Rain, Rain, Go Away...

Hola! Today was our first day of “real” work with the South Carolina group. After breakfast and morning devotional, we all loaded up on the buses, and headed to Mololoa. We split up into a few different teams today. We had 2 construction teams today, both of which were pretty high up on the mountain. We had a team that was digging a footer (note: a "footer" in Honduras is about 5 feet deep and about 4 feet wide...they do this for all of the buildings no matter how tall they are going to be.... it would take an earthquake to shake this foundation) for the new daycare, and we also had a team to play with the children and keep them occupied so they woould not be at the construction sites in the way of danger. With all of that going on, we also had to fight mother nature all day. It was rainy, windy, and cold (well for Honduran weather). Mother nature pretty much won.

The construction sites were…well in less than perfect areas, both were on a side of a mountain, and both were very difficult/challenging to get to (Torchers will know that this was a typical building site). At first, only one site had wood so we had about 30 people working on one house at the beginning, which was good considering how difficult it was to get the wood there. The wood was dropped off on the road (path, trail, narrow driving area...) and we had to carry the lumber down the mountain side to the build site which was about 200 feet away. After we had dug out the post holes for that house, the wood came for the other house, so half the crew grabbed their supplies, and walked about 15 minutes up the hill to their site, which to the eye looked a little bit easier…HA…looks can be very deceiving! The site was closer to the road but was located about 25 feet below. After using our acrobatic skills to get down to the site we had to dig out additional dirt away from the side of the mountain to make enough room to build. The house build began very smoothly, but hey, it’s Honduras, that can’t last long, so of course it had to start raining and the wind had to start blowing (slightly less than gale force which was so fun to deal with on the side of a mountain...).

Then in the middle of the day (3 O’Clock) we stopped work and went to the church building. We had the official dedication of the new daycare to the Claypoole’s, which was amazing! The daycare will serve the women of the community so that they can go off to work and know that their children will be same and in a good environment. The Claypoole family made a sizable donation to the project and flew down for the dedication. Jen Arnold’s Sunday School class sung 6-7 songs in Spanish and in English for everyone. Her English class recited a verse from the Bible. Melissa Kluge gave a speech about all of the things that are being done in Mololoa and some of the mothers spoke about what the daycare would mean to them. After all of that, the cooks from the feeding center prepared a meal for everyone (they had been up since 5 AM preparing).

Meanwhile, the interns stayed behind and finished one of the houses, and when the rest of the crew came back we dedicated the house to the Dial family. The proud new owners of the house were very grateful that God had blessed them so greatly today, they now have a dry place to sleep. It was very heartbreaking to see the little boy helping us with the house telling his mom that he was cold. He was shaking so bad that he couldn’t move. It was a bit relieving though to know that tonight they now have a brand new house to keep them warm and dry. We do have to go back and finish the other house which is almost done. Weather and building conditions stopped us from finishing that one. We got a lot accomplished considering the circumstances today.

While the construction crew was hard at work, a group of girls went down to the soccer field armed with hundreds of coloring books, crayons, balloons, jump ropes, and lots of nail polish. It was a fun day playing with the kids and neither rain nor wind kept them away. We packed up our stuff and headed down the mountain around 6:00 to catch warm showers and a hot meal (chicken enchiladas!) The devo tonight was lead by Mr. Claypoole. He spoke about our influence on others not only in Honduras, but also back in the states. He spoke about his father and the influence Christians had on his life. He told us that people are always watching so always set a good example. At home, school, work, wherever. There were a lot of tears when we finished (Note: The SC group cry more than any group we have ever worked with! We are thinking about starting a support group!) Most of the group was weary after a hard day of work but a few people got together for a rousing game of spoons. Puffy reversed his usual role of being on the ground wrestling for spoons and instead tackled one of our rookies. As you can see from the pictures….this is what happens when you show no respect…..

It was a great day, despite the weather. It is going to take a lot more that rain and wind to keep us down! Tomorrow we will be at the Valley of Angels for worship and to do some shopping. We will have devo at Santa Lucia too. Take care, more later!