A Mud Pit on a Bolder

Wowza! Talk about a LONG day! Today we had three groups: a hospital and special needs group, a classroom build site, and a house build group. The classroom build was basically is a doublewide TORCH house from my understandings.

I once again was on the house build site, no surprise right!  We were again up in the La Tigre rainforest, however the site to build today was not quite as easy of an area for the house build. It also did not help that it rained for most of the day and the area we were build was both a mud hole and a bolder.

 Maybe a fourth of the wood we had to move

When we arrived at the site we had to first organize all of the wood because it was in a large pile in the middle of where the house was going to be put.  Arranging the wood took about 30-45 minutes and then we were able to get the postholes set. 

The hole of death.

 Both of my nieces working on that difficult hole.

If any of you read my blog last year you probably know that I am known for choosing the worst hole to dig out; today was no exception. We had to set the post in the middle of a bolder. This bolder went the entire way down into the ground. But that is not all…..after getting about half way through Tricky re-measured and discovered that we were a few inches too far back, so we started over.

Beginning to put up walls

And still digging the hole.

After another short while we put the post into our new hole. Again the hole was off and we had to dig…..break through a third time. However after much work and a lot of patience we were able to set the pole.

 Finally setting the post!

Once the post was in the wall went up quickly.

After that the house went up relatively easily. The most difficult part was simply all the mud that got caked onto our shoes.

As you can see the walls got a little muddy.

Hannah decided to clean off the walls. 

The house was build for a young couple named Sandy and Jose. Jose helped us with the build most of the day. Sandy watched and helped with a few things. It is always nice to have more help! There was one point I am not sure how I would have gotten a board nailed in without Sandy’s help!

A trust exercise. 

Don't worry mom Noah is keeping me safe.

The house was finished around 4:00 thanks to the hard work of the team. We were then able to get back to Villa Gracia and shower. Thank goodness for the shower almost all of us were covered from head to toe with mud.

David finishing the roof. I have known him since he was a kid and now he is here working with us!

First house build with the three of us! :)

Finished product

So like I said it was a long day….but my friends it was far from over. About 10 minutes after my shower we sat down for a nice game of spades while we waited for the teams to arrive and for dinner to be ready, but then along game a new activity for the evening because two containers were released.

We all got loaded back onto the bus and began the trip down the mountain to the warehouse. Shortly after 6:00 the two containers arrived. From there it took till 7:30 to get their first container unloaded. We then moved onto the second container and finished around 8:50, loaded the buses and drove back up the mountain to have dinner. 

For those of you parents of the K-town and Latrobe girls let me tell you that for their first day in Honduras each one of them did an AMAZING job! I did not hear a single complaint out of any of them and it was a very long and tiring day.  

The plan for today is to build two houses in Mololoa, visit the dump, have a food distribution, and a small group to go back and finish the classroom. Any guesses on where I will go?