construction team

This last week we had a wonderful team from Tennessee out to El Ayudante. This was really the team that has been around since the beginning of El Ayudante - they were the ones that laid the block for the mission house and poured the cement floors etc. Also on the team was most of the board of directors - aka - our bosses :). We stayed out at the mission house and had a super long list of projects for them to work on - the main goal was to build the guard house - we had the floor poured and the walls up but that's it - they did the roof, windows, interior walls, bathroom, kitchen cabinets, and doors. Lots of work! In addition to the guard house they also put up ceiling fans in all the mission house, lights on the back porch, security bars on the windows...and the list goes on. :)

The bummer is their was a lot of sickness during the week - our best guess is that someone brought down a virus and it was passed around during the week.

Pictures of the guard house: start to finish

While we were working we also had other projects going on at the same time - we had the well finished being dug and the pump put in (and although the well wasn't done for the team like we were planning on - we didn't have any water problems all week! )

We also had septic holes dug for the staff house, the guard house, and the medical clinic! We had a backhoe on the project for 2 days doing that.

Then we also had an electrician crew putting in 3 new poles and a new transformer (for the clinic, guard house, and well pump). It was really neat to watch how they put the poles in the ground and then climbed the poles to do the hires.

We also did a bunch of community things while we were there with the team.

- we had a hot dog lunch for the community - about 150 people showed up and we gave them hotdogs, chips, and juice. We also had 2 pinatas - one for the older kids and one for the younger so they wouldn't trample each other too bad. It was a lot of fun and they hung out for most of the afternoon.

Madelyn enjoyed all the attention - this is Liliana - she is 13 and we've known her for 2 years now. She also loved talking and playing with the other kids. Madelyn is getting to be quite the social butterfly. :)

We went to a local school for the morning and these girls stood against the wall and sang to me for at least 15 minutes - song after song with actions and everything - it was so much fun! I really need to learn these songs!

One of the ladies - Donna - with one of the kids from the school.

The team also went up the mountain to share at the church up there and minister to the community. It went really great! Tristan did about half of the translating for the church service.