Monday, the 4th of July!

No fireworks here -- but had plenty of concrete chips flying throughout the day as folks tried to cut out U's in some of the concrete blocks (with hammers, picks, chisels, and machetes) while others chipped out concrete at the column locations on the existing walls where they had come to a stopping point.

Shortly before lunch, an electric saw magically appeared . . . by the end of the day, we had a welding machine (but no official welder or welding rods) and a generator, power saw, and even cell phones working at the work site -- so much for doing things like "100 years ago" like we started the day with. Not to say we had 100% advancement into 2011. We still cut ties and bent rebar to make assemblies . . . After we managed to break several concrete blocks by "carefully" chipping away the "U" shape for a designated course of block, they decided they had better just order some concrete blocks that were already in that shape -- they came in the second load of concrete blocks that we had to unload and get up 3 flights of stairs (which was after a pick up load of sand that we carried in bags up the same 3 flights).

We were very well fed by the ladies of the church today. They started off "light" with fresh fruit for morning break . . . then a chicken stew with potatoes, green beans, some kind of squash that we do not have, and ??? (it was VERY good -- esp. with the tortillas and rice); we had fruit for dessert and thought we were done eating until we got back to the hotel . . . not so, the ladies fixed us a delightful snack of plantains with chocolate / mole sauce and sesame seeds. We hardly had room for our "light supper" of chicken fried rice. We worked hard all day, but I am not sure that we burned off any where close to what we consumed. An added bonus at lunch was being sung two by two young missionaries who help Pastor Celso (Zaqueo - alias Zach - and Mario . . . also known as Duo Missioneros de Cristo); we have not yet checked it out, but we think you can hear some of their music at www.lavidtv.com -- this is the website we were given when we inquired as to whether or not they had a CD.



a few of the good cooks at the church . . . laughing as they prepared our lunch.


Our van driver, whose sole duty was to take us to and from the job site, elected to help us the entire day. He was a very good addition to our 3 man - 10 woman crew . . . in addition to several of the church members and Gabriel helping us out -- we were about equal in terms of male and female folks doing the construcion work (in addition to the 6 +/- cooks that did all of the hard work in the kitchen.) This afternoon, we had an eager 92-year old member of the congregation come to the jobsite (on the roof) with his son (his grandson was one helping us already) and helping to move some of the concrete blocks in addition to sharing some of his stories with us via translator. It was neat to see 3 generations of one family helping build the church addition.



Here are some images for you to get a glimpse of what we tried to do:
moving buckets of sand from the second floor to the third floor
chiseling out so that the new work can be joined with the previous work

assembling rebar
sifting sand
moving block from one area to another

cutting rebar to form into C's or rectangles to tie other rebar together . . .


tying rebar

bending rebar with a form
connecting new rebar with existing to make wall higher (in column location)



sharing M & Ms (they do melt in your hand -- in addition to your mouth!)



pencils provided by Lonnie at TH Rogers (they are coming in very handy -- and Dale can sharpen with his knife.)