Thursday, June 21, 2007

Today was my turn to work at the construction site! While things got organized, I sat in the shade. Pretty soon, there was a small group of children around, wanting to sing. Pharaoh was pretty popular, as they were quickly learning that one. This year’s construction project is to stucco the community center that was built last year. So, there was a huge pile of sand, and some in a wheelbarrow. Katie and Talia added a little water to the wheelbarrow, and started showing the kids how to make sand castles. The kids had a great time in the big pile of sand – until the other adults came and chased them out. Oops!

It quickly became apparent that I wasn’t going to be much use with stucco, so I was assigned to guard the water. We have to buy water while we’re there, to avoid getting parasites or whatever from the well water. So, it’s important to keep the spout of the cooler from getting dirty. Sometimes, the smaller children try to drink directly from the spout, so we guard the water. It worked out well for me, because the water was in one of the rooms of the community center. It was out of the sun, and there was enough breeze that day to keep things fairly comfortable if one was out of the direct sunlight.

After lunch, we went back to the job site, and left a different team off to do VBS. It quickly dawned on them that all the singers were at the job site (me, Lynn, Talia), so Vicki came to get me to help with singing. With Nataniel and the other Sheila, the singing went really well. Still, I missed having Lynn there to do the Pharaoh motions!

At the end of VBS, we handed out the baseball caps. They were a smash hit! We got a little taste of what popular ball players must experience, as the children mobbed around us. Those who couldn’t speak English ran up to each of us, pointing at our name on the hat, and then at the team members, letting us know they knew which signature was which person. It was pretty cool.

That evening, the church hosted a farewell to us. Of course, there was lots of singing, let by the other Sheila. She invited me up to sing “Yo Celebrare”, which was a lot of fun.

Pastor sends his greetings to Fred, and hopes to see him next year.