If the mention of a project in progress at Centro Escolar Nuestra Señora de la Candelaria catches any reader unawares, I won’t be surprised. It appears I never posted any information about the project when we started it in February, and it is currently well over halfway done.

Anyways, the school may be found in the departament of Santa Ana, in the northeast region of El Salvador. The school educates 300 students pre-K through 9, but formerly had to pack several classes of children into woefully inadequate classrooms.

The final product? Three classrooms and a small office, all constructed to leave a platform available for future expansion–a high school perhaps?

You will find photos here.

Walter sent me a few photos of the progress in San Vicente. If you’re like me and constantly forget the names of the schools and can never place the projects with the right town, this is Centro Escolar San Jose la Labor in San Vicente. As you can make out in the photo to the left, we are well on our way to two new classrooms, a small office, and a sturdy security door to keep out troublemakers. I’ve uploaded the photos to the picasa site. You may find them here.

On September 17, 2007 2 year old Madeline Beatriz Sánchez had her second open heart surgery, this time at Mott’s Children Hospital in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Using special donations, TLAU paid for her first surgery which was on December 8, 2006. At the time of her first surgery she was 17 months old and the doctors patched a hole in her heart and removed a couple of obstructions. Madeline was in the hospital for over six weeks and nearly died due to severe complications.

Soon after, it was discovered that she needed life saving surgery on her tricuspid valve within a year or she would die, a surgery not performed anywhere in El Salvador or Central America. Fortunately, Madeline’s cardiologist Dr. Alfonso Escobar Amaya had a contact with a chief surgeon at Ann Arbor who handles desperate cases at a hospital that performs about six pro bono surgeries a year on children from developing countries. We were at first told that the waiting list was so long that there was no hope of Madeline getting a slot anytime soon. Lo and behold there was a cancellation and they said that they could give her that slot. Fr. Keane happened to be going down to El Salvador in July for two months and he was able to help the family obtain visas for Madeline and her mother. Fr. Keane brought them up to North Carolina and then to Michigan for the surgery. In this second surgery Madeline’s tricuspid valve was successfully repaired and not replaced, and she was also given a pacemaker as a backup because of her irregular heart rhythm.

Madeline did extremely well and was only in the hospital for a week and she was able to go home on October 17^th. While her and her Mom were in the U.S., several donors sent money to build them a new home because the family of seven had previously slept in a single room with two children to a bed. Dr. Escobar and his wife bought furniture for Madeline’s family as they previously had none and now she lives in a healthy environment free from dirt floors and cramped unventilated sleeping conditions. Madeline is now a completely different child and is growing like a weed and has no complications or health issues. Please read the following letter from Madeline’s 16 year old sister Lydia expressing her gratitude to the TLAU donors:

Dear Padre Patricio,
Receive warm greetings filled with hugs and affection, hoping that you are enjoying good health and that our all powerful God is showering you with abundant blessings and that our Mother, the Virgin Mary, is guarding you in your ways.

I am writing you to give thanks with all my heart to you and to all the brothers and sisters who have given their homes, food, clothes, toys and many other things to my mother and to Madeline because thanks to these good people my mother was able to spend the time there in peace. These brothers and sisters, without knowing her, received her and gave her great affection and this is something that we are never going to forget. We are very grateful to you all and we are going to pray everyday for you that God will bless you abundantly.

Padre Patricio we thank you very much for all your help that you have brought to our family because without this help we would never have been able to have this surgery for Madeline but thanks to your generous heart it has been possible for God to put an angel in our path to protect Madeline. Thanks also for your concern in the well being of Madeline and her home, because this help has been extremely valuable.

You have brought us many blessings and we are not able to repay you except with many prayers to our all powerful God and our Mother the Virgin Mary that you might be cared for in your journey and in your daily labors and everything that you do. We will prayer greatly for all the brothers and sisters who have been so good to my Mom and Madeline, that God will bless them and the Virgin Mary will protect them in all their ways.

I say goodbye to you all, sending you hugs and many prayers, hoping that our all powerful God and our Mother the Virgin Mary will protect you all and fill you with abundant blessings and guard you always. Sincerely, Lidia Maribel Sánchez and the Sánchez García family

As you vigilant TLAU news-feed readers already know, we recently built three new classrooms at Nuestra Señora del Refugio in the department of Ahuachapan. Because our projects are swiftly completed with the utmost care, schools usually follow up with a few extra requests (it never hurts to ask). This school has made known to us a pressing need for 100 student desks and chairs, called “pupitres.” The cost of a desk and chair is $35, which is basically seven times the daily wage in El Salvador, making them completely unaffordable on the school’s part. Please consider donating for one, two, ten, or more sets of desks and chairs and we will gladly purchase them in honor of or in memory of a loved one of yours. If you donate on-line please put in the comment block that you would like to provide for x number of pupitres and in honor of whom. If you donate by mail, please write in the check memo pupitres and for whom. If you give us their address we will mail a letter saying that school desks have been donated by you in their name. This is only one of many schools that needs desks and chairs so please don’t wait for someone else to answer the call!

Click HERE to make an online donation.