1. By Monday, it had been raining for 7 days straight. Since Gaspard doesn't have much other entertainment, Titise and Rodrigue, the two helpers, spent a lot of time playing cards. The clothes pins on Titise's ears mean that he is losing.
2. When Fr. Phechner went to visit his father in early October, he visited a local family. The mother had just died of cancer, leaving 10 children---and the father is dying also. It was decided that the children would have to find someone else to live with. Jean Ronel, age 14, ended up going to Gaspard with Fr. Phechner.
3. Fr. Phechner is trying to renovate the parish hall. It serves as the government school in the morning; as the classroom for the St. Therese Parish 7th and 8th grade classes; and as the meeting hall for the church on the weekends. He has enough money to finish the walls, but not the roof or the floor. All building materials (cement, sand, rebar, nails, wood) have come up the mountain on someone's head or on a mule.
4. The upper classroom of the parish hall. No one comes to school when it rains; but nothing can be left in the open room, because it will be destroyed by the water or stolen by the hungry.
What courage, hope, faith, community.......
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