Day 5 Edition of Our Journey In Paraguay:
McGyver and I started the day at 5:45AM. It seemed that almost everyone slept a little later today. About one half hour before breakfast, four or five of us gathered in the dining hall for our morning coffee and some quiet time to work on our journal and reflect on the previous day and what lay ahead for today. Breakfast was served at 6:30AM and was great as usual.
After breakfast Jimmy Newmon shared his testimony with us, and it was a wonderful and moving story. We each continue to share more and more about our personal lives and are really coming together as a strong, closely knit Team.
The ride to the Agricenter was quiet as we all focused on our tasks for the day. Once at the site, we were introduced to a revolutionary new Paraguayan tool…The Wacker Packer… The Wacker Packer is a section of log (tree) about 12” in diameter and about 2’ long. It has two narrower tree limbs, one attached to each side extending straight up as handles. The purpose of the tool is to compress the fill dirt we have been, and will continue to, load into the base of the house we are building. After each layer of dirt is filled in, we simply lift up the Wacker Packer and drop it on the dirt to compress it. It sounds easy, but let me tell you, it wears you out.
Some of the better brick layers on the Team continued to lay brick, while others mixed the mortar. The rest of us went back to shoveling loads of fill dirt in an ox drawn cart down the road from the construction site, and then off-loading it into the foundation of the house. After each load was filled in, the Wacker Packers took over to compress the fill dirt.
We broke at noon for lunch and were treated to another wonderful meal. During lunch we learned that Christian was short $1500 to purchase all of the land he wanted for the school expansion. The Team discussed this and we decided that we would give Christian the additional $1500 he needed for the land purchase and that we would give Ed Baker the $900 he needed to get clear title for the Agricenter land. This money was only available because of the generous support of each and every one of you, and our Team members’ sponsors. After lunch we went back to work on the house until about 2:45PM.
We cleaned up as best we could and hiked down the road to the church for VBS. Today was the story of Creation. I had the role of playing GOD again today (not because of my character, but because of my white hair and age). I was also informed that this would be my role for the balance of the week so as not to confuse the kids. Our craft with the kids today was decorating picture frames for each of the childrens’ individual photos that Melody was taking and printing. They would be getting those later in the week. They decorated the frames by gluing small squares of colorful paper to the outer border of a 5” x 7” piece of cardboard.
When we got back to camp for the evening, we were given chicken and dumplings for dinner…not quite the same as we get here in the South, but it was good. After dinner we prepared for the next day’s VBS program, the story of Jonah. We each practiced our roles in the skit and made sure we knew how to put together the next day’s craft.
As the night wound down a few of us had a great game of Hearts, while Melody was busy printing pictures of the school children. I had a little time before bed to reflect on my devotional that I was to give in the morning. My topic was: “Why do I go on Mission Trips and what are the results that I can see from them”…a surprising answer.
Lights were out at 10 pm…stay tuned for our next day’s adventure.
Labels: journey, paraguay
