We’re now in our second week in Puerto Galera and we have definitely been working for our meals.
Coming from an information culture, being put in a position of having to do regular manual labour is obviously not something I’m entirely used to (plus I’m not the bulkiest guy in terms of musculature… yet), but every day this week we have gotten up and thrown ourselves in to construction. We initially helped demolish an outdoor seating / hut area, the support beams of which have been used to extend the hut that the pastor’s daughter, JoJo, lives in just next to the church so that a second living area can be added in there.
The next time we worked we broke up and removed the foundation, salvaging some of the tiles on its edge and floor to be used mosaic style in flooring elsewhere and putting the rest of the rubble onto one of the dirt roads to try and level it out more – a simple yet useful way the church is able to do something for the community.
Since then we’ve been doing some landscaping about three quarters of the way up the hill next to the church. The guys here have built the frames and roofs for a couple of new living areas up there but we’ve been removing part of the hillside so that the ground in and around the huts is flat. This has been particularly gruelling and has involved breaking away at the ground (including having to cut through large roots and break through stone) with a pickaxe, shovelling the dirt into a wheelbarrow, moving this to another part of the area and placing it to expand the ground there.
Pictures of the remodelling will likely be included in my next post (we’ve been working so hard we haven’t even stopped to document it yet :-P), but as proof that I’m working hard here is me pouring with sweat, taking a break and playing with a little girl (one of seven children) called Jaline who is one of the cutest little kids who currently comes to see how we are doing a couple of times a day.
We have also been helping with some of the church events, including the prayer meeting on Wednesdays, and in Sunday's service I played a song titled ‘Your grace is enough’. God has challenged me a lot during the last few days: every time I have felt like the work was too hard I remember ‘[His] strength is made perfect in weakness’ (2 Corinthians 12:9); every time I have wanted to sit back and just let others do it I’m reminded that my ‘attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus… who did not consider equality with God something to be grasped but …[took] the very nature of a servant’ (Philippians 2:6-7); and then every time I make sure to remind myself that this isn’t anything like I’m earning salvation but rather ‘[His] grace is enough, more than I need… and I will fall at [His] feet and worship [Him] here’ [lyrics from the song I sang].
A shot from after the service when a couple of the kids came to play with my guitar (this is Vanessa) and I jammed along on my harmonica.
We’re off to the wedding of a local couple tonight, which is why we have had some time off this afternoon to get to the internet and blog – tell you all about it next time.
Peter Francis
P.S. If you want to see some more photos of the kids we work with and what we’ve been doing I highly recommend my team mate Jess’ blog (jessicafischbach.theworldrace.org) as she is uploading her very professional photographs regularly 🙂
Also, Pete Dinh has created a ‘food blog’ for the year to document what we’re eating in different places. Given how well we feel we’re eating so far it seems somewhat ironically titled but you can follow it here: starvingmissionary.blogspot.com.
