In last night's posting, I became a little sarcastic. During the night I became vindictive! If the containers are not released very soon, I plan a blitz of communications to our senators and congressmen, then a trip to San Salvador. I will get in contact with some people from the press and explain:

We have conducted FIVE large medical campaigns in La Palma and surrounding communities which helped THOUSANDS of people. Everyone who came got free vitamins and parasite treatments in addition to any meds they might have needed. Our nurses and doctors make dozens of house calls every time we are there. Again, free meds for the poor.

We shipped three previous containers to La Palma and have helped thousands with clothing from that. We shipped several medical equipment items including an Xray unit. We shipped hundreds of wheelchairs, walkers, crutches, canes, etc and have photos of the help those people received.

We shipped lots of school supplies and distributed them. We equipped the La Palma Christian School. We HAD 13 working computers in the school and were teaching the children how to use them until someone stole all 13 of them-including monitors, keyboards, power strips, uninterruptible power supplies, and printers. THIRTEEN of them were stolen and the local police can't find them! In the containers are some replacements for those computers, but they do the children NO GOOD while they sit in the trucks awaiting someone to release them.

The 2008 container had a valuation of over 1/2 million dollars and was GIVEN to the poor people. These two containers have perhaps that much value, and yet have no value until the goods get there.

We have photos of previous distributions that the press would like to see.

I will tell of little Emerson in La Palma, waiting for one of the children's wheel chairs in the containers. I will show the photo of Julio and how happy he was to receive the personal energy transport (PET) last year--how it enabled him to get around better than walking on his hands.

Do I want to do that? No. Do I owe it to the people of La Palma and the people here who worked so hard to gather and store those items, then load them on the trucks? Yes!

If other mayors have abused the system and taken donated goods for their own gain, then prosecute them and punish them. Don't punish the poor people by repeatedly and systematically denying the release of these containers. And don't discourage future donations by this stall tactic which has become very expensive to us and robs the people of money that might be used otherwise.

I don't think the government wants this kind of news reported, but it is very close to happening. Let's pray that God will touch someone even today and effect the release. Ralph