Day Five, a floor, more stumps and a soccer game

The second day in the mountains, we were ready to tackle a floor, more stumps, play a soccer game, hold a prayer service and give away a bunch of stuff.

A lesson in ingenuity. We broke the pick ax handle. Using the trunk of a tree, they provided a new one for us, it took about a hour.

The creation of a floor.

How they mix concrete in the hills. It was another nice thing to learn. We were able to mix concrete using the actual concrete as its own container as we mixed, when the entire container was mixed in we has a pile of wet concrete to use, no other container required. Hard to explain in short terms, but it worked well.

Floor and ceiling complete.

One last push to get out a huge stump.

After we worked, we played. Another soccer game, and this time most of the village seemed to appear on the hill as we played. Afterward, we had a time of worship, prayer, and speakers for the people of the village. That was followed up by handing out lots of donations that were brought with us from home. I am not sure if all of us were just caught up on what we were doing, but I have not found any pictures of this part of the trip. Of all things to miss.

I was a little heavy after this day since I felt that there is so much more that I could have done if I just had a better ability to speak Spanish. I was happy to have accomplished tasks, and to be able to hand out necessary things to the people, but I also know the power of relationship, and I was not able to do much communicating with the people. It is a goal for any other trip I take to be better at the native language.

So we were preparing to hike back in the morning. I can say I was a little nervous this evening, since I had hurt my knee on the way into the hills, and each day it seemed to do well as I worked during the day, but hurt in the evening. I was not sure how I would make it back out, or if I should go without my pack. But each day I was able to get what I needed to do done before it started hurting, and I counted on that happening during the hike too.

Ryan did have to give up hiking on the way back. He has poison ivy so bad that he was having trouble breathing. I know it was a humbling and disappointing decision he had to make, but better to make it out alive.