Positive feedback from their experience has not stopped. Even after a difficult week, Carson Shook, who will graduate this year from East Lyme High School in Connecticut, found that after returning home “there are some things that make you realize how great life is, and how little you need to be happy, and what people truly care about you…I miss El Salvador.”Many of the participants on the trip were experiencing a foreign world for the first time. In El Salvador it is easy to find people generally living happy lives despite the fact many of the structures people call homes would not be suitable for a tool shed in the United States.

In the quest for relief Zuze Bonderer made several appeals for trees from local government agencies. Fuller Center staff have had a long term relationship with Consejo Nacionál, a Salvadoran Federal agency that deals with adolescent needs throughout the country. Carman Cordoba, a Director of Consejo Nacionál, directed us to the Alcaldias (City Hall) of San Salvador and Soyapango, the capitol and the second largest city in El Salvador. We wrote letters describing our organization and the need for trees in our projects. After running through the procedures we had success when the Alcaldia of Soyapango donated about 65 trees and small shrubs and San Salvador donated 75.

On January 22 we finished the third day of work on the first Greater Blessings project in Chiltiupan. Generally the Fuller Center is in the business of building new homes but the Greater Blessings program allows families with existing homes to receive basic repairs or improvements. Sister Rose identified a family who had the title to a piece of land with a large “bajareque” home (one constructed from poles held together with a clay/straw mortar) and an uneven dirt floor. She asked us to pour a new concrete floor.

In a special envoy recently approved by the US State Department, HFTH director Michael Bonderer will be departing Wednesday evening, January 20, from Miami, Florida with hopes of landing in Port-au-Prince. Although there is an extreme level of uncertainty, the team is planning to deliver aid supplies and will be working to establish a base camp of rebuilding efforts in Haiti. Please begin praying for the travelers in this and every envoy of aid workers to Haiti.

Actor Sean Penn has chartered a military cargo plane which will be packed with doctors, medical supplies, food rations, and ceramic water filters. Michael Bonderer will be joined by Rob Beckham, a long time volunteer with Habitat for Humanity and the Fuller Center for Housing. Rob has led volunteers on service trips around the world and traveled extensively in countries with difficult conditions. HFTH friend Ruben Durand will be providing translation services for the group as well as many years of disaster response experience.

This privately operated clinic sits in Santa Clara, the community cooperative next to the Fuller Center’s 60-home housing project, just around the corner from Villa Linda and Millard Fuller. The clinic is staffed by a nurse every day but a doctor is present only three days each week. For the past year several volunteer teams have brought medical supplies and other donations to the clinic to keep it operating and to make sure the clinic can provide a decent level of service to the local residents.

Around 5pm local time on 12 January 2010, the already impoverished island of Haiti was devastated by a 7.0 magnitude earthquake. Please read this article from CNN to learn more. Stay up to date with efforts with USAID.

You can help immediately by donating to the Red Cross to assist the relief effort. Contribute online to the Red Cross, or donate $10 to be charged to your cell phone bill by texting “HAITI” to “90999.”  Find more ways to help through the Center for International Disaster Information.

Check out videos of Sen. Edwards’ speech to the students on the last day and singing Christmas carols with the work crew.

When we first visited the community of Santa Cruz, just downstream of a collapsed bridge along the coastal highway of El Salvador, the community was nearly buried in sand. The streets were covered in several feet of sand and other debris, the houses that weren’t destroyed by the raging river waters were partially buried or filled with sand and mud, debris and trash covered the area and many of the houses, and broken building materials were dangerously strewn throughout the area. While other organizations and government officials had been through the area to see the damage and assess the situation, nothing had yet been done to actually improve the situation.

MACON, Ga – Central High School student Burgess Brown, while working toward his Eagle Scout rank, plans to use his Eagle project to provide a new home for the families of Villa Fuller in San Luis Talpa, El Salvador. On Saturday, November 14, Brown will lead hundreds of high school students and families from the Macon community in a Walk for Walls to raise $5,000 for a home in Villa Fuller.

Between Friday evening and early Sunday morning on November 6 – 8, 2009, the nation of El Salvador was drenched with a heavy, steady rain from a tropical storm that indiscriminantly wrought destruction in many parts of the country. Heavily saturated soils combined with steep, already unstable slopes caused innumerable mudslides to occur. Rivers throughout the region were bombarded with the sudden influx of water, causing raging destruction along their banks and destroying bridges and communities in their paths. Thousands of houses and people quickly became burried in heavy mud that blanketed their roads and communities. The death toll continues to rise above 150 and well over 13,000 are without shelter.

About 95 Crowley employees, Casa employees, and Casa kids joined together for one day to make a BIG difference. The large group came in waves of people throughout the day, each with a new burst of energy to get the job done. The group helped to pour the walls for a family’s house and worked on the foundation for another house. The Crowley management team did a wonderful job organizing the large volume of volunteers for this successful day. This event is the beginning of great relationships between Crowley, Casa de mi Padre, and the Fuller Center in El Salvador.

Senator John Edwards took time to make a return visit to El Salvador during the week of October 15, 2009. Edwards had a chance to meet with the Evangelical Alliance and elected officials of El Salvador. He also visited the Salvadoran Institute for the Rehabilitation of Disabled Persons in San Salvador. The most important part of the visit to the institute was learning how much of what they do can be prevented by proper care at the community level. The senator then had the opportunity to make another visit to the ongoing housing projects of Homes from the Heart – Fuller Center for Housing. Senator Edwards, and friend Michael Cucchiara (a green housing and infrastructure developer), plans to continue working with us in El Salvador and advocating with us for the needs of the poor.