mission trip construction project

There is a lot to this story and I only know a little bit. I wish I could remember all of the different parts that I’ve heard. I guess it starts with a little girl. She had to do dialysis three times a week. That is the reason the she was living at Pan American Health Services (PAHS). Well, this last Fall or Winter, her family’s house was destroyed by a storm. It was an adobe house of some sort, mostly sticks and mud. There was a lot of horizontal rain which softened up the walls and then a heavy wind knocked them down. They moved down to PAHS to be with their daughter who also developed a problem with the shunt. She basically was done fighting and I’ve also heard that the government doctor refused to treat her, but at any rate, she died just a couple weeks before we went down. The family then moved in with family or neighbors in their village.

The first Sabbath down there, we went for a hike through the rain forest land owned by PAHS. The trail starts in the village that the girl comes from, so we went and checked out the house before the hike. Basically, there were the four corner posts and three other support posts holding up a tin roof. PAHS didn’t have a major project planned for us; so, we decided to build the house back up. Pastor Steve had been to Pakistan and learned a new way of building a small structure. He shared that with Gary, our resident engineer, and promptly left us. (To be totally fair, it was always planned that he was only there for four or five days.)

Sunday, we pretty much finished up the painting project on the PAHS campus and Monday, I was part of the crew that went up. That was one of those times I was glad I was the #2 cameraman on the trip (Tom was #1). It was only a partial crew because the rest were supposed to stay behind and finish the painting, but wasps made it impossible to finish. At any rate, the first day was spent digging a trench, pouring cement into the trench for the wall foundation, and stretching seventeen wires around the whole structure. And, that’s how we left it for a couple days. It kinda looked funny.

Tuesday/Wednesday were mostly touristy days and Wednesday evening four of us picked up three metric tons of sand in town and shoveled it off at the site. Oh, something I forgot to mention. This town is quite a bit higher up in the mountains and probably only reachable with four wheel drive. We carried everything up there on a flatbed trailer behind a good sized truck and when there was more than four people, most of us rode on the trailer as well. Definitely not something you could get away with in the states. I’m not to sure of the trip time, because I didn’t have a watch or cellphone while down there, but I think it was about 45 min drive. With the sand on Wednesday, if I remember correctly, it took one and a half hours. It was quite the heavy load. Although, Thursday’s load wasn’t light.

Thursday, we loaded up 25 100lb bags of cement, a cement mixer, and 20 people. On this day, I actually arrived late because of a little adventure, but that’s another story. During that time, they had back filled the trenches and stretched the wires vertically, so they were taut. Next, was tar paper and chicken wire around the whole structure. They also erected the window and door that I had helped Gary make on Monday. Next was putting cement mud against the side walls. This took the rest of the day and most of Friday.

Friday was spent finishing up the mud and also adding plywood. When we realized that we wouldn’t be able to finish mudding all the way up the wall, due to time constraints, and it was decided that plywood would be used on the upper half. Also, Tim did some electrical work so they would have two lights and a plug. That pretty much sums it up and I’ve got a slide show uploaded now. Just click the picture below.

cheers!