Thursday at work

Augusto and his entire family joined us for a few minutes today -- he had to leave to go to his job as a chaplain at the university. He brought some sugar cane in block form for all of us to try . . . it is kind of like brown sugar, only different. Augusto's daughter, Deborah, stayed and worked with us today. It was good to have another worker as well as translator.


I suspect you can guess that we did much of the same today at work, and you would be guessing correctly. Today, we swept the morning rain off the roofs (both 2nd and 3rd), mixed both mortar and cement, moved and placed concrete blocks, cleaned boards, built forms and poured more of the bond beam (today we did the bond beam for the pitched roof at the end of the church.
Looking up from the second floor to the third prior to sweeping all of the water off or the steel channels arriving.





The new tasks today included removing the forms from the bond beam poured yesterday afternoon and then unloading 48 +/- steel c-channels and getting them up to the 2nd floor (lifting them -- they are too long to go up the stairs!) We also unloaded and moved tin sheets for the roof up as well . . . Once we got the c-channels up on the roof, we began cleaning the oil off of them and then painting them. They had to pass inspection from Pastor Celso before we could paint them -- several of us failed in our initial efforts. Thanks to Lu for giving us a clue about just wiping them down in one direction rather than rubbing them: wipe the oil off versus smear it around. We cut up several old shirts to use for rags to use with the cleaning fluid, saving a white one for the "white glove" test.





The after-lunch break before the crew was sent downstairs to tackle the steel channels . . . oh yes, we were working -- if you consider watching the bond beam dry as work!

Late in the afternoon as rain clouds were all around us, we were blessed with a double rainbow.