December 9, 2007                 

Dear Friends in Oregon,

It is so good to hear from you. I have been shuttling from one end of IPTL's projects - the Lisa Dila Vocational Jr. High School in Lisa Dila, Maubara, Liquica in the West and the International Christian University Timor (ICUT) in Baucau City. Dili City, the capital is mid-way between the two projects.

The Lisa Dila Project is the one that was started in 2003 by Rev Drs Jim Moos, James Viyakumar and Ptr Francisco de Vasconcelos, Moderator of IPTL. Last September, it finally accepted its first students - 38 of them. We hope we will soon find ways of refining the activities of this school. As of now, they have planted corn in about 3-hectare of land using the tradition stick-hole-plant process. 

Since September they have "solarized" the school building with a capacity to handle all the lightings of six large rooms (including the staff housing) and an extra capacity of 10 desk top computers and/or 10 laptop computers.

The ICUT project is one that I have lately been spending about 80 % of my time. It is over 167 kms from Dili and it takes me 2 1/2 to 3 hours to drive there. ICUT was closed for almost a year - CY 2006-07 because of mismanagement. They have finally reopenned last September with over 300 students pursuing their bachelor degrees in agriculture, education, economics, and law. They are now in the midst of preparing their strategic plan which I hope they would be able to finalize by January.  I have been conducting a seminar workshop on Basic Educational Management for non-trained educators. ICUT's campus is rented from the Local Government of Baucau. It has only 4 functional classrooms. The rest are burnt out buildings that are not rehabilitated. Except for my services, the salaries of the mostly part-time teachers are from the tuition fees that it charges: $4 per credit-unit. 

Believe it or not, while the Chinese stores out here a blarring out Christmas songs, the mood does seem like Christmas at all. People keep throwing stones at each other and at any vehicles that is caught when tempers rise among the frustrated populace. The few are doing really fine but the 90% of its people are not. In fact we are already experiencing difficulty in collecting tuition fees at ICUT.

Lastly, gasoline price have risen again from $0.92 to $1.10 per liter (there are about 4 litters to a gallon) in this country that is rich in fossil fuel oil deposits. Unfortunately it is the Australians and Indonesians that are processing their crude oil.

I still do not know where I will be spending my Christmas for I have to feel my way as per Immigration requirements here so dictates. 

Do kindly extend my wishes for the best to all this Christmas Yuletide and New Years to all of the congregations of the Disciples of Christ and United Church of Christ there in Oregon.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Carlos

drclmadrazojr@yahoo.com