We had a wonderful day. Lessons of the day:
1) How to pour a concrete floor over rocks. It can be done!
2) Uno Poqueto Espanol. (I think I spelled it right?!)
3) That it gets really really hot in the day, and you better bring a change of clothes.
4) That things never really get put away here, they just get moved to a different location. (i.e. garbarge, scaffolding, etc.)
Enjoy the photos of the day!
This is John & Bruce trying to figure out the broken tape measurer and interesting leveling table. This was our only tape measurer we had until after lunch. It still did the job!
This is what the church looks like now. You can see what it looked like when we first saw in a few blogs below. All the scaffolding that was on the first floor has now been moved to the second floor. People here like to just move things to a different spot and deal with it later. We spent the first half of the day picking up garbage and big rocks. We even found some old sneakers, gloves, and take out containers in the rubbish.
This is Aryelle, She was "sanding" the concrete walls, as did most of us, for hours on end. The concrete is rather rough when it is put on so we used scrapers, special concrete stones, and even rocks from the floor to smooth down the concrete. It makes it more finished and polished before you paint it.
This is the outside of the church. It's been over a year and they have made it this far. Things move slow down here, especially when they need to raise money to pay for things. The church members don't have much, but they are faithful with their money and look what they will be rewarded with. The pile or rocks on the left side of the doorway were the rocks we moved from the floor of the church to outside. I am hoping this pile doesn't sit there for months!
These were are high-tech, state of the art, construction tools for the day. We forgot some things and didn't think of bringing other tools, so we were left with some old buckets, a broken tape measurer, chalk, a 1x4x8', some old shovels, and a laser level on cinder blocks. No big fancy concrete tools needed!
This was the little girl that came and sat patiently while we ate lunch in front of her. In countries like this you cannot really give someone food, gum, candy, etc..., because when you do she will go get all her friends and sooner than you think you will have 30 kids begging at your door. She was cute thought, definitely has figured out those puppy-dog eyes.
This is the view from outside of the current church building. This was the little girl from above and her father.
Men started gathering and watching us as we unloaded tools, concrete, people, food, etc. Everyone was very interested in seeing what we were up to. Once we told them what we were doing they were so happy and thankful we were helping. I was talking with one of these men and the weirdest thing happened. One of the other men took out his cell phone and took a photo of me... apparently I look weird or something?!?!
I asked this girls mom if I could take photos of her kids, luckily she said yes. This little girl was 14 months old. She didn't really like getting her photo taken and tried to run away. Her 3 year old cousin was trying to keep her still so I could take their photo. The Dominicans are so nice! I really enjoy trying to have conversations with them. I think my Spanish has gotten better already! I think I will continue to study Spanish when I get back into the states.
This is a photo of Me & Anne. We were off to battle with the concrete walls. Don't we look serious!
This is here to give you an idea of what we are putting concrete on top of. Not the ideal situation, but here in the DR things don't always go how they are planned. We will work with what we have and it'll turn out awesome. This was when the first amount of concrete was put down on the floor, very exciting! This was our friend the tile guy who is from Haiti. We had a hard time communicating with him because he knows no English and only a little Spanish. Haitian's speak a sort of Creole. He was a nice guy though and I know the men really had an easy time working with him.
A Chicken decided to join the party. It is so odd how animals just walk around like they own the place. She was looking for her eggs as she used the new church as her laying ground. Sadly for this Chicky we had to concrete over her spot. I guess that is what happens when you lay eggs inside a building!
She couldn't find her eggs and started to get frantic and run around. She decided it would be a good idea to step in the wet concrete. I Think it's great that her chicken feet will be in the concrete. (For now at least, they will be tiling over our concrete floor.)
This was a young boy, Ronny, who hung around us all day. He is 13 and goes to elementary school. In the DR there are so many kids and not enough teachers so the public schools have to have two sessions. One in the morning and one in the afternoon. Ronny was there waiting for us this morning at 9am to help us out. He worked hard and then left for school and then came back after school to finish up. He really enjoyed having conversations with us. He knows NO English, not even Hello, and we still managed to hang out with him for a few hours. He decided to go home and get his bike. He was so excited to show us his tricks!
So that is a snippet of our first work day. God has been amazing to us. It is pouring rain out right now and starting to thunder. I have to be up by 6am tomorrow so I guess I shall go to bed. Thank you for keeping us in your prayers. Hopefully tomorrow we will finish laying the concrete or painting the walls. The goal is that on Sunday "Nuevo Raniero" will be able to have their first service in their new church. It won't be done, but it'll be a start!
"Dios te Bendiga"
1 comment:
Aww, that is so sad about the little hen losing her eggs. Maybe somebody should have tried to find her nest... That had to have been extremely traumatic for her. Animals become just as attached to their young as people do, and I know a human mom wouldn't have put up with that, hah. :)
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