Starting to Look Like Something

Fortunately for us, while we were out looking at some of the natural wonders of the world, the Maranatha workers are still of the job site working on the project! We were very surprised when we gotto the job this morning to see that they had laid four more courses of block, which included the windows and the tops of the doors.

There did not seem to be an abundance of cloud cover today, so it felt warmer than some of our passed days. As a result some of our team had to back off a little to deal with the heat. Additionally, the higher we get on the project the more difficult it is to lay the block. It is up high, it is hard to level the block, it is hard to grout the cells, it is hard to move grout and mortar up couple levels of scaffolding. So, each day as we move along we find that our progress in terms of just looking at rows of block laid is a little less each day. However we are still feeling good about the progress we are making and looking forward to tomorrow as our last day to work on this building. I have a few photos taken near the end of the day to show you our current status.

We all took off work today at 230, so we could all participate in the Vacation Bible School program being held at the church. Somewhat like American churches, the membership on the books is around 800. However the pastor said the weekly attendance is more like about 200. As you can see in the photos, the Vacation Bible School program is a jam-packed couple of rooms with a lot of high-energy kids. Shana and Kaitlin do a remarkable job of making this program fun and meaningful for the kids. The local pastor told me twice how much he appreciated our team working with the VBS program, and he seemed genuinely grateful for what we were doing for their kids. This is a joint program with their staff and ours. Culturally we have some differences in the way we run programs at church. However, they have been very gracious, and I think everyone has had a good time, and the kids have gotten a glimpse of just how fun Christianity can be.

At the end of the day we had one more item of business that need to take care of his Shana Williams birthday today. We have Candy to thank for very arranging to get the cake and ice cream for the event and we enjoyed a few minutes of celebration with Shana who could also celebrate her birthday with all of her kids.

Tomorrow is Friday, and just like school at home, we will just work to noon and have the rest of the Friday afternoon off.