I saw an informational meeting listed in the newsletter for Greater Des Moines Habitat for Humanity. They were planning a trip to El Salvador to build houses there. It sounded interesting to me so I decided to attend, even though I had not yet completed the treatment for my stomach cancer. They had some interesting food at the meeting, something called a pupusa. Kind of a stuffed hand made corn tortilla. They were served with 2 different kinds of sauce and an EL Salvadorian cold slaw. They were very good even though I was unable to eat much. They told us the story of El Salvador and the poverty there. We saw a video from Habitat Global Village. After the meeting I decided if I was healthy enough and able to raise the money I would go. The trip would cost just under $2000. I ordered my passport (bald head and all, chemo you know) and set forth to raise enough money to go.
I sent letters to everyone I could think of friends, family and my various doctors. My family surprised me with a card and $500 to get my fund raising started. I think in the end I raised about 2/3 of the trip. As it was getting close I received a donation from our Team Leaders church with that I was able to put the necessary funds together.
As the trip approached we received a call from the airlines that they had changed the schedule for the flight to El Salvador. The new schedule did not work so now our Team Leader had to scramble and find another airline that could get us to EL Salvador when we needed to get there. No easy task since we were a group of 14, 11 from Des Moines, 1 from Chicago, 1 from LA, and 1 from Cincinnati. He did a great job found flights athat worked for all and even saced us a little money.
I will write about the actual trip in my next blog. Check out my fund raiser on Twitter. I want to go back in 2013.
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