Building Blessings

Building Blessings


Monday morning, our work began in earnest. Dave, Samantha, Bob and I all began on the construction crew. The team of 18 were divided into teams of 4 and each team had a young man assigned to us who were skilled at working with the block construction, with a couple guys assigned to wheelbarrow the blocks over to the house from the area they were made. Bob Sendigoski gave us an overview of the process and let us go.

Samantha and I thought the bathroom would be a good place for our group, after all it's small, how many mistakes could we make in a room that size? We soon realized that with long, straight walls, a person could lay a straight row pretty quickly. Corners and doorways required more time as the blocks had to be marked and carried over to the cutter, to be cut and part of the bottom area had to be chiseled out. This was the dirtiest, enjoyable, fun job that any of us have had for some time.

The blocks were up 12+ courses when we left, making for a great building day!

We ate food prepared by some of the EOH Mamas for lunch and Boss Builder Bob, gave us a tour of the chicken run and village and we went into one of the completed homes. It was so nice and such a contrast to the homes we had seen the day before in the Camp Hope area. After lunch we had a free minutes to play with the EOH orphans and learned some new games. Dave says he's going to bring one back for his CBC kids to play, so be prepared!


Our Cup Runneth Over

Due to the overwhelming number and ages of children at Camp Hope, the construction team was asked some of us would be able to switch from building to camp, so Dave and I became children's workers.

Tuesday was a wonderful day for meeting and working with the kids. Dave has 10, 10-17 yr olds and I am in the youngest group, ages 6-8. These are some of the sweetest, most loving children you could ever meet. The highlight for me today was after speaking through an interpreter all day, we were trying to settle the children down and went into a small classroom at the school EOH is using. I asked if any of the children would go up front and sing for us. After a few songs, a 7 yr old got up and in perfect English, started to sing The Lords Prayer. It was hard to hold back the tears. She followed it with a song about how it was time for Christ to return and she didn't the month or day or hour but it would be soon. My heart melted.

Dave says his highlight was getting to teach 2 -3 Bible stories and the children were asking for more! You can't beat that!

Samantha and Bob kept on building and the team is within 3 courses of block of being ready for the roof! Mary says this is the quickest one has been built by any team! The team also was able to go to a church in the village and give ten Bibles to the congregation from Smithville Bible Church. Samantha has pictures that will be posted soon. Zoom Mamas from the church were so happy, they began lifting the Bibles up and singing praises to the Lord!

As you can tell, Tuesday was a great day to be in Zambia.