Divide and Conquer

For most of the trips, we stick together on the same site. Occasionally, a small group might go a few houses away to tie up a loose end. But today we had a split squad with 13 people sticking around the feeding center to work on a few projects, so I’ll start there first. Dan, Todd, and Nick were jumping out of their seats to get the opportunity to JACKHAMMER! Yep, we have moved on to the big boy toys. They had to break some ground to find a pipeline to connect a dishwasher to. Lissy, Caitlin, Audrey, and Melissa bent and formed about 10 new fish traps. And Carrie, Kim, Barbara, Alyssa N, Cyrus, and Jessica emptied, cleaned, and organized the large storage bins on the side of the feeding center.

The rest of the group went back to the village to work on the beginning of the end. By now it’s just like riding a bike. Before some of the supplies are off the bus, the teams are already organizing and tackling the various set-up jobs.

The Roofer’s union finished up roof #3, the painters finished house #3 and began #4, and the gardeners firmed up the retaining walls and cleared a bunch of weeds around various houses. And of course the kid’s club crew kept going with a bunch of new activities to keep them busy – like Kung-fu and Magic Carpet Ride.

We ended our night with a few more GREAT Helen games and some devotional time. Most of the team headed to bed early in anticipation of our long closing devotional tomorrow night, but also because they are dead tired. It’s going to be hard getting them up for the 9:30 service Sunday morning. (Thanks goodness for the 7:00)

Even though we were on two parts of the island, most of the kids shared the same “Jesus” moment. (These stories were pretty much the same from both groups.) It was really hot today (not as hot as home), but occasionally we get an afternoon thunderstorm. We don’t want the thunderstorm because that messes up a lot of our work, but today a big one was coming. We scurried quickly to get cleaned up before it hit. As we waited for the rain the come, a nice breeze picked up, the clouds gave us some cover, and the temp dropped about 20 degrees for almost 30 minutes. Fortunately, the rain never came, but the relief we got was just enough for us to make it through to the end of the day.