I guess I’m the guest (and newbie) blogger. Darla dropped me off at the Ciber Cafe on our way to the worksite this morning and said that I should post whatever I’m posting to our email prayer team back at Valley Covenant Church in Stillman Valley, Illinois.
We’re getting a lot accomplished, but hampered by problems with electrical supply. Though the city has promised to get electrical service to the ministry center we’re working on, so far there is no juice. We have been making do by running drop cords to neighbors homes, thanks to Amy Parsons’ friendly smile and easy Spanish, but there isn’t enough amps to turn the compressor we’re using for the framing gun to build interior walls. . It has worked okay for saws and screw guns for drywall Juan Manual, a pastor who also works as an electirican, even brought a generator for us late today, but it didn’t run.

We’re almost done with the ceiling in the 35′x50′ main part of the ministry center/home, and are looking forward to working on the interior walls so we don’t have to keep working over our heads. Some of the drywall finishing may be “outsourced” to one of the church members who is looking for work, but we don’t know when/if that will happen exactly.

Today and yesterday Deanne mostly cut drywall while I was on the scaffolding with Greg Parsons , Terry Brown, and Dave Smith positioning and driving screws. The ground crew, Sue, Lois, Darla, Judy and anybody else who is handy uses wood T’s to support the piece and shout directions… all in all, something worthy of a youtube video, if not a prizewinner for Funniest Home Videos, Everyone is picking things up quickly, and despite having to work around electrical boxes and drops, we moved along at a good pace, for a bunch of amateurs. Lois has been painting and helping Deanne cut and carry drywall. (We’re drywalling the ceiling before the interior walls go up because the center may need to be used for something else, like a church, someday.)

Late in the day Wednesday, Keith, Dick, and Ken started assembling interior walls, and found that they will need to be stick built “in place” because of the imperfections in the floor and joists, among other things. It will be interesting choreographing scaffolds for drywall finishing, assembling walls, hanging more wall drywall, etc. all in that space. Elial has been tiling the storage space, with help from Sue Setter, and the Maestro has been doing stucco in the bathrooms/laundry room. A pad was poured on Wednesday for the water tank, also.

A highlight of the day yesterday (Tuesday) was a brief after lunch visit we paid to the “Good Samaritan” Nursing Home that is run by the large church here called “Nuevo Vida” and the alliance. This was one of First Covenant’s first projects here about 8 years ago and for those that were on one of those trips, it was a visit to “holy ground.” We sat in the courtyard with the residents and sang a few songs with them… visited the rooms, etc. Very clean, simple, but homey. Dabbing tears from our eyes, we went back to work.

We have a good rhythm for the day: Breakfast, devotions, prayer and day planning at the hotel at 7, and we are usually at the worksite before 9. Lunch back at the church, then work until 6 and back to the church for dinner. Our meals have been mostly mexican food, but we can tell they are trying to give us some American food because they think we would like it more, and it may have more variety. However, from what we’ve seen of what they do with tortillas, rice, beans, and some kind of meat, they can feed it to us all the time! We get back to the hotel about 7:30 p.m. and everybody heads for the showers and bed follows pretty quickly.
Please pray for good progress in the next couple of days. The electrical issue and other misc projects that were supposed to be finished by the time we arrived need to be taken care of. Next week is the last week for work teams until Jim and Barb Mikrut and their girls finish language school and move into the home portion of the ministry center late this spring. Praise the Lord for good progress, good health, good attitudes, good weather and green lights at the border crossings.

At devotions Wednesday morning. we talked about Mary’s song in Luke 1:46ff… and that brought up lots of good observations about poverty, simplicity, power and privilege. All these issues are “in your face” in a place like this, of course. But so is the reality of the good news of hope in Jesus, and we’re excited to see the growing faith, growing churches, and growing disciples we talk to and hear about, despite their difficulties. I know it’s a cliche, but being in different country and being on a missions experience does nothing if it’s not to give you a whole new perspective on Paul’s letters. What an awesome experience this is for all of us.

Plenty warm, almost hot today, but we’re inside, out of the sun, and that insulation we put in Monday helps to keep things cool a bit. Humidity is up, too, and when I got up early this morning to plug in the coffee, just about everybody’s AC was running in their rooms.

I’ll try some pics tomorrow or later today… my laptop battery’s getting low.

Don Holmertz