Long, hard days

(from Zack in Serenje)
It is Friday night and there is nothing to do. We ate dinner, I gave myself a haircut and now I am long overdue for making a new post. Last week I left you with a train ride that we were anticipating on Friday. Well....we rode the train. I'll save that story for another post.

The work this week has gone well. (sometimes I have to stop and think to myself while I'm typing, "is that how we talk at home?" The English here is poor and I find myself talking like they do.) The rains didn't disturb too much of the work. We have finished filling the foundations with dirt. That was a Long process that was often interrupted by the rain. Now all of the concrete has been placed in all of the floors. This is a big benchmark to hit. This week we have also finished the roof on the shop, prepared the bathhouse roof for tiles, installed the garage door, plastered all of the interior shop walls, and countless other things. Tomorrow, Saturday, we will be working to try to catch up a bit. We hope to get the new shop set up so we can be more productive during the week.

Death seems to always hang over this place. This week two of our workers had their children die. One left home in the morning to come to work, his child was sick at home, by 8:00 he had received word that his child had died. I'm still trying to understand things here. Why don't people go to the Hospital?

We have started having short bible messages on some of the mornings before we start work. It is fun seeing the conversation that is provoked through this. We hope to make this time more purposeful.

Having the Hope Center complete is starting to be within sight. There are several of us who thought this would never come. Now that it is becoming close, there are a lot of things that have to be figured out. Staff, leadership, programs, accounting, etc. Please pray That we would make wise decisions in the months to come.