Day Five: We plan, God laughs

Day Five: We plan, God laughs
Today was another typical morning with breakfast, devotions by Sue (today was about Noah, his willingness to follow God’s instructions even in the midst of ridicule by his peers), quiet time, and a bus ride to our worksite. But today was different in that we were able to begin some of the projects that we had come to do. But before I get into what we worked on, I would like to try to give you a better picture of what we have been seeing as we have been here the past few days. But we were missing two of our members, as Mark Gabriel and his daughter Emily traveled to visit their sponsored child through World Vision located three hours south of Quito.
Lote Tres (Lot Three) is a smaller community that is located in the Andes Mountains. Paz de Dios (Peace of God), the church at which we are working, was started by Jaime Lomas in 1985. Because the church has grown in size, the people have outgrown their current building, which is very small, has a dirt floor, and has one light that hangs from the electrical cord. The new building will be used for church services, Sunday school, and a community center. The building also will house a small kitchen.
We are working at an altitude of about 12,000 feet above sea level. The air is very thin and it has been a challenge to even walk up a hill. It feels like we have asthma. Often it can take us a minute or two to catch our breath when just standing. But our surroundings are green and full of life, which is demonstrated by the people that we see walking and working in the fields of the crops they are growing.
The roads that we travel to get to our worksite are rough. Sometimes they are paved with rocks, and other times they are just dirt. So we travel very slowly up the mountainside. Some of the turns we take while we travel up the mountain are very sharp and steep—and because we are traveling up the mountainside, sometimes we are right next to the edge, which can drop as much as several feet, although most of the road has land on both sides of it.
The logs that we have been carrying to the church have been fresh-cut trees. The trees are located in small forests, and the forests are about one to two miles from the worksite. The trees can be as long as 12 feet with a diameter of four to six inches. Because they are freshly cut, they still hold their water and can weigh as much as 75 pounds. While it takes two of us to carry some of these logs, many of the local women have been carrying one by themselves. Several trees will be needed to hold up the roof while it is being constructed.
When we first arrived in Ecuador, we planned on putting up the roof. But the building was not quite ready for a roof. Another layer of block is needed, and they have run short of supplies. But yesterday afternoon, a truckload of supplies came up to the worksite bearing gifts including rebar, concrete, and wire mesh. So today we spent the day cutting the rebar, bending the rebar, and carrying blocks from one area of the worksite to another. Another project that we planned to work on was building benches that also can be used as tables (the back of the bench flips up to create what looks like half a picnic table). Mark Gillis and Chris purchased the lumber yesterday and we picked up the lumber today (we brought the lumber to the worksite on the bus. It was stacked in the aisle of the bus). So Mark and Joann spent most of the day building a “prototype” and now are ready to cut all the lumber and assemble ten benches for the church.
Jerry, Steve, Jim, and several others took turns cutting the rebar with a grinder. Quite a few of us also worked on bending the rebar into rectangles, over 200 of them. Justin and Dana worked on wire tying the rectangles onto longer pieces of rebar. They created wire reinforcements ten meters long for the beams at the top of the block walls. These reinforcements will be used to stabilize the long walls and span above the windows. The roof supports will sit on these concrete beams. The ten-meter rebar assemblies were lifted from the ground to the top of the second story block walls by hand in a team-building exercise. Then the church members formed up and poured concrete on top of the back wall to make the first beam. They mixed the concrete by hand using the concrete mix, sand and gravel that we had carried up to the second floor the day before.
Today seemed to be the first day that the people at the church and our team really worked side by side. It was sometimes a difficult task to communicate at times, but it was exciting to try!
After working, we again loaded the bus and headed to the Lomas home for dinner. After a wonderful meal, Jaime gave his testimony. He is known as the Billy Graham of the Andes, bringing the word to the indigenous people for the first time. He is credited with founding over 12 churches and five small groups (churches of less than 25 people). I invite you to ask one of our team members about their impressions of Jaime’s story. I also understand that there is a book about his life…I’ll try to find out the name of it. We also were joined by Cadie Boyung, who is in Quito working on her internship before spring graduation at UW-RF. She will be with us until Monday. For those of you who don’t know Cadie, she is Pastor Tim’s niece and was part of our team to Ecuador in 2008.
Once we returned to the hotel, several went for ice cream. Others headed to showers…hasta manana!