8/6/12

First full day of work, woke up at 5:30 to be ready to roll at 7:30.  I had to be real quiet since Phil needed his beauty sleep, and i had agreed to set  my alarm for 6:15.  I had been tossing and turning since around 5:00 and all of a sudden at 6:10, Phil comes flying out of his bunk saying it was 7:10 and we only had 5 minutes to get ready!!! It took 3 grown men and a small boy to convince him it was only 6:10.  Then we all had avoid laugh and got ready for the day.  After breakfast, Trevor and I who are in charge of hydration had to fill the 5 gallon thermos water cooler and load it and four other 5 gallon water jugs into the truck taking us to the work site.) I had no idea what to expect. None what so ever.  As we got to the job site I saw a foundation for a house that was about 12 X20.  That as small as my trailer living room or the area under Josie's parking cover.  The structure housed two bedrooms, a bathroom, and a, eating, resting, food prep utility room.  The building they were living in before was half that size.....  They had the footing and the first course of bricks layer when we got there and our job was to lay more brick and build up the walls.  But there isN a lot of things that need to be done before the bricks become a wall, we had to build up the floor shovelful by shovelful, we had to move 500 bricks by hand,  we had to mix enough mortar, again by hand. And all this during a torrential rainstorm.  The good thing and the rain was that it cooled us off at he cost of our clothes getting soaked and weighing 20 pounds.  Since all the water that touch the land is basically contaminated it felt good to be able to open my mouth point it to the sky and thank the Lord for the wonderful refreshing rain.  We ended up building up about 3 rows of bricks around 2 walls of the house.  It doesn't seem like much but my body says it was way too much...  After we finished the house we went back to the compound and ate lunch and relaxed (slept) for about an hour.  Then the kids showed up and the soccer play began.  The missionaries built a covered soccer court the size of a hockey rink for the local community to use.  We played around with the kids for about an hour than we started English lessons.  We helped the children with their english pronunciations, reading, and comprehension.  I guess a kids are the same everywhere, some would try and others would not, it was great helping the kids. The kids had a blast when it was their turn to teach us Spanish they were quick to correct our pronunciation and grammar.  But it was a great time anyway.   We came back to the dorms to a wonderful stew and biscuits and fruit that was prepared for us by the unknown cooks.  It was wonderful, tasty and filling.  After that Phil, Caleb, and myself had dish duty tonight washing dishes. Prewash, wash, rinse and bleach.  Yes I said bleach, since we use contaminated water we must bleach everything.  30 people generate a lot of dishes.... A whole lot of dishes.  After dish duty, I went up to the eating area to relax and start by writing, listening to the rain outside reveling in the miracle that brought a 51 year old call center representative, living in Arizona, to the town of La Ceiba in the Honduras to help build a home for 6 people living in a one room shack.  God is a wonderful provider for me and for them....  After my thinking, I got recruited in to making lunch for the teams.  What would you think that a missionary team in the Honduras eats for lunch? Perhaps a stew with vegetables, or maybe,  a sandwich with a slab of local ham,  no nothing so exotic, we will be having peanut butter and jelly sammiches!!  Hey, at least it's jif brand.  After we made the sammiches, some of my team and the intern and one lady from the other team started playing spoons.  No broken bones, cuts or contusions, just some smashed fingers and bruised egos.vwhich brings to a close today's events, I'm heading to bed now to get some sleep in preparation for a long and toting tomorrow.  Good night all.......  XOXO