Visit September 16 and 17 2019
Sr. Frantiska had her first visit to Gaza and all went well at the boarders. I didn’t realize that my permit to the Gaza side had expired the day before. This gave us a few anxious moments until they decided to let us enter. We were to renew my papers the next day which we did. Due to the help of Fr. Mario and Ramzi we were able to leave on Wednesday a day later than we had planned on. The Missionaries of Charity were kind to let us stay another night with them.
The first day was full as we started by visiting the Al Arabie School in the north. The children were happy and busy studying theirs forms and reviewing the names of the colors. They all received apples that day. After we went immediately to visit our second pre-school in the Jabalia area of Gaza City. Again the children were busy; this time they had a puppet show which the teachers put on for them. They have more children enrolled this year in their school of three classrooms with a fourth room as a play room.
Fr. Mario and two of his friends joined us to visit four families two of which just had their homes renovated due to the generosity of our benefactors. It was great to see the joy on the faces of these families. In the afternoon we met with Sabah and discussed the current situation with our projects there. After we went to the Missionaries of Charity for the night.
The second day after Mass we went to the bank and after to the parish to work on our paper work for our permits with the government. We headed south to the Middle camps to see our two pre-schools there and were very pleased with everything. At Hanan’s School we saw the new room which she built on the top of the schools to be a play room for the children. We had sponsored the windows and the flooring. CRS had donated many nice toys for them. In both schools the children were eating nice martadella sandwitches. We returned to Gaza City to discuss again our projects for the future months. The Italian clown Mario had been to all our pre-schools and was entertaining the children of the parish that afternoon.
After Mass and breakfast we went to the parish offices to see how our paper work was and Fr. Mario came to our aid again and we were able to leave immediately for the frontier as he was sure that he could get the problems resolved there. He and his friends were also leaving so we went together across the boarders. About 100 people were ahead of us waiting to leave so it took us about 2 hours to be processed to leave. It was a great relief to be able travel that day and not have to wait still another day.
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