work overview

Once we got to the church on that first day, we did a run down of what jobs we had to do and what supplies we would need. The general idea was to work during the day and then have bible school in the evenings. At first, I thought to myself that we didn't have nearly enough work to keep all of us busy for the days that we were going to be there. Little did I know that we didn't have nearly as much time as I thought we did. We were 11 degrees off the equator so we had almost exactly 12hrs of daylight each day. For some reason, I had it in my mind that it would be about like summers in Kentucky....sunrise about 6:30 and sunset around 9pm. Not even close. Considering we were staying 20min away from the church and the fact that it took two Jeepney trips to get all of us on site, our work time was actually very short. And, the day was cut even shorter because the ladies of the church prepared 3 big meals a day. Believe it or not, there were several times when I would want to just keep working to finish something but would have to clean up and go in and eat so I wouldn't appear to be rude and ungrateful.

We had 3 basic jobs that needed to be worked on during the week.
1. Install a water pump to pump water up a hill to a holding tank that was on the highest part of the church's property. This was probably the most important of all the jobs. The ladies had been carrying water up a steep and slippery hill (my behind experienced this hill more than once) which was very inconvenient even for over there.

2. Run water pipe from the holding tank to the restrooms and install toilets. This job turned out to be bigger than originally planned. Connie, the founder of the church and go-to person on this trip, decided to make the walls taller and to extend the restrooms to make room for 2 shower stalls. So, we had to rip the old roof off and install a new one and lay block for the extention. And I was afraid of running out of work...hehe.

3. Dig out from under the church for potential sunday school rooms. The church was already several feet off the ground at the front and just needed to be evened up in the back.

We hired a lot of the local guys to help on these three jobs which did 3 things: It gave them a job and some income they wouldn't normally get. It helped us because we weren't used to the heat and mud and never would've gotten finished without their help. It also gave us a chance to work with them and build relationships that we wouldn't have got to build otherwise.

Overall, it was a very full week as far as the work days went. It was hot, muddy most of the time, and downright draining. It was good though......a true blessing to get to work with the guys on the team and with the guys from that area.