MEMO is Busy With a Lot of Exciting Projects

Whether you are a first time viewer of our website or a regular viewer we want to give you an idea of the scope of our present activities.

EL SALVADOR

In El Salvador we are beginning to work in an impoverished community of 47 families hanging on the side of a mountain in Texacuangos where we work. We are going to work with the community of La Presa to provide a simple sheet metal building to be used as a health and community centre and chapel on Sundays. We hope that with a place to meet together the community will begin to be empowered to work on solving some of the problems they have. MEMO providing shoes will allow kids to go to school and perhaps help with travel to school. The average daily wage for a woman in La Presa is $2.00 and bus fare to school is $.50. Education can break the cycle of poverty and hopelessness.
The greatest immediate felt need by the mothers in the community is for food security for their children. Poorly nourished children learn poorly. While the community will be encouraged to look at ways they can grow some of their own food, MEMO will provide some nutritional supplementation in the form of high protein dehydrated soup mix provided by Ontario Christian Gleaners.

MEMO will also work with the community in building a railing up the steep mountain side so the elderly will have something to hang onto to prevent falls when it is rainy and wet. Not very dramatic, but practical in helping these folks feel they have some hope for better conditions.

Of course the greatest need is to realize they are loved and valued by God so they can have a future here and hereafter. MEMO is happy to bring them this Good News.

Meanwhile out in the El Salvadorian hills, Cecilia Huezo is working away in her community to achieve the same results with poor agricultural workers.

MEMO is helping by currently sending a 40’ container to be used after emptying as a sewing shop and bicycle repair shop to provide local employment. We have already sent 50 bicycles and all the tools for keeping them going along with 8 sewing machines and $5000 worth of bolts of cloth, zippers,buttons and thread.

At present if someone in this community gets sick and needs medical care they have to travel 30 kms in a motorcycle taxi over a very rough mountain road. To help with this need a community member, Lillian, (Actually the village “mayor”) has volunteered to be trained as a health care worker.

MEMO’s Steve Wiebe, an Air Ambulance paramedic trainer, has volunteered to go to El Salvador in April to train Lillian and ambulance attendants from both the Shalom Clinic and this community as first responders and health care aids. MEMO is planning to send a simple ambulance to provide transport for the seriously ill of the community. Sustainability is hoped for by charging small fees based on ability to pay. The health centre will be housed in a simple pre fab sheet metal building based on the design of a Canadian charitable organization that has built 1200 of them already in El Salvador.

Meanwhile back at the Shalom Family Clinic MEMO’s Erwin Stuka is struggling to install the digital X-ray machine MEMO provided. In January Ruth Ann Robinson a Laboratory Specialist with her husband will get the clinical laboratory MEMO has provided up and running in anticipation of the clinic getting government certification and being able to open formally.

MEMO’s various activities in El Salvador are being expedited by Cuban Canadian missionary Eduardo Pulin. He and his wife and 2 children hope to have enough financial support to move to El Salvador in 2015 under the auspices of the Evangelical Free Church of Canada Mission Having a MEMO representative on the ground in El Salvador makes these projects so much more doable.

We are working on acquiring a 26 passenger used school bus to move children around for recreational activities.

Next fall MEMO hopes Dr Aurora will be able to go to El Salvador and get the Breast Screening program functioning, using the clinic and the mobile mammography machines.

Wheelchairs to be shipped to give mobility to the immobile

MEMO’s current container contains replacements for this furniture in a boys dorm at Shalom Orphanage

A comfortable bed and chair for this patient in Saldana Hospital El Salvador provided by MEMO

MEMO mobile breast screening clinic being delivered in El Salvador

MEMO’s 26 passenger school bus will provide safer transportation for outings.

Meeting with Government Officials and Children’s Hospital staff in Cuba

Inside present La Presa “Health Centre” to be replaced by new structure.

Matanza Children’s Hospital Surgeon Dr Abel Santana trying out one of 16 new finger oximeters provided by MEMO

CUBA

And of course the door to Cuba has swung wide open again.

We are busy preparing to send a container to Matanzas Cuba in the spring with equipment to renew the Matanzas Paediatric Hospital as well as a large Home for the Aged. We are working with a Christian children’s surgeon and his wife a maxillofacial surgeon doing cleft palate and hare lip repairs.

We then will be working with the Cuban Council of Churches Health Care Committee providing them with all the things necessary for care of the aged: Incontinence products, bedding, wheelchairs, walkers wound dressings and much more. They will then distribute these to the aged through the Churches of Cuba in the name of Christ.

Our two wound care nurses have accepted the Churches invitation to conduct 5 wound seminars for caregivers throughout Cuba next year.

So God has provided us many opportunities to show His Love to needy people. We need your prayers and financial support for these ambitious plans.