Cuban Bodega

Welcome to Cuba Week here at OPOD. We had a treasure trove of photographs sent in by Rafael, and so I wanted to share them with you this week. I hope Rafael will tell us more about these pictures as the week goes on. This one shows a Cuban "Bodega". Rafael's father is on the right of the picture.

When I think of Cuba, I think of fine cigars. They really are the best cigars, and I wish that you could purchase them here (legally).

DOMESTIC UPDATE:

I had mentioned several weeks ago that my daughter, the lovely Miss EAM, will be departing on September 5 to serve as an RN for the Mattaw Children's Village in Africa. Unfortunately, orphans have no money to pay for a nurse, so I brought the need to you all. I am pleased to announce that you all responded with overwhelming generosity. Between visitors to this blog, and some local churches she visited, she has raised the funds needed for her airfare over, 6 months of living expenses, and her airfare home. In addition, she has raised money that can serve as a start to buying equipment to put together a small clinic for the village.

We greatly appreciate your support for her work. I have one additional request. The area she is going to is a very unstable part of the world. There is great turmoil in the neighboring countries, and that type of trouble can quickly spill across borders. I would appreciate your prayers for her for safety while doing this work, and that her work might be successful.

BLAST FROM THE PAST:

Several years ago, I described a young man to you, Dustin, who was a very troubled young man who was making an incredible turnaround in his life his senior year of high school. Many of you were a huge encouragement to Dustin, and we got together and provided some funding to him to help (You can read Dustin's story here). We have not talked about Dustin in a while, so wanted to give you an update. He did in fact go on to college, and he successfully completed his certification as a Wind Turbine Technologist. He graduated at the top of his class. To be honest with you, I have been very concerned about Dustin. When it became known that there were lucrative jobs in the Wind Industry, there was a huge rush of people into technical schools to get certifications to work on wind turbines. So, there were LOTS of people going into that field. Then, with the financial crisis of 2008, many of the big wind farms that were planned were cancelled because they could not get financing. So you had the perfect storm of oversupply and people looking for jobs, and a collapse in Wind Farm projects. Bottom line . . . virtually no jobs in the Wind Industry now.

I am pleased to announce, however, that Dustin was able to get a job in the industry, and was just hired to be a Wind Technologist near Big Springs, Texas. What a wonderful ending to this story you helped make happen.