Driving in the Spikes

Thursday is officially in the books for this year. I can't believe how fast this trip is going.I really wish I could take a rewind button and go back to the first day because I am not ready to be half way done with the trip. We broke up into our building, VBS, and medical teams again today. I am so proud of this group because building can get extremely tiring when you do it day after day but everyone is being so good about getting things done. 24 houses in a span of 8 days was never going to be an easy thing but so far we have been able to stay on track.

Our house build today were again out by the dump. I was on Scotts team again today, it was a dedication house in memorial of Mark and Mary's parents. Our build site today was much simpler then the last one. We were not near as cramped, it was not raining (Praise the Lord), and we did not have to walk our wood nearly as far.

The view from the top of the area we have been working. 

When we started digging our post holes we read into one little problem...one of the holes had a bolder that took up pretty much the entire area of the ground near the hole. Manuel, Scott, Mark, and Jonathan worked tirelessly trying to get the hole deep enough to set the post but there was no way we were getting that hole to be 18-20 inches deep. We were able to get maybe about 6 inches and decided that was going to have to be enough.....at least we were being biblical and building the house upon the rock right?

 Build site

Manuel trying to get that boulder out.

Finally up!

Due to the one post not being very deep we had to set all of the posts a different way then normal. We got all of our posts in the holes and measured out 16 feet on the siding boards and nailed them in. This allowed up to keep our 16 feet without moving the posts too much. Then we filled in the posts one at a time....the last one being the pole that was not very deep.

All square!

After we got our posts set we began working on the floor supports. I was very excited today because in the 14 years that I have been coming I have always wanted to be able to drive the 9 inch spikes in on the floor supports and this year I DID IT! And not only that but I drove in about 5 in a row!

Spikes

I did that! 😁

Me and Cassidy 

Once the floor supports were in 3 of the walls seemed to go up with the snap of the fingers. I don't know if I have ever seen 3 walls go up that quickly! However Welcome to Honduras we forgot to flush the one side of the floor supports and that brought us to a screeching stop. We had to get those boards flush before we could continue...and that was not an easy thing to do because the wall was already up and there was not a lot of room

I made a friend.

While some of the more experienced carpenters worked to get those boards ready for us to lay the last floor board I was able to play with a few of the kids. They were having so much fun trying to trick all us gringos to put our arms up in the air so they could tickle us. We also played a few different hand clapping games and took some pictures.

Angie, myself, and Axel...I couldn't understand the name of the little girl on the right.

 The lady in the white is who we were building for. She had 3 kids.

Breaking while they fixed up the floor.

Once we got the floor all squared away, the fourth wall went up in a flash and were cut out the door and the window. Now for the where did you see Jesus moment of our day. It was BEAUTIFUL all day yesterday. As soon as the majority of our team made it inside the house it started POURING! We did our dedication and prayer, went to leave, and wouldn't you know that it stopped raining right when we finished our dedication to the family. Sometimes God is so amazing.

Getting the last wall up.

Window edging.

When we finished everything we decided to take a group pictures. During the group picture I was beside Cara, the lady we were building the house for. After the pictures she grabbed my shoulder and said thank you. I told her your welcome and that I hoped that God blessed her family. Then she began talking in Spanish and although I couldn't understand everything she was saying I did get that she was talking about how we had the same Awesome God and his blessings are all around us.

The house. :) 

We had to walk back up the hill again when we finished the house. However we did find a little bit of a shortcut...although it was a steeeeeeeeep shortcut, haha.

At devo Andrew talked about being the example in someones life. He focused in on the fact that you never know if you are the only Jesus that someone sees in their life. As Christians we have to be constantly showing Christ to every person that we meet because its possible that we are the last Jesus that they will see. We don't want to miss our opportunity to give that person the gift that was given to each of us when Christ died and rose again. Andrew then said something that really got me...he said "How will you feel when we are standing at the gate and someone that you had a chance to help was on the opposite side looking straight at you and asking why didn't you do more to help me. Andrew has been really good about asking questions that really challenge us this week. Questions that many people including myself sometimes want to brush off and not think about.

Today we are going to be doing a few things other then the normal crews that we have been on. We have a hospital crew and a food distribution team. I am fairly certain that I will be building again....I think that many people are ready for a slight change in their daily activity, especially since we have so many rookies who have never gotten to goto the hospital or on a food distribution.