We had four dump truck loads of gravel and sand delivered to mix with the bags of cement.
We spent 8 days preparing the wooden support roof that the cement would be poured on top of. Then after the cement dried we knocked out the supports and removed the boards (this is inside the structure looking up at the bottom of the wooden boards...the cement is poured on top of the boards)
These two pics show us putting the plastic conduit down for where the future electrical cables are going to be supplied.
We built a ramp wide enough for 2 people to pass in opposite directions…one climbing with a cement bucket and another descending to get another.
Here we are at 6:00am, all gathered around waiting for the boss man to tell everyone what our assignments were. We had to bring in a big water truck so that we could have enough water to mix up 140 bags of cement.
So now we have started to work. Each person doing a different job. Some are shoveling rocks into buckets, others shoveling sand, others pouring bags of cement into the mixer, others carrying the buckets of cement up onto the rough to pour.
I have a short story about this kid in the turquoise blue shirt. I went up into the mountains to a small community to pick up a few of the volunteer workers. They are friends of a friend of mine who lives up there in that community. When I arrived there were a few men and some older teens but when I saw this little kid I thought to myself…what in the world is this kid going to help us with??? He is about 4 foot tall and weighs about 70 pounds. The bags and buckets of cement weigh almost as much as he does. Anyway, we get back to the property and we start working. He starts shoveling rocks into buckets to pour into the mixer. Well guess what? He shoveled rocks for 5 hours straight minus about a 30 minute break in the middle of working. 5 hours straight he shoveled rock!! Man was I humbled. No one knew it but I sure was. I thought about my wrong thoughts about this kid and I thought about how wrong I was to jump to conclusions. So I guess I have learned another well needed lesson down here in Mexico.
In the first pic you can see the types of mountains these guys were shoveling and in the second pic you can see that there isn’t much left of his mountain. Just keep your eye out for this kid in other pics as well as you can see him working on his mountain in various shots.
Here we are getting the cement mixture shoveled into our buckets so that we can walk up the ramp and pour it out onto the roof.
Then we carry the buckets up the ramp….
Then we poured it out onto the wooden boards that made up the foundation for the cement roof…
And after pouring it out we had guys smoothing it out so that it would be nice and clean.
Pastor C and me with one of the workers…he was the one cutting the bags of cement in half and pouring the half bags into the mixer…just a little dusty!!!
I got most of the workers together and we made a happy-to-be-over photo…
The orphans showed up around 2 o’clock when we were almost finished and they were so excited to see the work going on…
The finished product while it was still wet
Here we are eating lunch prepared by the ladies of the orphanage…
The finished product a few days after it dried…we let it dry for 24 days…
That is all for now but I will continue to update everyone as we continue to build...
Thank you all for your prayers and financial support as without either of these things we would not be able to do these types of ministries here in Teopisca...
With love from the three of us,
Lance, Sarita and Joshua
