Day 2

Day Two

It was our first day of hard labor and we, well, honestly, ROCKED! It all began in true African fashion with all the greetings. This is an important part of the culture. People don’t just work side by side. You have to know the people. We Christians can learn a lot from this. Those aren’t just people in the pews, they are our people – people with whom we have an intimate connection.

Then it began. A small portion of land behind the crèche (preschool in our lingo) was untouched when we got there but we immediately got down to the business of building a chicken run (coop with a fenced in yard). We are working on this project because the women’s league of the congregation want to make this either a self-sustaining egg business, which will give money to the ministry, or it will be an outreach, bringing in people from the village as a means to evangelize them. Measuring out lines, setting corners, and setting to digging a trench was the first work. Next, we set a number of the fence poles that define the whole construction project. Here was the first rocking of the day. We had to chisel through rocks to have holes deep enough to set the poles. Some cement was mixed and the poles were set in place. That was our whole morning, interrupted only by “tea time,” a delightfully civilized break with hot tea and biscuits (cookies).

Our afternoon was dedicated to finishing all the poles and, just when we thought we could wind down, we got our introduction to making concrete, Zulu style. That means finding a flat piece of ground and piling up bags of sand, a 50 kg bag of cement, and several bags of stone. After mixing that well, the hard work really begins. Adding water a little at a time, you have to shovel the whole mess into a thick and heavy concrete so that we could pour the footers of the chicken coop itself. The other rocking of the day is that we are ahead of schedule! It was an exhausting day but it was a satisfying day. Tonight we are headed out for an Italian meal at a local restaurant.

Pictures to follow

Pray for us to be relieved of any muscle pain!  Also, pray for continue safety and good weather for us. Most of all, pray for the people to whom we minister so that they might be blessed by us and know Christ as Lord!!