Wellshire SHY Guatemala Mission Trip Post 3: Cinder Blocks and Smiles!

Monday was our first full work day at the Habitat sites. We woke up to God's blessing of a beautiful sunrise. The sunrise from our hotel

Our wake up call came a little bit early at 5:30am, with breakfast at 5:45. But we are here to work, to be the hands and feet of Jesus, and the kids were surprisingly pleasant and energetic, even at the early hour. After breakfast, right before loading our buses, we took a group picture in front of the hotel. What a great looking group of God's servants!

We fanned out across the state of Baja Verapaz to work on six different Habitat homes. Each night I will post pictures of different work teams and different work sites.

This Monday set of pictures is of the group led by Brian and Angela Duggan. They are having an amazing building experience. Their team arrived at the worksite and discovered that the forms for the foundation had been set, but it had not been poured yet. That means a LOT of concrete mixing, all with a smiling face.
The brackets that hold the rebar together in the foundation are all cut and bent by hand. Here you see Caitlin and Laura making rebar clamps.

Here you can see an enormous stack of cinder blocks, over 1200 of them to build the house. And our youth will touch and lift almost every one of them!

Miles and Connor are amazing cement mixers! They probably mixed a few thousand pounds of cement today.

Natalie plays with one of the children who will be living in the house they are building.

What a great team! They took a short break and decided to take a quick group photo in front of this brightly painted teal wall.

There is nothing more refreshing than a Coke on a hot and humid day after some cinder block house building!

This is the "stone mason" who has been hired by Habitat for Humanity to build the house. Our team provides the "manual labor" and he provides the "skilled labor." The team has built a great working relationship with him.

This is a panoramic view of the front of our hotel and the parking area. The wandering horse that was grazing in the parking area had temoporarily left for the photo. Perhaps he was camera shy?

This is the large covered gazebo space at the hotel where we are eating all of our meals, doing all of our worship and having all of our meetings. The hotel staff has been great and very accomodating.

This is the swimming pool area with our very own water slide. After a long, humid, hot day of building a cinder block house, the pool is quite refreshing!

This is the vespers band leading our group in worship. They have been doing an amazing job bringing their musical talents and energies to lead our group of 61 in worship.

We had a few members of our group who had to arrive late. They all arrived safely this afternoon and now are group is complete.

It has been an incredible trip so far. Our first day on the worksites was eye-opening and fulfilling for our youth and adults. Thank you for your continued prayers, below are a few prayer requests:

PRAYER REQUESTS:

-Prayers of thanksgiving that the rest of our group arrived safely

-Prayers of thanksgiving for an incredible first day of work on the Habitat homes

-Prayers for continued open minds and hearts for our youth, that they feel God's love in this experience and embody that love in their interactions with the Guatemalans and the rest of our group

-Prayers for health and safety for the rest of the week