Week Two

MONDAY
The materials arrived, so we helped Christian to offload them from the truck, and cleared some more space in the building site. It was Sam’s 18th birthday, so the boys took him out for swimming and an ice cream, then we threw him a surprise(ish) party at night, complete with snacks, balloons, salsa dancing and even Scottish ceilidh dancing.

TUESDAY
Work has gotten underway in the church – with some of the materials here, we worked on cleaning and painting massive beams that will contribute to the structure of the roof and walls. At night, we were invited to Clara’s (one of the ladies from church) again for a (second!) birthday celebration for Sam, including dinner, party games and dancing – once again, so thankful for the hospitality we’ve been shown.

WEDNESDAY
Got up early to go to work but we couldn’t paint the beams because of the weather – it was too rainy. Had a rest and then went back to work working on the steel beams. We went for a smoothie and empanadas with Amada, Elias and Norman, and cooked dinner at the house.

THURSDAY
Gave the beams a second coat in the morning, and worked on translating some worship songs into Spanish for this Sunday’s service. Went swimming in the river in the afternoon which was a lot of fun.

FRIDAY
We’ve been praying that work will pick up again and there’ll be more jobs to do, and our prayers were answered today – we spent the whole day at the building site and smashed six large holes into the church wall where metal plates will go in later. We went out for dinner at an Italian restaurant, which was a nice reward for our work!

SATURDAY
Another day at the building site – Mark, Raphael, Sam and Ben arrived sharp to begin work, which included drilling holes into the metal plaques for the structure, cutting the steel columns and welding them to the wall. We’re working on planning a ceilidh for next Thursday before we leave too. We went to Clara’s house at night to spend time with their family.

SUNDAY
We managed to lead the church in singing/playing two songs in Spanish, and the service was brilliant – Katy translated it for us and the message (about coming to God for help in difficult times, and how He will always bless us more than we expect) was very powerful and moving. We went swimming in the afternoon.

Prayer requests:

• that there’d be lots of work at the building site for all of us to do!
• some of us are still feeling a bit ill, so prayer for our health would be appreciated.
• that we’d feel encouraged through the work we are doing and that we’d get more of an idea of where God wants us in the future.
• that God would really use us where this community needs it most.