Monday Madness

Monday morning was a little bit slow starting as we gathered some last minute tools and loaded up the van to head to Cinco Senores. We arrived there around ~9:30 am to find that some of Alfredo's men had gotten a good start on preparing the two building sites. The area for the community kitchen had the old concrete removed, was packed, and leveled enough to start pouring. We built the forms and started pouring the concrete. The mixer was a very dilapidated piece of equipment with an engine that was ready for retirement. Somehow it made it almost to the end of the first slab before dying. The last few wheelbarrows of concrete were mixed by hand. Juan, one of Alfredo's men helped to screed the slab while Phil and Jerry did shovel work and the rest of the men and boys wheeled loads of concrete from the mixer to the slab.

Since the mixer was dead, we took our lunch break a little early while Alfredo rounded up another mixer. After lunch we headed back to Cinco Senores, where Phil, Daniel, and I troweled out the dog tracks from the first slab, while the rest of the crew poured the second slab.

Around 2:30 pm we headed over to Vista Hermosa to start on the church building projects. Josiah, Dane, Brandon, and I worked on the trenching for the sewer and water lines for the bathrooms. A nice surprise was that some of the young Mexican boys started helping. The husband of Blanca (the daughter of Lupita, the widow woman with the store we helped to open in Vista Hermosa) also came over and was a very big help. By the end of the day the water line was hooked up to the water source and run to the building, and we had started fitting some waste line pipes. Meanwhile Phil and Jerry were doing a stellar job getting the drop-ceiling installed in one of the rooms inside. Jason was assembling doors frames and Daniel was pruning trees that were scraping on the roof.

We wrapped up for the day at ~6:30 pm and headed back to the DeHoyos’ home for supper. After a brief rehash of the day with Alfredo, a very tired group headed for the hotel.