Last Friday, we stopped and took the day to celebrate — and we had a big reason to celebrate. One of the biggest challenges of the year has been in the area of education. And we were thankful to finally be able to say, “WE MADE IT!” Due to COVID, tropical storms and hurricanes, the school year kept getting extended, and then a two week “reinforcement” summer school was assigned. Talk about a long year.
Gratefully, every single one of the children passed their grade level. We even had some other special awards to celebrate. We had one who graduated from Preparatory. (There are two years before first grade here, kindergarten and preparatory.) This is a big celebration here in El Salvador where sadly the dropout rate only seems to increase each year afterwards. We had two of our sixth graders earn first and second place academically in their grade level. And then we will have three of our young ladies graduating from high school this coming weekend. With less than 1/3 of all who begin school ever reaching this goal, we are proud that they had the opportunity to earn their high school degree. All three have plans to continue their education next year in either technical schools or university.
We are thankful for all of those who rallied to support us this year in the area of education. Our staff were all hands-on when school switched to at-home learning. We had others who came alongside us when internet challenges seemed to take its toll on the process. We had faithful donors who continued to give so that we could hire some additional tutors and continue to pay tuition in the schools. It took us all to overcome . . . but we did!
Join us celebrating God’s goodness this year!
