The day began....

The day began at 3 am.

Not for me...or any of the other members of our group.

The day began at 3 am for 20 men from the Horquetas congregation. They gathered together at the church and prayed for us from 3 to 5 am and then went off to work.

I was rudely awakened by a dog at 5 am...barking outside my window...but i rolled over and went back to sleep. At about that time many of the men headed off in buses to work in banana farms over an hour away.

So the day began at 3 am.

We arrived at the church, our worksite, at about 8 or maybe it was 830 and worked very hard all morning. From the pictures you can see just how much cement was put down. Many of our team worked at scraping and painting a metal fence. I believe it will all look beautiful when it is done. The kitchen that we will have paid for will be used to serve food to the young, old, and impoverished of the community. It is quite a ministry.

Pastor Don Carlos is a great man. I will tell you more about him someday. He works very hard to help the people of this community to live well. Yesterday we watched him hand out baby chicks to families here. 11 chicks each. They were to keep 10 chicks for themselves and sell 1 chick and use the money as a tithe to the church.

This afternoon we spent a few hours with children from the community. Crafts and soccer (football) were the order of the day. We were challenged by the disconnect in language, but the kids smiled so widely. It was beautiful to be with them.

Tomorrow will look a lot like today. We will work at the cement in the morning...putting on a finer top coat (this will involve sifting sand by hand!), more painting, and more time spent with the kids in the afternoon. Thanks for your support and prayer as we move forward. I assure you, with every effort we look to serve another in Christ´s way and with every moment we awaken even more fully to the holiness of life!

Monday!

Hi all!

Just a brief note to let you know that we worked very hard today!

We were able to see how the Sunday school classrooms here at Horquetas ...the ones we worked on last year....are being used. We were also able to witness 400 chicks being passed out to members of the community....

That PLUS lots of manual labor...making more cement....

Anyway, we´re doing well, and miss you all!

We're gonna get dirty

It's about 530 am here and we are headed out to the rural village of horquetas. Today we will meet the sand, cament mix, and agua we have been waiting for. I look forward to reuniting with the pastor and his wife. We will have to see what kind of Internet access we have... Bit when there is a will, there's a way!

Btw, many thanks to ken comegys who managed to get these pics online.

Sunday part 2

After worship and a good lunch we went to a place called Los Guidos. This is where our missionary friends bob and ann jefferys serve. We met them there, it was wonderful to reunite. The pastor at Los Guidos, dorotea, spoke to us about the needs of the congregation. They serve a place where extreme poverty is the norm. Many parishioners live in shanty houses. She hopes to use her church as a preschool but it needs a great deal of work to pass inspection. She said "God says to knock, look, and seek. And that's what I believe.". She is moving forward by selling handmade cards. Today they were also selling empenadas for 500 colognes (about 1 dollar) on the street corner. I'm really struck by how the people move forward in faith. NoBody seems worried about how tomorrow won't work out, instead they seem to ask, "what work can we do today?"

We finished the day with a ride through another shanty town. The poverty is appalling. We always comment about how lucky we are. Today our group came face to face with how lucky we are.

Peace in every step.... N