Day Five: Update from Libby Gygax

Greetings good Saints in NWPC from Libby. I am just going to write from my journal. It is rough. Please excuse the bad spelling and stream of consciousness prose. No time to clean it up this week. No matter how early I get up, there is never enough time to do everything. Today at 5 a.m. I found Buck in the small dining hall uploading pictures to the Blog. He had been at it since 4. Tom Bowman came in to the dining hall with me and we both starting helping Jan with breakfast preparations, setting tables. She also had been up since 4 a.m. The team started gathering for early 6:15 devotions soon after. Karolen and Tom led our devotions on the theme of fire as we sat around the 4 tables we had made since Monday. The tables were just boards leaning up against the wood shed when we came here. Sitting beside Buck enjoying the pictures he was choosing to upload, I was able to read to the team the list (sent by Richard Collier) of powerful prayer warriors who are committed to praying for each and every one of us. Thank you, thank you so much for your prayers. We are feeling the blessings each and every day. Our weather could not be more ideal with cloud cover, moderate temperatures, rain in the evening or after we retire. Spirits are high, joy abounds. God's work is being done. We are blessed. But please pray for Penny Musson and her teaching of the pastors this week: a work she did not know she would be called on to do until Monday or Tuesday. We don't get much warning before we are asked to do the impossible. Pray also for our second day of V.B.S. First day went very well with about 50 children whom we divided into 4 flocks. 4 shepherds led them around the rotation of 4 activities of Bible story, crafts, singing, and play. The stuff we had to work with was awesome. Can't believe what has come out of suitcases to meet needs. Last night Cindy Pardue stayed up very late making lovely mustard seed necklaces for the children (today's Bible story is on the parable of the Mustard seed).
Today is our 3rd work day and our 3rd "pouring" which means pouring cement for the floors of buildings that will go up in are work area. Monday was a 23 x 33 foot floor, Tuesday was about 23 x 16. and today a 15 x 30 ft. floor. To pour we make cement in a small mixer - an upgrade from doing by hand in a hole in the ground. Each mixer full requires 8 buckets of sand/gravel, 2 buckets of water and 1 100-pound bag of cement. It takes 10 shovel fulls to fill 1 bucket of sand. Can't begin to count the number of mixers-full it took. But 1 mixer-full could fill 4 or 5 wheelbarrows. So we had a water brigade,a a sand bucket brigade, and a wheelbarrow brigade. There is no wasted time! We 'coolies' shovel sand. Going on at the same time was the master block layer (a local mason)building the walls for the floor we laid Monday. Tom Bowman was his assistant handing up each cinder block. Our master carpenters were also hard at work assembling the parts for 18 chairs to go with the 4 tables we made on Monday & Tuesday.
I say "we" with humility. For every hour we work our Mexican hosts put in 10! They start about 6 a.m. and are still going strong at 9 p.m. They do much more than we do each and every day; day in and day out; week in and week out; year in and year out. And are they strong! They will shovel a dump truck full of gravel sand and haul it over. They will sift the gravel sand to get the finer sand for mortar and haul that over. If we need more cinder block, they go over to the clinic site and haul that over. They lift over 100-pound bags of cement and throw then on their backs like it was nothing. The more skilled craftsmen are always training the younger men on the job. Delightful to witness them work together - and always smiling.
It is the Mexican ingenuity that impresses me the most. Bob Thompson, you would be impressed. Buckets with the original handles are used to haul water. When the handle breaks, they take a short piece of rebar wrapped in rubber hose stuck through 2 holes at one side of the bucket and wired secure. These handles are great for the sand and mortar buckets. Then there are the rebar tying tools for tying wire reinforcements together. Nothing is wasted here. I saw a length of rebar used as a counter weight to keep the dining room door shut. Pictures will show all. We are looking forward to talking with you tonight. And don't forget, there will be an early 'show and tell' on the Friday after we get back - 2 o'clock in the afternoon in the library. Now back to sanding chairs. After all, it is only 10:00 a.m.!

Grace and Peace, Libby