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Wow, the last couple days have been a lot of work! In a good way, though. Yesterday, we were helping a Work and Witness team from Idaho tile a bathroom building. They had been working on the building for a couple days already, so at first, I felt a little bit superfluous -- everyone else already had their own jobs to do, and I joined them half way through the day, so I just sort of bounced around asking people if they needed help with what they were doing. But then, Steve, the Work and Witness Coordinator for the area sent me over to help Gustavo, a Costa Rican fellow who was up on a ladder, to put weather proofing stuff (I think) around the roof. I learned several new Spanish words and really got to help out, since he could give me instructions in Spanish. It was so fun!
This morning, the Work and Witness team, Liz, and I went over to a local church (the same church that we went to on our first Sunday here) and worked a lot to build them a driveway. If you remember, this church used to be a farmer's house, and he sold the property to the church. They have worked to convert the house into a church, to the extent that it is not easy to tell that it used to be a house -- at least from the front. They've done a great job! But because it is a bigger property than before, it takes everything that have to pay their bills. The Work and Witness team raised funds to pay for two cement trucks full of cement, plus the rolls of rebar to hold it together. When we got there, the men of the church had already done a lot of progress with digging. Some of us grabbed shovels and helped out by leveling the ground (and removing foliage), so that the ground would be even with the top of the forms that would be used to box in the cement.
It was pretty cool to watch these experienced people go to work. One of the guys of the church taught me how to tie the rebar together, so a few guys rolled out the rebar, Guido and I tied them together, and a few other guys put stones underneath areas where the dirt wasn't all the way up to the rebar. I honestly don't know what everybody else was doing at the time because I was just excited to have a way that I could be contributing. After they packed down the dirt (with a big power-dirt-smasher-machine) and got the rebar in place, the cement mixer came. Two or three guys on the ends of a big metal square pipe pushed the pipe along and leveled out the cement, while several of us had rakes and shovels to either remove excess cement or bring in more cement to fill in gaps. After all that, another couple guys went behind us with a float (looks like a giant dust mop -- long and flat -- without the mop strings) to smooth it out. After them, someone took a very long handled push broom and pushed it across, making lines in the concrete for traction (it's on a steep hill).
After we paved all the way up the hill, the ladies of the church made us a delicious meal of arroz con pollo (rice and chicken and various spices). Super tasty. Liz was able to find the lady that made it and Spanish her way through getting the recipe from her. Good job Liz! We loaded up the tools and took them back to the seminary, where the Work and Witness team (and us!) got to unwind a bit with some water volleyball. Overall, a very delightful and hard-working day!
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