One day this week, we went to paint murals on the walls of what will become an orphanage. God willing this place will be allowed to open soon so that when a hospital is built down the street from it in three or so years, the abandoned babies will have a safe place to be left. So in the meantime, they are preparing the building for the children.
We went in early one morning to find a theme of Noah’s Ark started on part of one wall. However, the people who started the paint either didn’t know that paint brushes had to be washed out after use or ran out of time and didn’t get to it. Either way, all of our paint brushes were bunched up in one big nasty mess of colors. So I headed off to start washing them out or at least to attempt it anyways.
Soon I found myself with a helper. A little local boy whose mother is eventually going to help with the orphanage came in and started helping me wash out the brushes. Together (along with the help of another World Racer) we were able to get all the brushes clean on unstuck. While I scraped the paint, my little helper would brush the brushes through the water trying to help loosen the old paint. It probably took us a good hour and a half or more but we did it. My helper even got in trouble for helping me, but he came back and continued.
For the rest of the day, I got to paint fun little animals on the wall. Here is the monkey and the bird I painted…pretty cute, huh?
But as I went back to wash out my own brushes, my hands began to become stained with white paint. And the more I washed, the worse it got! Apparently, the white paint we were using was oil based. I have no idea what that really means except all the other paint came off our hands. But my helper came back! He tried to help me get the white paint off my hands. Again, pretty much everything we did made it worse, but it was really cute of him to help me.
My guess is that in three months I probably won’t remember any animal that I painted or anyone else on the team painted, but I will remember my little helper for the day!
