House Construction

Ate Fe in the partially finished house.

The hole for the septic tank.

Digging out the driveway in the rain.

It has a roof!

Josh standing in the muddy driveway in his new mud boots.

Pouring the concrete floor in the kitchen of Ate Fe's house.

Ate Fe requested that this be written on her front door.

"This House Will Magnify the Lord Forever!"

Looking strait through the kitchen into the CR (bathroom).

The luxury of a bathtub!

Construction mess in the kitchen.

Concrete counter tops!

Unfortunately Josh has been so, so busy with the construction. Too busy to do a detailed post about the construction. He says he will do one soon. I always feel bad when I do a post about construction because I can't give a good detailed account. I suppose it is better for Josh to be focusing on the construction and not the blog, though!

Clara and I have been sick for four days now. It has been a while since I have been this sick. I had a day of temperatures above 102 F. Wow is that miserable. It gave me more compassion for Clara, though. She was hovering around 103 F for quite a while. I think that we are both heading out of it at this point. Dan is just starting! I am hoping that I feel a lot better soon so that I can care for him. It has been particularly hard on Josh as he works hard all day and then comes home and cares for the children. He has been amazing.

Thank you all for your continued prayer support! The contractor Philip Secat is leaving soon, so Josh will be working with a few local men to wrap things up. A small work team of three are coming from Australia tomorrow. We are very excited to meet them and work with them. I hope we don't give them our sickness!

Remodel of Fe's Place begins

"Who am I, Lord God, and what is my house that You have brought me this far?" 2 Samuel 7:18

This is the verse that was impressed upon Fe's heart as we begin work on a house for her to live in.

Fe Canalas is the administrator here at the orphanage and makes everything run smoothly here. She is a social worker and works tirelessly to get all the paperwork completed for the kids. At times she is even doing work for the government officials so that the paperwork can keep moving. The officials, for whatever reason, will not get things done in a timely manner. So she is forced to do their work and then go to their office and get their signatures! Fe is always hard at work!

Since 2003 Fe has lived in house two in the orphanage. While it is a short commute to work for her, she has no privacy. It just so happens that there is an old house on the new property that could use a remodel. Well maybe more than a remodel! The board of directors decided to fix it up so that Fe could live there.

In no time at all the funds were raised and on Monday the work began. We are all hoping that in a few weeks Fe will have a place to herself. It will also be great to have someone staying across the road on the new property. Just to have a presence there will further discourage anyone from entering the property. The wall is great and will do it's job, but if someone is really determined they could probably figure out a way to get over it.

You might be wondering what is happening with the security wall. Well, it is 95% complete with only a few loose ends to tie up. There are a few grates to be put back up after the plastering of the columns is finished and a few caps to be put on top of columns. After that there will be a lot of clean up! We will post some pictures of that soon. However, since the remodel project started on Monday I wanted to let every body know about that.

Here are some pictures of the house before demolition began. Note the large cracks in the beams. It was because of these cracks that so much demolition was necessary.

Here are some pictures after one day of demolition.

First Day of School

Today is the first day of school for the Rehoboth Early Learning Center. It is a preschool for the kids in the orphanage and also a few children from the community. It is mainly for 3 to 5 year-olds, but some of the older children that are a bit behind attend also. Dan and Clara have missed going to school ever since the school year ended on March 31st. So today is the big day to go back to school!



Everyone was very excited- especially Paul. I feel kind of bad for him since he won't be 3 until October. Poor guy was so excited to get his uniform on this morning! So I had to take his picture along with the other two. Right now he is eating a snack and watching his favorite cartoon. So I don't feel too bad for him.



Clara was excited to go but would not give me a big smile when it was time to record the event.

They have a different colored shirt for each day of the week. It is amazing how well that helps them remember the days of the week and the order of the days. So orange is for Monday.

There was no way to get this crew to give nice smiles all at the same time so I settled for silly.



It was only after our little photo shoot that I realized that all the other kids were not wearing their uniforms today. I think that it was because it was orientation day. So we rushed inside and changed shirts. It seems like I am always a little behind everyone else with stuff like that.

Here is the line to go into class. The teacher puts them in order of height.


The next three pictures are from a painting activity in the breezeway next to the preschool. This was a couple of weeks ago. All of the kids had so much fun. Some of the paint made it onto the paper at first but it was not to long before it was all over the kids and the walls!

The package said one size fits all but I think that it should have said one size fits most! Josh's feet are a little larger than average here. The socks that we brought for him have been worn out for a while so I have tried to replace them with not much luck. Amazingly these did not slip under his heel in his work boots. However, Josh decided that his sandals are much superior in comfort to the boots. So I think it has been more than a month since he has worn them.

Josh decided to climb up the water tower here to see the view of the fence across the street. The water tower is at the east end of the existing orphanage and the construction is to the west. Above is a picture he took looking strait down. I think that this one is mostly to show off his sandal tan.


This shot is actually looking east over the orphanage wall. This is a swampy area where so many LOUD frogs and toads live. The guest house were we are staying is right up against the east wall and very close to this swamp. Some times after it rains the chorus from the swamp is so loud that it is hard to have a conversation.
In this one you can see the playground in the foreground and then house two. Over the roof of house two you can see the tarps covering some columns of the new wall. The columns were being plastered that day and the tarps were to protect from the rain and also to make it possible to work despite the rain.

The roof in the foreground of this picture is the administration office/ preschool/ birthing clinic. The house to the left is house two and the house to the right is house one. House one and house two have about twelve kids apiece right now. House one has more of the babies and toddler and house two more older children. You can also see one of the care givers stepping through the pedestrian gate in the large gate. Strait across from the large green gate is the driveway in to the new property and the security wall under construction. Josh is hoping to get another picture from the water tower when the wall is completed.
Engineer Josh in the grassy area of the property. The grass was all burned down in early April and now it is about four feet tall in some places. I have a hard time walking through it when I can not see my feet! I am not a big fan of snakes.

This is where the large gate for the driveway connects into the column that supports it. I have to say that I don't even have the vocabulary to describe it but I thought that it looked pretty cool.

The gate is in! It looks great and works well. We were so excited to see it up and functioning!

Here is a picture of all the construction craziness by the driveway. Soon the driveway will be leveled, graveled, and poured with concrete. That will be so much easier than mud!

Here Comes the Rain

The rainy season has come with a vengence! Over the last several days we have had tons of rain and wind. It has also been quite a bit cooler, although, I am sitting here in shorts and a t-shirt so I can't really call it cool. Yesterday I wore a sweat shirt for a while but ended up getting too hot while picking up the house. I almost want to wear pants and a fleece just to reminice.

Because of the rains work has slowed down some. We are praising our Awesome God though, because the rain will not cause any problems with the construction just drag it out some. Right now the men are pouring columns and installing the grills that make up the front of the wall.

Last night the heavy rain and howling wind kept Josh and me up. It was so loud! Not like a nice little Montana rainstorm more like one of those severe thunderstorms we had last summer. I still can't believe how it can rain here! God was so creative when he designed all the different climates on this planet!

Josh went to see if his drain pipe that runs the length of the retaining wall was working. It is! He was very excited to see clear water pouring out of it into the lagoon this morning. It is so fun to watch my engineer husband get so excited about stuff like that!

For some reason blogger wants this to be a vertical picture! You can see the water running out of the pipe. Josh says that the screen covering the opening is just temperary and he will put somthing more permanent on soon. It is great to know that the water will not just be pooling up against the retaining wall.

Our family is doing great. We have had no illnesses and the kids are in heaven. I am so spoiled as they play most of the morning and afternoon with their friends here. I am spending my time cleaning, cooking for Dan due to possible food allergies, and I have also had some great time to read God's word. Josh is still at the construction a lot, but he is in our house doing paper work a lot too. We have had quite a few power outages (brown outs) lately. When it is pouring and the internet is down we have had some great family time too.

A few weeks ago Josh and I celebrated our ninth anniversary by taking the family to the beach! It was a two hour drive on a very windy mountain road. Even though we gave everyone dramamine, Clara got car sick. She didn't loose her breakfast but was very uncomfortable. She cried for the last thirty minutes of the trip. It was very worth it though. We had a great day playing in the waves.