Wednesday, July 15th

Today was a major work day. So after a good breakfast at the hotel, we traipsed over to the school, arriving about 9:30 AM. Steve led our devotional time and we sang "This is My Desire," a request by Pastor Jose. We first sang it in English, and then our hosts took over in Spanish.

The first jobs was to transport all of the building materials that had been purchased the day before from the downstairs foyer up to the floors on which they were to be used. There is an elevator in the building, however it has been broken for a long time and, in fact, would have been too small for most of our supplies. So, as you can see in the picture below of Ron and Brittany, we carried lumber (2x3's...the standard stud size here), metal studs, pre-cut tabletops, and sheet rock up several flights of stairs, handing it up "fire-brigade" style.


While Tina, Brittany, and Leigh Anna continued to work on the paint job on the first floor, Carl met with Eduardo and Pastor Jose (below) to finalize the plans for the relocation of the buildings IT equipment. Carl and Barry are pulling Cat5 cable so that tomorrow they will be able to move and install a new 16-port router, a professional-grade wireless access point, as well as install some additional power, computer, and telephone connections. Hopefully, this will enable the school to have wireless internet access throughout the building, improve office communications, standardize the computer lab setup, plus provide computer access in the library.


Steve and Ron had the big job of building 10 tables to be used in the classrooms. Here Steve is planing and sanding each table legs that Ron had cut. Yes, that's 40 table legs...that was a substantial workout and Steve is going to be sore tomorrow.

Here Ron is applying stain to one of the table braces. After that came the polyurethane finish.


Scott and Billy had the task of taking one office and making it into 3 separate office workspaces, building walls and hanging doors.


Nancy and Debbie, shown here at lunch, were stripping window treatment from some of the windows, as well as measuring and cutting fabric to sew for curtains. This, too, is a pretty big job. This building has a lot of windows.


And speaking of lunch, here is one of the main dishes, ajiaco bogotano. This soup is indescribably delicious. It is made of potatoes, chicken, corn, and indigenous herbs. At the table, we added crema de leche and capers. A thing of beauty...

Here we are, enjoying a great time of fellowship, with the city and mountains over behind Andreas:

Another special time is our meal together with our hosts at the end of the day. This is where we really get to know one another and our Colombian brothers and sisters. The work that they do and the beautiful way they serve us and one another is indescribably humbling. It is impossible not to love these people.


We were exhausted. Here, over our dinner later that night, Billy is getting the story from Brittany about how she got a little carried away with a putty knife earlier in the day. Evidently she was trying to dig her way through one of the walls...you'll have to ask her about it.



When we got back to our hotel rooms, we all found on our pillows a sweet note of thanks and a gift of frutas Colombianos from our hosts. Like I said earlier, it is impossible not to love these people.