need was