I feel ashamed for worrying about the things at my house. After we got out of the flood waters last Sunday I was thinking about things I wished I had brought with me, some were sentimental things like pictures and cards and letters from family, but others were just things.

This morning Maria came to Annette's house aroung 8:00 a.m. Maria cleans at Annette's and she also works at my house 2 days a week (thanks to Maria I always have clean clothes to wear - handwashed on the pila!). She normally works at my house on Fridays, but she had come by Annette's to ask me if she could wash her clothes in the washer. She stayed and cleaned while her clothes were washing. I was asleep when she got there and it took a little while for things to start to compute in my tired brain. I knew something must have happened at her house for her to bring clothes to wash at Annette's.

I began asking her about her house and if it had flooded. She was using some words that I was not familiar with. I understood her to tell me that the water had come into her house and that it had happened at 3:30 a.m. but she was telling me something else that I wasn't getting. So I called one of the teachers, Patty, and I told her that Maria's house had flooded, but I didn't know how bad it was or what I could do to help her, what did she need, what things had she lost. So Patty talked to her for me, and it was worse than I could have imagined!

Maria lives in a very poor bario, Bario Bokeem. (For those who have been here with Restoration, this is the bario where Pastor Felix's church was, where we would do a lot of ministry, and walk the streets passing out candy). Her house is made of clay blocks and one of the walls of her house crumbled during the night and the water came in her house.

It broke my heart when I learned what happened. Maria is very humble. Some of it is culture and the way maids and similar workers are treated by people in general. She has a hard time accepting blessings which I have given her in the past and I have seen the same when others have blessed her. Today however, she did not resist. Which shows me the desparation I can only imagine she was feeling. She is a single lady with three children. And now her house was missing a wall, it rained all night last night, and the rain is not going to stop any time soon. She can't go to her savings account, or pull out a credit card, or open an account at Home Depot...this morning someone was trying to put up a temporary wall with sheets of plastic to protect her home.

Today as I gave her some money and told her it was for her house, and then Alyshia came and gave her some money as well, I saw her face change, soften, and I thought she was going to cry. Please pray for Maria, for her kids, and for this situation.

Today it has not rained in Comayagua, but one of our students from school told me that the highway was closed again yesterday because the river had run over again (that is the river that is near my house, that flooded the highway and many neighborhoods last Sunday morning).

This is rainy season, so it is odd to pray for the rain to stop, but there is so much rain and so much damage and so much flooding, if the rain continues I don't know how we will ever get past the destruction that is occurring.

Pray for these poor neighborhoods, families who work hard to make a home for their kids and the rain is washing away their homes. Maria works harder than anyone I know....she cleans house for 3 families (for 2 of us that includes handwashing all our clothes and towels and sheets), and cleans our school in the afternoon.

Pray for those of us who care about her, for us to know how to help in this situation.