Hurricane Carolyn

From Wednesday to Wednesday, July 14-21, a combined group from 2 churches in MI was here. Half of them, from St. Paul Lutheran Church in Caro, stayed at the dorms in Anapra and built two houses there; they are the church that built the new sanctuary for those of you that remember pulling the vans right up underneath the carport and worshipping in that cramped room off to the side. The other half of the group, from Holy Cross Lutheran Church in Flushing, stayed and worked stateside at two sites in Horizon City. Half of them--lots of halving going on here--worked with Chris on a full build for the Garcia family. Check out Chris's blog entitled "Better than raking leaves" for pictures and stories about them; Luz, David, Rafael, Elizabeth, Dora, and Nadia are quickly working their way into all of our hearts. The other half worked with me to finish up the kitchen/BR addition at the "Wildfire house," home of the Olivas family. Oh, I suppose I need to explain the title a little. We had a hurricane on the Friday they were here (not really...maybe the aftermath of one in the Gulf...but we did have rain pouring down in sheets, hail, and high winds), and since the name of Holy Cross's DCE was Carolyn, we decided to name it after her. It was way worse at Chris's site than mine where we just had some light rain--they were hustling to finish their roof in time, which they did but had to redo a large portion of it since the tar didn't have time to dry all the way--but I got to experience the worst of it b/c the Maryland group stopped by for a tour so I was navigating them all around Sparks and Horizon. When we arrived at Chris's site, we pulled over for a little bit to wait until the visibility improved. On their way back to my site to drop me off, one of the main roads had several inches of water on it!

My family was around for their first two days on the jobsite. Dad and Kara went with Chris, and mom came with me. I'll say it again--it's nice having family around to take pictures of me actually working!

Mom even got to experience the Wildfire, one-handed of course :)

I was pretty proud of myself for the amount of sheet rock that I screwed in without Chris's fancy drywall screwgun, even some on the ceiling. Steve (youth intern who happened to be really tall) was way better at getting all the high spots though.

Ashley painting the trim boards...

...and the boys sitting in the shade???

Robbie had a fight with this ladder. The ladder won.

Wanna see my guns?

This wasn't even the day of Hurricane Carolyn!

About half of our sheetrock was purple, aka mold and moisture resistant and HEAVIER!

Awwww sisters mudding together.

Matt was the true construction leader of our site, since I have learned quite a bit but am not quite up to leading entire jobsites yet. Carolyn introduced him to me as a "master electrician," but he was pretty much a master of it all. He thought it was pretty impressive that I knew what a drywall nailer was and always had whatever tool he was looking for either in my belt or my box. He's also a photographer so of course he got quite a few good shots of the trip, which I may share a few of on here once he sends me them all on CD.

Matt and Mayra's baby girl, Camila.

Ruben.

Sebastian.

Camila again...

Having a baby around the construction site wasn't distracting at all...

That interior "doorway" came about during Holy Cross's week. There was an exterior window in the living room there, but we moved the window to what is now the exterior wall of the kitchen, cut out the remaining sheetrock and siding, and rearranged the wiring to create an opening connecting the 2 structures.