Tuesday . . .

Today started at 6:30am. We got up, got dressed and like all other mornings, made our lunch.  We are eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches every day for lunch.  Being that we don't have a table in our room, I made our sandwiches on our bed.  Doesn't this look like fun with a white duvet?  I actually did a good job and didn't get anything on it. Spreading out our dishcloth on the bed helped keep it clean.

After making the sandwiches we have funny plastic bags to put them in.  No ziplocks.  lol!

Then we pack up whatever we need for the entire day and go down the hill to where there is a nice patio area.  There is also an enclosed long hut there where we eat our dinners together.  Normally we would meet around those aluminum tables and chairs, but with the rain that we got yesterday and all day today we had to meet under the overhang to stay dry.  It has been pouring non-stop.

Here is Greg and John waiting in the overhang for everyone to show up.  We have bible study together each morning.  Today Matt led everyone.  Matt is one of our three youth on the trip.  I have to say that these youth are very impressive.  They have been doing such a great job and they are all so mature.  I'm so glad that they have come on this adventure!

After bible study and prayer, we head to the vehicles to drive over to the building we are working on.  This is the van we have been using.  We usually have to pack everyone in pretty tight in order to fit.  We were hoping to get a bigger van yesterday, but had no luck.  Supposedly we will get a bigger one tomorrow.  We shall see.  :)

We all arrived at the building this morning with no problems.  Thank you all for praying!!  As you can see it still pretty much looks the same as the other day that I took pictures.  We have been doing tons of scrapping and wire brushing.  We were hoping to get to start painting today.  We have run into all kinds of problems though with getting the paint sprayer to work.  We brought it with us, and it is brand new, but trying to hook into the electrical system here has proven to be quite difficult.  Apparently you need to use a transformer and the one we have was too small.

So we have been putting everyone to work doing more wire brushing and scrapping.  The boys got to go up into the rafters with a ladder on top of the scaffolding today.  I was just glad I didn't have to do that.  It was kind of scary looking.  Oh course they were fine.

Jake doing some work on a ladder.

Emily scrapping paint off the floor.  The floor has graffity all over it.  We have been scrapping it for two days.  John went this morning to find a chemical that would take it off the floor.  It took a few hours but he was finally able to find some good chemicals that would do the job.  Notice Emily's wet pants and wet shoes with bags over her feet.  Poor thing!  Funny story though.  She and Mikki brought shoes to donate to Dan so that he could give them to families that could use them.  He ended up bringing over a bag full of shoes and sweatshirts to us at the building since there were several people with wet shoes and clothes.  Emily and Mikki got to put on their shoes that they brought to donate because their shoes were soaking wet!!  I think God knew that they were going to need them, when He had them pack them for the trip to donate.  I love that!

Mikki working on a wall.  Some of the walls had graffity on them also.  We tried to smooth out the surface so that when they were repainted you wouldn't see the words.

Debra working on the floor.

Jackie working outside on scrapping paint.

Kim getting ready to climb the ladder to scrap more paint outside.

She's wearing the pretty eye protection because all the chips were flying into her face.  We have gotten so much junk in our eyes it's crazy.

Around the side of the building we had a crew working on the walls, windows and railings.  There is tons of graffity out there.  It's in pretty rough shape.  I don't know if you can see right above the brick wall, the electric fencing?  Every house or building here, and I mean EVERY ONE has a wall of some kind and razor wire (think prison fencing) and electric fencing.  It is insane looking.  I will try to get a better picture of it tomorrow, because you really need to see what this looks like.

Greg and Fabian working together.

Greg working on the paint on the walls.

Dee, Fabian, and Greg working on the walls and windows.

Me working on wire brushing the window frames.

Greg and Dee showing how happy they are.  lol!

Greg working on the walls still.

So after lunch we actually started putting some paint on the walls.  We spent about an hour with everyone painting and got a lot of the lower level done.  Then most of the group went to Effingham to the squatter camp to do the VBS with the kids there.  Emily, Fabian, Billy, and I stayed to finish the painting.  So I don't have any pictures of the VBS from today.  This is how the building looked though when we were finished.  (we were finished because we ran out of time, not that we were done)

We did the lower half of the walls.  I did the cutting in at the top.  You can see the graffiti on the floor in this picture.  We will be using the chemical on it on Thursday, after most of the inside painting is done.

This is just another wall.  We still have lots of painting to do, but it is getting there.  You might notice the water on the floor in this picture.  The roof is still leaking even after repairs have been made.  So after the rain stops, more repairs will have to be made.  It was dripping on us constantly while we painted that area.

The VBS with the kids went amazing!  They said that there were about 49 kids that came even in the mud and pouring rain.  Everything went just as planned and the kids loved the puppet show, and got to make their own sock puppets for a craft.  Everyone said it was just incredible.  I'm sad I missed it, but I loved hearing their stories!