La Romana - part four...Wednesday

Today we started by doing a bucket brigade to get more rocks and sand up to the top floor. 

Hi Mallory!

John shoveled rocks and sand in to the buckets. Duke lifted them up to Paul thru the window. 

At the top of the stairs after they were emptied Hannah and Kelsey tossed them down and I picked them up and placed them to be filled again. 

At one of the breaks the kids played with hula hoops and jump ropes we had brought them. 

Finally it was lunch time. The ladies from the church prepare the meals each day. They have made such nice lunches for us       

Here Kelsey is going thru the line. 

Keith had some fun tying Michael to the gate with a jump rope. 

Everyone takes a break to eat. 

Paul got in a short nap. 

Lonnie found an empty classroom to nap in. The school kids leave at noon each day. 

Back to work and time to pour concrete again. 

 It was hot today. 

 Charlie our fearless leader. 

Quitting time. This is our bus to and from the church each day. It's nice and cool after a hot day at work. 

Back to the hotel for a cool off in the pool. 

The brothers checking their phones. 

This is a little peek at our room. 

Good night from Mallory and Michael!

La Romana - part three...Tuesday

Today we worked hard in the sun mixing concrete and doing a bucket brigade to pass the concrete up the scaffolding. Talk about a primitive way of accomplishing this task. 

There's no big concrete truck rolling in to dump mixed concrete into the forms. A big pile of sand, rock, cement and water is mixed by hand using shovels. 

Then the buckets were filled and passed to Mike who handed them up to John or Charlie who then passed them up to Andrew who then handed them to this guy who was standing fully upright on top of this super high wall. He'd pour the concrete into the form and toss the buckets down. Part of the time I retrieved the buckets and passed them back to be placed for filling. We all did various jobs but I could barely stand to look up at that nice guy on the top. I'm told they call him Papa John and he is from Haiti. 

That's our team leader Charlie DeLuca in the green shirt. He's from Louisiana. His brother, Andrew is the one just above him on the scaffolding. 

This was tough work and tomorrow we'll be at it again. We have to go all the way around the top of the building. The roof is then attached to these headers. The part were doing on the ground is nothing compared to what those guys up top are doing. Those buckets are so heavy and each one has to be lifted overhead. I just pray everyone is safe. Trusting the Lord will keep them and us all in His care. 

La Romana - part two...Monday

Monday we got up, ate a nice breakfast at the hotel and headed for the work site at 830.

 

We had fun peeking in the windows of the classrooms. The children in the school are 4 years to 2nd grade. It was nice to see the sweet faces of school children smiling and happy. 

Here we're having a team meeting before getting started. This is the same area we had the worship service on Sunday. The area we are working on upstairs is the future sanctuary. 

The first thing we did was clean up the site. Us girls and the kids picked up nails and swept the floor. 

Our kids gave out chips for the kids' mid morning snack. 

Later we played ring around the rosy with one of the classes. 

After that we did a chain line up the stairs to haul rocks, cinder blocks and sand up to the top floor. That was really lots of fun. The comraderie was good and we laughed a lot while working. Here are Kathy and her granddaughter Kelsey on the stairs. 

As we were leaving I snapped a pic of this worker on the makeshift scaffolding. We sure take things like decent scaffolding for granted in the States. 

This was dinner last night. There's a nice buffet provided for dinner at 7 each night. Always on the buffet...rice and beans. 

 The food is good. We don't know what some of the food is but you can always find something to eat. That's a wrap on our first work day.