Today was a physically demanding day. The team gathered for breakfast at 7:30 and then headed out to the building project at 8:15.
On the way there we had to stop at a local hardware store to pick up a few items to help with the work and, as is often the case, most of the youth had to come in and check it out.
Once we were at the work site, we began working immediately.
This involved a variety of odd jobs. Some people were tasked with taking rocks and pieces of concrete and filling up the holes in the concrete blocks. Others were tasked with the job of pulling nails out of pieces of wood so that the wood could be used again for the concrete forms. While still others, for the first little while, shoveled dirt to help begin the process of leveling out the floor and building up the area around the walls. The second half of the morning involved pouring concrete, which involved a lot of teamwork. Some of the local people mixed up the concrete on the road and then it was shoveled into buckets and the buckets were then passed from person to person (about 17 people) across the project to where the concrete needed to be poured.
After a lunch break, we headed back to the project and spent the first little while passing buckets from person to person, to pour concrete into the last section of the outer wall. All in all, we passed over 200 buckets of concrete. The rest of the afternoon was spent moving dirt and leveling out the floor area. It also reached a high of 32 and so there was a lot of sweating and a lot of water and gatorade being drank. But it was also a great way to work along side of the local community.
After a hard day of work we came back to the ministry center and enjoyed another tasty meal and then, after getting cleaned up a bit, we had a chance to do devotions together and to practice our Spanish song that we are expected to sing in church on Sunday.
When all was done, the youth joined in with a bunch of local community kids for some basketball and volleyball.
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