Lanza Arriba:
It takes some driving in order to get to Lanza Arriba. You have two choices from Paraíso: either you drive back to Barahona and around to Cabral so that you can take the road out of Cabral that heads up to Polo ... or else you can drive to Enriquillo and take a right turn onto the dirt and sometimes pavement road to Polo. Either way, you need to reach Polo. Once there, you take a turn to the East and travel along a rough road that has just been cleared of rocky obstructions since the Noel flood.
What happened in Lanza Arriba:
The heavy rains and winds of Noel damaged the coffee crop together with the corn, yucca, beans and other crops that the people plant for food. Coffee beans fell to the ground and there was a frenzy to recover as many as possible. The corn and beans were another story. They might provide food for animals, since the biomass is still usable.
The meaning:
Since the Haitian immigrants do most of the hard work involved in picking coffee, and since they depend upon the food crops for sustenance when there is no coffee work... the loss of both sources of income or food security spells hard times ahead.
Little Christmas:
In the pictures, the children of Lanza Arriba are presenting the gifts that arrived from Spain: springtime green scarfs together with T shirts. The scarfs will certainly be well received since we are entering the cool period. Temperatures in Lanza Arriba will drop to the 40's between now and the end of March. It is no fun to lie awake at night and not being able to sleep because of the cold. You can be sure that those green scarfs will be wrapped around the children's heads in an effort to bring comfort. "I was cold and you warmed me up," might be words which the donors hear at the Last Judgment.
Bother and blessing:
When Sister Beania (pronounced: bay a knee ah) received the message from the acaldia of a town in Spain... that a shipment of clothes was on its way from Spain... this meant a big problem for her. She had to make numerous trips to Santo Domingo and visit Customs offices in order to clear the shipment which arrived by air. Few people will give her thanks for the trouble she endured in order to free the supplies. But the comfort which the scarfs and the T shirts will bring to the children is a true blessing. The parents took it as a sign that they are not forgotten.
What would Jesus buy?
He encouraged a wealthy young man to purchase blessings for the poor by sharing his wealth with them. Did he ever make tables or beds for the poor and then settle for a price well below the actual cost? For every child who will request and then receive a brand new X Box or other Digital video game for Christmas... how beautiful it would be if that very same child could have the experience of giving out to poor children simple things like green scarfs and prune T shirts... Then he or she could compare the levels of joy that flow from the two experiences.
