Finishing San Juan #5

We spent a couple more days working on the prototype home. We had leveled the site and put up the forms, now it was time to pour. We had the mixer at the church but... we had no vehicle with a trailer hitch so we had to pull it across town and out to the new home site. The day was spent perfecting the mixture for the concrete and rearanging the foundation plans.

It was a typical San Juan day, hot and humid. the people there at least understand the principles of hydration and they were there constantly with cool water or lemonade. I know I am becoming more of a missionary as the end of the day neared I noticed that my glass had concrete and dirt in it so I took it to the 55 gal barrel that we were using for the concrete mixture. This barrel had brownish grey water but I proceeded to swish my glass around in the water and then pour more lemonade into it to drink. Even the lemonade had a twig, some dirt and sand remaining, a few ants and a tiny spider in it. Down the hatch! without even a thought. It was only after the fact that I even considered the preceeding events. The foundation was finally poured and the next day we went to build the walls.

This day we had helpers and lots of them. Randy (EMI engineer) works with a community of hurricane Mitch refugees who now have their own town called Balcones de Palin. They heard of this new construction style and that we were building for hurricane Stan victims and 13 people wanted to join in so we had hurricane Mitch victims coming to help Stan victims. It was quite the sight. We started building and I quickly realized that my job would be only making sure that everyone else had a job. The walls went up quickly and by the grace of God, after a mere 4 hours all the walls were up and tied. The weather was looking grim and the rains were starting. Because San Juan is 2 hours away and the rains start about 3-4pm and they always want us to sit and eat lunch with them, a 4 hour work day is about all there is. I was just glad that it went so fast.

In the middle of the day the local ladies had brought all of us a treat, sugar cane. This was the first fresh sugar cane I had ever eaten. Really it just tasted like warm sugar water in a celery stalk. It always got stuck in my teeth so I didn't eat much, it wasn't all that refreshing with the scorching heat.


The rain was falling and it was time to go home. On the way home we followed these three semis all carrying a piece of something that looked like a space ship. It must have been some part of a sugar cane processing plant. The pieces were so large that they covered both lanes (both directions so we couldn't even pass until the road widened). It was amusing to watch it take out each sign it passed on the side of the road bending them to about 45 degrees.

Once we neared Balcones de Palin to drop off all the workers we stopped to have "cocos frios" cold coconuts. They are just green coconuts that still have a lot of juice in them. They just chop off the top and hand it to you with a straw. I'm not so fond of them.

Tom will go to complete the roof without me as I will be building the second home in Pixebaj on Wednesday through Saturday. The prices of materials have gone up so the project only includes the home and the water filter now. I am praying for means to get the price back down but God knows what He is doing.

During this same time, while I was building this house, Heather was doing VBS with the children of the village. in the end 13 trusted Christ. Read about it here