4th Time's the Charm!
At least we hope so! Last week we had two groups here--one from St. Paul Lutheran Church in Chicago, IL, and St. John Lutheran Church in Edgar, WI, and another St. Paul/St. John combo, both from Vergas (Loon Lake..."vergas" is a not nice word in Spanish), MN. I worked with the latter, which also happens to be the home congregation of Kristine, whose name you may recognize as last summer's summer volunteer. They come every two years, and ironically, their group shared a week with my home church the very first time I was down here, and one other year too. I recognized the leader Sonya after I saw her, and another guy named John recognized me as having done a reading in Spanish, but I couldn't place him. I listed off some other people I remembered, and some of the leaders knew the names but none of them come anymore.
Enough reminiscing--the 2010 group spent their week on two major projects: VBS at San Pablo and Rosa Chavez's roof. They also did some painting. They had been planning on doing VBS at Sin Paredes for 200-300 children daily, but had to settle for significantly less when we asked them and the IL/WI group to remain stateside. By the way, there have been no further bombings, so as of this past Sunday we are back in Juarez! Dios es fiel! God is faithful! They served the kids lunch every day after the programming ended, and in pure northern MN style, we had elk sandwiches twice! Someone in the congregation donated ground elk meat so they brought it down in coolers and served it on buns mixed with some ground beef and turkey too...
Rosa Chavez's roof/painting occupied the afternoons and all day Friday. We have tried to fix this roof 3 other times and failed (Kristine worked with 2 of the groups), so this time we just re-built the whole thing. I kind of really want it to rain so I can see if it works, but at the same time I don't want to know if it doesn't. I have to say I am pretty proud of myself because the plan of attack was actually my idea. It's kind of hard to explain, but a couple of the pictures below illustrate it better. Let's start at the beginning though:
Their T-shirts say the theme phrase on them: En este signo conquistara! (In this sign [the sign of Jonah] you will conquer). It's a quote by somebody famous but I don't remember.
Welcome to Vacation Bible School!
Kristine and Camila. She came most days...when she was awake!
Their format was a little unusual in that they did the same skit day after day, with an ever-increasing amount of audience participation. Obviously their strategy worked because on the last day, when they showed the Veggie Tales video instead of acting out the story, even the most troublesome little boy was able to predict what would happen next.
The big fish swallowing Jonah.
OK. My evil plan began with nailing boards along each side of the trailer, a task which was made significantly easier by pre-sinking the nails.
John and Christian nailing on one of the side boards.
John 3:16.
I was taking pictures of the sidewalk chalk art and one of our AARP cleaning ladies said she wanted her picture taken too. So here she is! I am terrible because I see her all the time but I don't even know her name.
Bernadine and "Bob" (he usually goes by Mal, short by Malcolm, but he started using the nickname for his middle name, Robert, after I informed him that in Spanish "mal"="evil!") making lunch.
After the side boards were on, we used brackets to mount2 x 4 rafters, and then proceeded like a normal over-roof. We didn't just do it all normally because we didn't want to have too many people--well, any people for that matter--walking on the existing roof. With this method, only lightweights like Kristine and I walked on the trailer until we had all the rafters on to distribute the weight to the side boards, which were anchored to the lode-bearing walls of the trailer.
I measured, Chris cut. Good teamwork.
All the kids and helpers at VBS.
Closing on the last day under my favorite climbing tree that I don't climb nearly enough. Myron's back is wet because this immediately followed a water balloon fight!
Thursday afternoon was dedicated to painting since all day Friday was set aside for construction, and we decided to hold off on tar for the morning when it would be much cooler. So Thursday afternoon and Friday afternoon after finishing the roof, the group painted building #13, aka mi casa! Freddy was intrigued.
Thankfully Kristine isn't over tarring yet like I totally am, so she was in charge of that.
This crew knocked the entire roof out in about 2 1/2 hours!!!
Ashley was the only real casualty of the tar...Chris gave her a stylish new outfit for the van ride home.
The group plus Rosa right before we left on Friday.
Enough reminiscing--the 2010 group spent their week on two major projects: VBS at San Pablo and Rosa Chavez's roof. They also did some painting. They had been planning on doing VBS at Sin Paredes for 200-300 children daily, but had to settle for significantly less when we asked them and the IL/WI group to remain stateside. By the way, there have been no further bombings, so as of this past Sunday we are back in Juarez! Dios es fiel! God is faithful! They served the kids lunch every day after the programming ended, and in pure northern MN style, we had elk sandwiches twice! Someone in the congregation donated ground elk meat so they brought it down in coolers and served it on buns mixed with some ground beef and turkey too...
Rosa Chavez's roof/painting occupied the afternoons and all day Friday. We have tried to fix this roof 3 other times and failed (Kristine worked with 2 of the groups), so this time we just re-built the whole thing. I kind of really want it to rain so I can see if it works, but at the same time I don't want to know if it doesn't. I have to say I am pretty proud of myself because the plan of attack was actually my idea. It's kind of hard to explain, but a couple of the pictures below illustrate it better. Let's start at the beginning though:
Their T-shirts say the theme phrase on them: En este signo conquistara! (In this sign [the sign of Jonah] you will conquer). It's a quote by somebody famous but I don't remember.
Welcome to Vacation Bible School!
Kristine and Camila. She came most days...when she was awake!
Their format was a little unusual in that they did the same skit day after day, with an ever-increasing amount of audience participation. Obviously their strategy worked because on the last day, when they showed the Veggie Tales video instead of acting out the story, even the most troublesome little boy was able to predict what would happen next.
The big fish swallowing Jonah.
OK. My evil plan began with nailing boards along each side of the trailer, a task which was made significantly easier by pre-sinking the nails.
John and Christian nailing on one of the side boards.
John 3:16.
I was taking pictures of the sidewalk chalk art and one of our AARP cleaning ladies said she wanted her picture taken too. So here she is! I am terrible because I see her all the time but I don't even know her name.
Bernadine and "Bob" (he usually goes by Mal, short by Malcolm, but he started using the nickname for his middle name, Robert, after I informed him that in Spanish "mal"="evil!") making lunch.
After the side boards were on, we used brackets to mount2 x 4 rafters, and then proceeded like a normal over-roof. We didn't just do it all normally because we didn't want to have too many people--well, any people for that matter--walking on the existing roof. With this method, only lightweights like Kristine and I walked on the trailer until we had all the rafters on to distribute the weight to the side boards, which were anchored to the lode-bearing walls of the trailer.
I measured, Chris cut. Good teamwork.
All the kids and helpers at VBS.
Closing on the last day under my favorite climbing tree that I don't climb nearly enough. Myron's back is wet because this immediately followed a water balloon fight!
Thursday afternoon was dedicated to painting since all day Friday was set aside for construction, and we decided to hold off on tar for the morning when it would be much cooler. So Thursday afternoon and Friday afternoon after finishing the roof, the group painted building #13, aka mi casa! Freddy was intrigued.
Thankfully Kristine isn't over tarring yet like I totally am, so she was in charge of that.
This crew knocked the entire roof out in about 2 1/2 hours!!!
Ashley was the only real casualty of the tar...Chris gave her a stylish new outfit for the van ride home.
The group plus Rosa right before we left on Friday.This week I have been busy with Language Plus (more on that later) and getting ready for the last group of the summer, from Canada. They have a fairly large group, so they're going to do 3 projects--a warehouse at Santisima Trinidad, a house in Sparks (It's actually the neighbor of where the IL/WI team worked...she lives in this tiny metal camper and ever since we visited IL/WI's project site for the first time, I had wanted to knock on her door and ask if we could build her a house. My "in" came when they talked to her and brought her some groceries, and now it's happening next week! Needless to say, she cried.), and some ceramic tile (if we get a good enough deal at Lowe's) in the trailer of a San Pablo member. We were going to use a bunch of ceramic tile that was donated and has been sitting in the warehouse, but I tried to lay out a nice-looking pattern with it this morning and quickly discovered that there weren't enough of one color or size to do so, and not enough period to do all of what the lady wants done.
Hasta la proxima vez, bendiciones! (my brain has been in Spanish mode all week!)
P.S. I just made homemade tortillas again without Blanca's assistance, and they turned out great!
Hasta la proxima vez, bendiciones! (my brain has been in Spanish mode all week!)
P.S. I just made homemade tortillas again without Blanca's assistance, and they turned out great!
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