The end of Day 4 ...

Another update from St. Vincent... prayers are being answered... and the work has finally found it's "footings" (building related pun sadly intended)....

From Shirley:

"Yesterday, the Lumber and plywood...all 27,000 pounds of it was moved from the shipping container to the storage container....back breaking work, lots of tired men with sore backs and muscles


·         Footings were poured  (hooray!)


At the Camp, I unpacked the food boxes, and bedding boxes and started the huge job of putting everything in order and trying to find a sensible place to stash it. The problem of not much food (before Container clearance) has now become...where to store a 4 week supplies of basic staples for 44 hungry people. Fortunately the kitchen, dining, chapel area (all connected)is pretty spacious.


Nellie and Juanita went grocery shopping yesterday, and it took 4 hours... We enjoyed a delicious supper of potato wedges, tossed salad and 'mission pie'....the usual mix of instant mashed potatoes, onion, mashed corned beef and canned corn. It really was tasty!


The kitchen is very well lit, clean and bright. The frig is pretty small, and very old...not much storage space there, but there is a large, efficient chest freezer, where we store our sandwiches so they can eat safely at the work site.. (No complaints YET of sandwich popsicles. It is warm enough for them to thaw by lunch time...)
I haven't heard about how it is working but the Seniors centre next to the work site is giving us the use of their toilet facilities (hooray again!)...since the building site is a vacant lot.


We have a washing machine installed now at the Camp (one that was donated to the Salvation Army) and the wash loads of dirty work clothes have begun. It is a lot better than doing it by hand in a tiny sink. And I am glad that this is something that I can do.


This afternoon at 4:00 PM there will be the official 'Ground Breaking Ceremony'...and I think that we ladies will attend. Should be interesting as I am sure some government officials will be there, since they donated the land. The newspapers carried news about 17 Canadians coming to build the Children's Home."

Back to Laurie...

Apparently there is a hilarious video of the men trying to cut lumber with a locally purchased hand saw... that only cut backwards ?!? We will HAVE to figure out how to add it to the blog at a future date! Bandwidth limitations may sadly limit this until we are all home.

That's all for tonights update. Hope to share more news and stories soon...