I am so happy to tell you that one of our groups in Canada – Mayan Families Canada has raised enough money through their schools to be able to build a new house for Dona Marta.
Dona Marta is a single mother with seven children, she has cancer with a very serious prognosis and is not doing well, we are supplying her with continuous pain killers Her eldest daughter is married with two young children and lives several hours away. She has two teen age sons who are both work full time and are both sponsored to go to week end school with Mayan Families, They are in their late teens. One just suffered a broken jaw from being kicked while playing soccer so has been unable to work.
Glendy, her 15yr old daughter works at Mayan Families, she does all the cooking and cleaning and getting her two young brothers off to school before she comes to work at 9.30a.m. every day. Every evening she cooks and does the dishes for the family. She is up quite often at night making hot drinks for her mother to help her through the night. On Sundays she goes to week end school.
Dona Marta also has three young sons, Walter 11yrs old., Eddy 9yrs old and Elvis 7yrs old- these boys are sponsored for school by Mayan Families Canada and the schools there have taken this family to their hearts. Dona Marta’s family has suffered more than their share of unhappiness. Three years ago her then 15yr old daughter died after an undiagnosed illness. She had a very bad pain in her stomach for several weeks and finally went to the hospital, was operated on but died shortly afterwards. She lost her 3yr old son four years ago to a respiratory problem. The father abandoned the family approx. 5 years ago for another woman and has not supported them finanacially since or seen the children.
The house that they are living in is made of rough wooden planks that have spaces between them, letting in the wind, the rain and the dust. The floor is dirt. The worst thing is the position of the house, it is on a sloped part of the land and all the rain water runs inside during the wet season. The beds and the table that they have has to have the legs in tin cans to stop them rotting, the floor turns to mud.
I asked Dona Marta one day what she needed and she asked me if it would be possible to move her old house to another part of the land where the water will not run inside the house. Well, thanks to Robin and the Mayan Families Canada supporters we will be able to do much better than just move the old house.
We will be able to build them two new rooms made of cement block and with a cement floor! There will be no more rain or mud inside their home!
I hope that this will bring some happiness and comfort into the lives of this family.
Here is the joyful email I received from Robin – it brought tears to my eyes when I read it. I am so grateful to the people who are making this miracle happen!
Sharon
MAYAN FAMILIES CONSTRUCTION PROGRAM
