We Did It! We Did It!
Our team woke up on this Tuesday morning knowing that we had a full day of work ahead of us. The previous day, we made all kinds of progress, but the concrete work was cut short after the cement mixer broke down due to a snapped rubber belt. Without a high-capacity cement mixer, we were looking at a ton of manual grunt work, mixing one small batch of concrete at a time.
After pulling up in front of the school, one of the group said quietly, I'm going to pray right now that the cement mixer is fixed and working today. And wouldn't you know it, there was the mixer, along with its crew of 5+ men, all fixed and ready to go! So we were praising the LORD from jump.
We left the 30' x 60' basketball court less than 10% finished the day before, but now, with all hands and equipment "on deck", work began in earnest. All day long, from about 8:30 until 4:00, there were about 15 people actively working on this part of the project -- a mixture of our missionary group, hired hands, and local teenage boys.
Slowly but surely, batch after batch of wet concrete was wheeled onto the court, poured, and finished. A number of our group "learned concrete" from scratch, and everything went really well.
There were so many different types of jobs: making the concrete by shoveling sand and gravel into the mixer; pushing full wheelbarrels in to the work area; raking the wet concrete into place; and then smoothing and finishing. It was a HUGE job!With great anticipation, everyone just kept working . . . and working . . . and working. We were all getting really tired, but it didn't matter -- we were making so much progress thanks to the team effort, we weren't going to stop until the entire court was DONE!
When the last corner was poured, a loud cheer broke out across the playground, "Yeah! We did it!"
The basketball court might be the most noticable project, but we need to give credit to all the hard work going into the stone-wall decorative gardens, that have been painstakingly put together throughout the week, including today.
There are a total of 4 of these little gardens around the outside wall of the playground. The flowers aren't planted yet -- but stay tuned! This project is being performed by 5-6 of the women in the group, who have "gotten their hands dirty" (and then some). This involves moving rocks and boulders, mixing mortar, and laying these walls in place, one stone at a time.
The ladies have also taken charge of serving lunch. Each day we take a break around noon for a snack.
Last but not least, is the huge amount of work that has been done patching and tuckpointing the school building, a hot, labor intensive task that is combination of setting up, taking down, and moving scaffolding -- combined with working 2-3 stories up in the air applying mortar to broken sections of the building.
This job has been handled by Ward and Jeff (pictured above), and their ground-helper Lee, who gets them tools and buckets of mortar. The scaffolding seems vintage-1950's, made of rusty old steel that has to be banged together, and apart, with a hammer. We have been slowly working our way around then entire building, and we've already made more progress than we originally thought possible.
When something truly "crazy" needs to be done, we count on our fearless leader Brian. His rock-climbing experience comes in handy, as shown in the picture above, as he proves he wasn't lying when he say "I like heights!" All we can say is, yikes...and "Lord have mercy!"
Want to see our progress? Click on this link: Panorama of Worksite - Tues March 6
Conclusion - We are REJOICING Today
 |
| Our motto for the trip: "Realize the Dream" |
In His service, with gratitude,
