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From: Greg Long Date: Sat, June 12, 2010 8:35 am Subject: Day 4 Hey all, It’s kind of interesting; as they aren’t on daylight savings time here, it is light by 5 a.m. and dark by 7 p.m...makes it hard to sleep late, and seem later than it is in the evening. Anyway, much snow and ice today, had to put the chains on the tires...wait, yes I am dreaming. Worked on the basketball court today; first we dragged 40 foot lengths of rebar 40 or 50 yards, then we bent about 6” on the ends of over a hundred of them. Before we started work down here, Welch didn’t think rebars could be bent. The process is simple...slide a 2 foot or so piece of pipe completely over the end you want to bend, leaving 6-7” sticking out; put another pipe over the 6-7” you want to bend, stand on the first pipe, and pull up on the second until the rebar is bent 90 degrees. Lots of bending and grunting... They don’t call it rebar here; it is simply steel...so Welch and I have proclaimed ourselves “Men of Steel”. Once the rebar was bent, we dragged it onto the 112 X 62 foot clearing, and spaced them 18’ apart one direction, and 16” the other, creating a lattice pattern. We had the help of 3-4 other adults and 4-12 kids at various times, but still, lots of heavy work. I don’t normally give financial advice, but you may want to invest in Ben-Gay or Icy Hot before we return...Greg out. Welch again. Well it wasn’t any cooler. I am now beginning to think that Ranger School wasn’t all that bad. As Greg said, lots of bending and grunting involved in bending iron, but we have become very good at it. Greg had to ruin it though by pointing out that today’s rebar was much smaller than Wednesday’s What he did not mention was that after the iron was hauled onto the court, they all needed to be tied together with wire - on the ground, in the sun. So you have to either squat, lean over or take a knee - none of which qualify as a favored activity by Greg or me. Glad we don’t have to do this for a living, but I must admit I have learn a lot doing all this. I feel bad having to leave the team early, but not sure if I would survive many more days, plus I need to get ready for VBS. So...I don’t have to go last tonight, but somehow the guys always get to go first. That could be because they are always back at the hotel in the evening while we are at church teaching! Tonight’s class was with young girls ages eleven to nineteen - at least that was the way the class was billed. We had about sixteen people in attendance. That number included two adult women, a ten year old boy, a 2 year-old and a 3 month old. It was a great evening, however, it required a lot of |
flexibility and willingness to change mid stream. Speaking of flexibility, Laura and I had been asked to move our Friday preschool class to Monday as today was a special “Story Telling” conference and the whole class was going. So we were given the day off and invited to go along. What happened, though, was that we ended up supervising all of “our” children and a whole bunch of others who saw how much fun we were having. It sure was good Laura had thought to pack some coloring pages and crayons, some books and some cookies. We were at the community center for about three hours, and sitting still for that long was difficult for three and four year olds. We had a good day, but it wasn’t as much fun as when we knew what to expect. We are looking forward to being off tomorrow and getting to see a bit of the country. I can’t wait to share our adventure tomorrow. And a few final thoughts from Laura.....we are thrilled to see word spreading throughout the community about the programs Vicki and I have been doing all week. Several moms who attended Bible study last night promised to send their daughters tonight, and they did! We have had several women attend our programs every night this week, and some of them aren’t even members of the church. Many people who don’t always attend church have promised to sit with us on Sunday morning, so we feel like we are making an impact. And Sandra-lee wants to take our teenage girl workshop from tonight and reproduce it again and again, because she has ideas about how to reach many other teens in the community. One of our goals was to build relationships, and learn from the people of Belize as much as they are learning from us. Our other goal was to help equip Sandra-lee, Jimmy, the small group leaders and anyone else who was interested with the ability to further the kingdom of God here in Lordsbank. While we have made some progress in those areas, we have many ideas and thoughts to improve future trips. It has been an incredible week. I am ready for a break as we enjoy time with Jimmy and Sandra-lee tomorrow exploring the Mayan ruins (after the guys put in a couple of hours of work in the morning), and participate in the worship service on Sunday morning. Thanks for your continued thoughts and prayers. We have taken many photos of our new Belizian friends, and we are anxious to share them with you! We’ll try to get one more update out, then Welch leaves Sunday a.m. and takes his computer. We look forward to seeing all of you soon. Peace, Greg |