Wednesday July 22, 2009
Day 7 “Blocks”

The blocks that didn’t arrive yesterday we’re here when we got to the church at nine this morning. We made quick work of them moving them from top of the hill down to the location of future showers and bathroom building. Physical work and sweating always makes you feel like you got something accomplished. With that job checked off our list we got ready to paint the interior of the boy’s lounge room. Once again we had to wait while supplies were purchased.

Probably one of the biggest adjustments our team has had to make is that things just flat out take longer in Swaziland. Flexibility is key and patience is right there with it.

While waiting for more supplies to make their way to the Hope House Church we had a little down time today. Did we just sit and twiddle our thumbs? No way! P. Brian happened upon a Flintstone like weight set that we all took turns using. It was so fun to see the ingenuity of the people here.

Once the all the materials showed up it was time for us to get down to business. We all focused on painting the boys lounge room first. We knocked that out rather quickly. During our lunch break we saw four boys trudging up the steep hill the church is located on with two of the coolest race carts I have ever seen. We gave the boys some of our extra sandwichs and told them we would wait to see them come down. After nearly 35 minutes of waiting we decided to see what was taking them so long to come down the treacherous slope. We found the boys riding down a smoother shorter hill that did not have the possibility of confining them to wheelchairs for the rest of their lives.

To finish the day we wheeled some river sand and plaster sand from its current location (you guessed it) on top of the hill to (you guessed it again) the bottom near the construction site. So we did… or should I say DJ did? There was only one wheelbarrow so P. Brian, Shawn, and I filled DJ’s wheelbarrow and cheered him on as he did the runs by himself.

Today was low key, but it was great to get some things done for Pastor Louis and the Hope House Church in Motjane. Tomorrow we will be making our first school visit, I cant wait…