Tuesday

Happy Anniversary, Martha!  We have now added five courses of stone, brought most all of the interior walls to their 8 ft. height of brick, built the metal for the towers, built the forms, and poured the concrete for them.  We worked late yesterday, and today the team felt it a bit.  Dave will be leaving us tomorrow and so we will be down one of our team members.

In order to do work most of the team is now working with scaffolding.  We have found that mango ice cream with bananas, mango slices, and Hershey's chocolate sauce makes a great snack.

Every day begins and ends with devotions.  Jeff brought us some nice surprises - pop-corn to pop, fruit and fiber cereal, napkins, and maple syrup.  I have taken a liking to the ginger soda called, "Stony."

Beverly reaches for me to take her out of her high chair every time I walk past.  Little Bonnie burps loudly and seems to prefer a 2nd bottle.  We hear stories about most all of the children here.  Bonnie was thrown 30 feet into a sewer when just a few days old and still suffers breathing problems from that.  Another of the boys comes into our little "hospitality" room most every evening wearing his pajamas, wanting to fall asleep in someone's arms, although we are now encouraging to embrace the teddy bear that has become important for him.

Martin, from Kids of the Kingdom orphanage that teams from Western New York built 2 years ago showed up with his son, Bill yesterday.  He was curious to see what is happening at Instep.  We did have the opportunity to see the corn grinder that was sent from Rochester in action at Kids of the Kingdom.  Most of the food we eat here has been grown and produced at the orphanage - tomatoes, cucumbers, maize, pineapple, beans, peas, bananas, oranges, lemons, lettuce, and cabbages are just a few of the things that are growing well here.

Mud, a reddish clay, covers most everything.  We scrub it out of clothes, hair, and noses most every day.  We are here during the rainy season and most every day between 2 and 4 pm it rains.  When rain came in torrents with hail (on the tin roofs) it was deafening, but the children took our work buckets and tried to collect the hail to eat - a rare treat.

Jim and Amy have been great leaders, finding a wonderful way of pulling out the best in us and helping all to work to their potential.  Brothers, Mark and Matt keep things lively and occasionally bicker over one stealing stones from the other - setting up a row of finely matched sizes and colors for the wall.

We feel blessed to be here and hope to make more progress tomorrow.  At the moment folks are eating pop-corn and a few nuts.  Akuna Matata - Swahili for "No Worries."

Bruce