I’ve been meaning to post about the work week sooner, but I haven’t gotten around to it! As I mentioned in my first blog post, I had the privilege of spending my first week in Mexico with several people from Jackson Hole Bible College and Faith Bible Fellowship out of Arkansas for a work trip. FBF has been doing this yearly work trip for I don’t know how many years, and I know it’s a blessing to everyone at Campamente Berea.
When it comes to construction and demolition projects, I have no knowledge or experience whatsoever, so I was excited to learn. The first day (Sunday afternoon on Jan. 22), we took out the windows and knocked the huge wall down in the main dining room area, so we could extend it another 15 feet or so. The rest of the week was spent building the trusses, constructing a new schoolhouse and opening up the old one.
We definitely stayed busy that week, but each morning we had a devotional time to reflect and mediate on a verse from Psalm 119, and the evenings were spent playing volleyball, singing hymns at the Clark’s house, or simply visiting (I shared the upstairs of the house with four other girls and we often stayed up til midnight talking). It was a great week of fellowship (and food!), and by God’s grace, we were able to get a lot done despite the news of the accident. I was actually very thankful to be in Mexico when I found out about it because we were able to encourage one another, sympathize with one another and laugh together. It was such a blessing.
I won’t bore you with too many details, but I thought you might enjoy some pictures from the week!
Left: Some of the guys removing the glass windowpane.
Right: Several families from the church cooked amazing meals for us that week, including these giant handmade tortillas.
Helping move trusses for the new school
Gabi Persson taught some of us how to weld. It was a lot of fun, but I definitely have a long way to go. The picture on the left is probably my best weld.
At right, Grace is teaching Alma how to weld.
Despite all the work, we still had plenty of time to goof off, and here Andrew is attempting to ride Jemimah's bike, unsuccessfully I might add, while we played volleyball in the gym after dinner.
We poured all this concrete for the extension in about two hours! We started before breakfast, and I suppose we were motivated to finish quickly so we could eat!
Dustin and Malia hard at work in the bookstore as we demolished this room, and the wall Malia is standing in front of to open it up for a bigger space. This room was insulated with sawdust (it was originally designed to be a walk-in cooler), and it was a tedious job removing it. We covered our faces with T-shirts, so as not to inhale the sawdust and pour hundreds of gallons of water on the sawdust to keep it from blowing everywhere. You might thing I'm exaggerating, but it was at least a hundred gallons if not more. I think I choked on enough sawdust to make me cough for a week. But the crew we had made it a lot of fun, and you could often hear us laughing and cracking jokes the whole time.
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I love reading your blog. Reminds me of the trips I did several years ago to Mexico. We did projects very similar to what you are doing