Saturday, Jan 16

Our team is encountering one of the biggest challenges we have faced yet. We have set out to build 3 small houses for the parents of certain children at HOGF. Our original intent was to create 20 or so make-shift, portable shelters for the families on the street, but God had something bigger in mind. These 3 homes are being built in a very lowly rural area. Each will consist of one main room, and an adjacnt shower area. They will have electricity and we have the money to buy a few rugs and a bed for each home. It may seem like an insignificant project - what's three houses compared with 20? But these buidings are sound and permanent. For the mothers who will inhabit them, who have spent years and years sleeping on the street, it is a dream-come-true. It took us 4 days to finish the first house. There was a huge learning curve however, and we think the next two will go much, much faster.
The small commiunity was excited and honored when we showed up. They made us a meal and brought us chai several times. They were continually taking the work right out of our hands, so hospitable and eager to help that we got frustrated from time to time because no one would let us work on our own project. We showed up one morning and the lumber for the frame had been already set in the ground and nailed together. It would have been awesome, but there wasn't a straight line to be found from one corner of the frame to another. The walls would have zig-zagged if we had left it as it was. We had to spend half of the day digging up the poles and re-setting them. We had to remind ourselves over and over that people are more important than projects and everytime they insisted that we take yet another break and let them work, we had to focus on loving the person in front of us and determine anew that the whole process was a gift to God, not just the end result.
After a day or two the novelty of our presence faded and work progressed much faster. One of the most necessary tasks has turned out to be one of the most time-consuming and monotonous. The community has a small plot of land in the middle of several large pastures. On the corner of their plot is a large pile of dirt and rocks. Bringing the gravel from the pile to the construction site is necessary to build the floor up and to make it level. Everyone on the team has been on gravel duty for stretches of time,but Brenda and Christi have had the 'pleasure' of carrying rocks for about 4 days now. We certainly didn't expect that our work here would progress one small pile of dirt at a time.