DR missions trip-day 5

We couldn’t pass up the opportunity to take our picture in front of this wall of sunflowers since the state flower of Kansas is the sunflower

Day 5 Thursday

Today we got to sleep in a bit since we made so much progress yesterday.  We were all dragging and some of us have sore muscles, but we worked hard and accomplished several projects.

• We knocked off a chain link fence from the top of the old boundary wall so it could be put on the top of the new boundary wall we built.
• We added two more courses (for non-construction workers, that means layers) of block to the retaining wall.
• We filled in dirt on the backside of the wall we built the first two days.
• We made five rebar cages for bond beams so the Haitians could put them on the first wall we built and the retaining wall.
• We filled in the rebar cages on the first wall with concrete.

Kim tying rebar

Some of our team spent recess with the kids playing basketball, baseball and soccer.  Karly got a homerun today and Cassandra got one yesterday.  Stephanie taught the boys some cool basketball moves she’s learned from the Jayhawks.  Everyone had a great time.

Several of our team members got to take a walk through the village and meet some of the children and women.

This afternoon we got to visit a few stores in the village to buy some souvenirs.  One of the stores, a fair trade store, employs about 30 women in the village to make items for their store.  The women are paid fairly for their work and the missions groups that visit the store know they are supporting women in Caraballo and they get great products to take home as gifts.  I’m so excited about my purchases – handmade paper that I can use to make cards and journals and paper beads to make earrings.  If you’d like to make a virtual visit to their store and support women in this amazing community, head to latienda.ca.

Stephanie, Cassandra and Kim tying rebar

Tonight we get to chill in our team house, enjoy an amazing dinner prepared for us by Zeneida, our cook, and relax!

Thank you for our prayers!  Please pray that all our cuts and scrapes won’t get infected.  It’s pretty dirty here, as you can imagine.  We pray your week is going well and look forward to seeing our friends and families on a few days.

Karly using her new skills to add another course to our retaining wall

Some of our men filling concrete buckets and passing them to those working in the trench on the retaining wall

Karly, Vernon and Joy enjoying success after back filling the dirt on the wall we made

It took a lot of us to make concrete, wheelbarrow it to the work site, fill buckets, and pass them up to the top of the wall so Brian could pour it

The Fair Trade Coop of Caraballo

A local Haitian woman doing laundry outside her house

Haitian children playing dominoes outside their house

Santí is one of the men who has been working with us all week. Here he is standing in the doorway of his home. The paint on his house indicates that he is one of the wealthier members in the community

Haitian homes on the edge of Caraballo. These homes are not as nice as the ones Santí lives in. The homes in his neighborhood were built by another Christian organization that works extensively in this village