Busy day

I talked to Josh tonight for a very brief time when his phone started cutting out.  I finally told him to just shoot me an email, at least I would be able to understand all of what he was talking about.  It seems like today was a very busy day for everyone, so much that I did hear him tell me on the phone that Bryan was asleep by 7:00.   He was able to send me a very good email about the day so I just posted it below. Just continue for pray for the team the much needed rest they need.

  Initially I'm so overwhelmed by the poverty and my surroundings that I forget that we're down here to actually complete a task. Well today we got to work on that task.  My day got off to a bad start when I wasn't able to go to sleep last night until about 2:30, thanks I think to late cup of strong coffee. Then we had to get up at 4:45! Not good. We got out to our job site about 6:00 and got to work......by walking our gear (a lot of it!) About a quarter mile down a muddy trail. The Haitians had built the walls of the new church AROUND the old church, so our first job was demolishing the old church and removing it so the trusses and roof could go on tomorrow. We did that while Richard, Jeremy, and Elise went and got wood.


We got the church demo'd and removed by around 9 and waited (in the 95 degree heat) until around 11 when they got back with the wood. Then the real work started. We had haul 150 2x4x16s, 10 pieces of plywood, and 99 pieces of sheet metal down the 1/4 mile trail (although we had a small pickup to help with a little of it. We then began working on the trusses. That lasted until about 3:30 when we had to pack up quickly to avoid a coming storm. We got everything packed up and our pickup took everything back to the school 6 miles (30 minutes) away.


While we waited for the truck the storm hit. As it began to rain, a Haitian lady who lived in basically a mud hut, invited us to sit on her "porch". There were 9 of us and somehow she happily got together 9 chairs. She was so proud. She offered to let us sleep there with her family if the storm didn't let up. We found out she was a member of the church we were working on. She reminded me of the widow in the Bible who gave the two coins. The Haitian family had absolutely nothing but she offered us all she had.


Anyway, by the time the rain had "let up" we had to make a break for the truck which was up the trail that was literally now a river. By the time we all got back to the truck another "monsoon" had hit. We had the 30 minute trip in the back of a pickup, in literally tropical storm force rains! We went from worrying about heat stroke and dehydration to worrying about hypothermia! We were freezing,


But we got home and the ladies had a meal prepared of beans, rice, and freshly slaughtered goat! It was awesome everybody is extremely tired.