Our Journey In Paraguay....Monday, Day 4
My roommate was Bruce, but I call him McGyver after the TV show from several years ago. McGyver and I have been on several mission trips together. It seems that whenever we have a situation, or need something special, McGyver opens his backpack and pulls out just the thing we need, or he improvises something to work thru the problem….hence his nickname after the star of the show….anyway we got out of bed at 5 am.
This allowed us a little quiet time along with a hot shower before we woke up the rest of the team at 6 am. The guys were dragging a bit this morning, but after a few cups of that great South American coffee and a wonderful breakfast, everyone was raring to go.
This morning we were going to start work on the future home of the Agricenter Director. I don’t think any of us had any brick laying experience. The corners of the building were set and about two rows of brick had been laid by the time we arrived at the site (8 am).
Christian told us that we would only be working on the interior walls of the house which would later be covered by stucco and no one would be able to see our inexperienced workmanship. The Paraguayan craftsman would do the exterior walls.
A couple of the guys really surprised us with their brick laying ability and were actually allowed to work on the exterior walls. Jimmy Newmon assumed command of the cement mixer and was assisted by Jimmy Deas in preparing the mortar for the bricks. Dennis Covington, McGyver, Ed Baker and I were assigned sand detail. This meant we had to go down the road about one kilometer in a horse drawn wagon, load the wagon with sand from the road one shovel at a time, then bring it back to the building site and off load it so it could be mixed with the cement to make the mortar. I think we did about 6 loads before lunch.
There was a little kidding going back and forth about who had the easy jobs…we broke for lunch at 11:30. The food was great: Empanada’s, Pasta, Sweet and Sour Veggies and a wonderful cake for dessert. During lunch we discovered that Christian was going to go meet with the owner of the 5 acres of land behind the school, which they wanted to purchase for further expansion. Money had been donated specifically for this purpose. We also learned that there was a problem in getting clear title on the 24 acres that was the Agricenter land. It seems that the previous owner, which had homesteaded the land, owed a back payment of about $900 on the property. Once this was paid clear title would be granted.
After lunch we went back to work on the Directors’ house. Melody and Tracy went to the school to take pictures of all the children and to begin preparation for VBS. The rest of the team broke from work about 3 pm, cleaned up as best we could and headed down the road to the church for VBS.
Christian’s wife, Angelica, and her daughter have clown costumes and start each VBS with interactive songs to get the children participating. Then the team acts out a really good show depicting the specific Bible story for the day. This is a lot of fun and the kids loved it! David, a local attorney from Asuncion, served as our interpreter to relay the story in the children’s native language, Guarani. I got to play the part of an alligator and had to crawl all the way thru the church chasing the kids. There were about 180 children there for VBS. After we finished the story we helped the kids do a craft that related to the story. We made inch worms out of fruit loops on a wire. The kids had a great time making their worms and eating the fruit loops, which they had never had before and all went home on a sugar high.
We got back to our camp about 5:30, got cleaned up and sat down to a great dinner at 6:15. After dinner we went over the skit for tomorrow’s VBS program. I got selected to play GOD. I am sure it is not because of my character, but because of my age and my white hair. We then discussed and reflected on all of the day’s events. It was time to wind down from the day. Melody was starting to print the individual portrait photos of the school children (156 in all). Tracy was cutting up construction paper for the next day’s VBS program. Christian was in the kitchen giving his 1 year old daughter a bath. McGyver, Dennis, Steve and Jimmy were playing a hot game of Hearts.
At 10 pm it was lights off for an early start tomorrow.
Mike Vanderhoff
