My First Update

Hello to everyone back stateside! I am so sorry that it has been so long, if anything, my lack of contact is an example of how slow things have been here. A small update:

Many of you may know that I was graced with the presence of DaveSquared, that´s right, Dave Anderson and Dave Hannon made a trip out to El Salvador to visit and try to get some work done. Unfortunately, there was not a tone of work done. When I first contacted my boss I was told to take it easy for a few days and wait and see. Being that I had two buddies here with me, I took them around the country and we visited with some friends of mine. I was then passed down a series of work/living restrictions, which are necessary but difficult to work around. I have been placed in our local mayor´s office, literally his office, which is located about two hours from my community when there is transport. The problem with that is that there normally is not any transport at all forcing me to take a bus around the whole volcano to go up the back way. This can take up to 6 hours with all the waiting and leaves me only an hour to do actual work before I am forced to leave for the night.

I have meet with my bosses and sent in a proposal for a new community that is along the road heading towards the volcano so that I can wake up in the morning, get a full day’s work in and then head off the volcano for the night. My bosses have listened and I think everything will turn out well; the only problem is that it is Christmas and things are SLOW!

In terms of the fundraiser, I got back to my site and looked around for important banking information, unfortunately my IDs were lost. This is also adding slowness to everything. I am in the process of replacing local ID and a banking ID so that I can set up my Disaster Relief Account where I will be putting in the money that we collected while I was in Michigan.

I am a little frustrated because I would love things to happen at a faster pace, but this is the way it is, so I am trying to adapt. I will be SO EXCITED to have a house close to my work and the banking set up so we can organize and start reconstructing everything!

I promise that I will keep everything in the loop, as of now, it has been a lot of sitting and waiting and trying to coordinate housing and bus times. Within the next week, things should really pick up. As soon as they do, get ready for a lot more stories, pictures and proof of how the money you have donated is really making a difference!

Thank you to everyone and have a great Christmas!

love,
Jimbo