New School in 2015 !!!

21st of October Junior/Senior High School

by Michael J. Miller, Jr.   –  3/18/15

#1 School entrance

#2 Guidance Counselor’s Office

#3 Classrooms

#4 inside a cramped classroom

With almost the completion of the Santa Margarita School and awaiting the arrival of our April team to finish two roofs for this school we had to ask God where did He want us to go next. I have always said in the past that I didn’t want to help Junior/Senior High Schools because my heart was in feeding the children. However my heart doesn’t mean that God has other plans for our teams and projects. In the beginning of the year Glenda kept mentioning the 21^st of October Junior/Senior High School. She kept saying they were over crowded, they have to turn hundreds of children away, many children come from long distances so they can enroll in the high school because of the recognition they have in graduating the most equipped student for the working world. So we set up a time to sit and listen to the director of the school. At first he was asking for small and general jobs to be done for the school. I then asked him if he needed classrooms and he looked at me as if I were joking and I said I have seen the problems and heard of them as well from Glenda and from the mothers who have children that attend this school. So this is where the story begins. The school was opened in 1997 and there are very few “registered Junior/Senior High Schools in Tegucigalpa like this school. The entrance of the school is seen in the top photo and as you walk through the gates and pass the small gate and on the left is the soccer court and in front is the Guidance Counselors office as seen in the 2^nd photo.

The 3^rd photo shows 3 classrooms and ample space, so you would think. However in the 4^th photo shows Ben with his arms stretched out in how wide the classrooms are. The school has taken normal size classrooms and has divided them with 2×2 plywood walls to fit 45 to 55 students in each classroom.

#5 crowded classroom

#6 soccer court with temporary walls in order to create classroom space

#7

You can witness this in the top photo of this page. This school currently has 1,000 students and they are short at least 6 classrooms and a technology room for science. We knew that the tugging in our hearts was to help this school with the needed classrooms. So we prayed and asked for a week to seek God and His will for this project. We battled with the idea in our prayers in helping this school or to look for a grade school. We also knew that most teams want to work with the younger kids. What convinced us was a phone call from Director Freddy in asking us if we couldn’t help the school, would we help by preaching to the students once a week and that he would open the doors for us to come any day of the week and at any time. He explained to us that he has 16 girls that are cutting themselves, 32 students have tried to commit suicide, and they had 16 pregnancies last year. This is what moved us to say yes, we want to help the school with classrooms but also with the word of God. So the director acted quickly and moved the children to the soccer court as seen in the 2^nd and 3^rd photos. So we also responded with starting to dig for support columns for the 2^nd floor. Now many who read this are saying that it is a lot of concrete for the floor to pour. Well the school is going to fund raise the $3,000 needed to have a concrete mixer come in with a pump to pour this floor. God is good! We also want to share that in the morning are grades 10-12 studying and in the afternoon are grades 7-9. Let us see what change God is bringing for this school.

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