Today we started on our various projects. It takes a little while to get our
supplies and tools together the first day as well as organizing a plan of
attack. But things got rolling and we'll pick up speed as the week goes on.
Several things were going on in the Medical Center. A local tradesman was
hired to lay floor tile. Garrett Southworth, Gerard, Philippe and Ronald Jolin
got busy converting two of the containers that make up part of the center -
one, into a Men's & Women's washroom and the other into an office
area.
Greg Penny and Eric Jolin were busy figuring out how to put up the suspended
ceiling in the waiting room area. It will prove to be challenging as it's
quite a large area measuring about 45' x 30' and the ceiling will be 10 feet
high.
John Cachia and his painting team got busy in the new computer lab while
John Hamilton was busy painting the exterior walls of the school and Medical
Center with Grant Yake. John says Wilma was assigned to his team but he never
saw her all day. I told him that was because she was moving so fast!
Before things really got going our musicians were asked to take part in the
school assembly. We were caught off-guard with this and went over in our work
clothes and performed several songs for the kids including one in Spanish that
Greg had learned. With one of the teachers translating I gave a word of
encouragement to the youngsters telling them why we come down each year and
how we rely on the Lord's strength to do so much work in one week. I also
showed them a picture of me shoveling snow just before we left on the trip.
Anne Stewart and Penny-Jane Southworth were at the school today teaching
the kids some songs. Apparently Anne's voice was very hoarse by noon. But the
kids were listening - because when Anne & I went to visit a family after
work today, several of the children recognized her! So she started singing a
song and the kids were singing along and doing the hand actions too! That is
such a blessing!
Howard Rowlison & Aaron Penny were busy building tables for the new
computer lab. They rounded up some used doors which are being cut to size
and mounted on steel frames.
Graham Johnson was busy putting his mechanical skills to the test trying to
get a number of lawn-mowers operational. After scrounging parts from the
un-operable units he ended up with two that should work. The test will be
tomorrow when we have some gas to put in them.
After finishing with the mowers Graham headed over to weld the frames for
Howard & Aaron. It's always handy to have an arc-welder with us!
Dean Reynolds and myself (Bruce Pellowe) were sent over to the warehouse to
sort out 20 computers donated by Nissan and bring them to life. We were
successful with 14 of them and there's some hope for the others if we can get
past the password that protects them. We had five or six loading Windows at
the same time and got our exercise running back and forth answering several
screens of questions as the installations progressed.
As for my laptop it is still not able to put pictures with these reports -
but I've finally worked out a temporary solution. So don't forget to click
back to Sunday's page.
