The Wall (dun-dun-dunnnnnnnn!)

I(Caleb) am sure you all are on the edge of your seats waiting for the next blog post after the last whiz-banger Beth wrote.  After all, she had pictures and witty humor!  Well, here it goes. . .

(insert funny joke to start the paragraph)  For the past few days I have been helping with various projects.

On Sunday I helped put a 4-wheeler back together and for the past few days I have been helping build part of the wall around the ministry compound.  They originally only had a wall around the front and half of each of the sides, with barb-wire fence around the rest of the property.  Now though they are planning on building another building toward the rear of the property.  But before they can break ground, they need to have a wall around the entire facility for security purposes.  So Monday and Tuesday I helped with the digging of the trench for the foundation of the wall (which was done with a backhoe - I didn't use the backhoe, just measured depths for how deep it was supposed to be) and marked out the posts.  The wall and posts are made out of concrete blocks and concrete.  The wall is only about 3 feet tall and the posts are about 5 feet tall above that, so they take chain link fencing and concrete it onto the posts.  The posts are formed from re-bar and have to be marked out 8 feet apart in the ditch that forms the foundation.

Wednesday was Sabbath and we had worship that night so I played guitar and Kate Ficker played piano.  Playing instruments is even more fun when you are playing them with someone else, and then to play some amazing songs with God's presence all around you is always phenomenal.  Today I had a most interesting job.  The way people irrigate here is with a canal that gets water from the river (for some cool pictures of where the canal starts go see our post from January 6, 2009 called Un Paseo).  Everyone who pays gets an allotment of time to have the canal on their land.  Yesterday was our day to have it.  Unfortunately, most of it ran to the back of the property and into the trench we dug.  So today we had to go and drain the water.  Once we got all the water drained there was another problem.  The mud left behind had the consistency of chocolate pudding so we had to drain that too.  All in all, a very messy job.

Here is a picture of the wall.

Peace out!!