One of the things several of us on the team have discussed is that we’re doing work that we would rarely do in our own homes. The main project we’re working on in Honduras is the construction of part of a retaining wall for the new church building. Roughly 80% of the wall is already constructed and we’re working on the remaining stretch. So far the wall building process has involved constructing “castles” from rebar that go into footing holes, mixing and placing concrete around and in the castles, setting large stones around them. I’m hoping that before we leave this week stones will start to be set for the wall itself. The other thing that is involved in building this wall is moving things – a lot. Today we were joined by members of San José de la Vega, particularly the youth. They’ll be working with us tomorrow as well. It was a lot of fun to work and play together today. It made the work much more enjoyable.
We’ve moved sand, we’ve moved gravel, and we’ve moved rocks. These are not your average rocks. They are substantial. In the photo below you’ll see the completion of the first set of rocks we moved. Later in the day, rocks from another location were piled on top of these rocks. We moved the rocks down the same path we had been using to wheelbarrow the sand and gravel. My guess is that today we moved a total of three dump trucks of rock – carried in hands, on shoulders, between two people and even on heads. The second pile we moved we transported half of the distance in the bed of a truck, the first set was carried by the Wesley team and San José de la Vega members.
In my own backyard there is a brick retaining wall. When we bought the house it had a small crack and was leaning slightly. The crack and the lean have both increased over the past seven years. Actually an additional crack has developed at another point in the wall. The wall in my backyard is about four feet tall and keeps dirt off my patio. Here in Tegucigalpa we’re building a wall that will be more than 10 feet tall and helps to support the ground that will be the foundation for a church building. There is very little likelihood that I will rebuild the wall in my backyard with my own hands. Here though I’m joyfully working on the wall, even when it means moving the same sand and gravel multiple times or carrying a lot of really big rocks.
Yep, that’s a lot of rocks [click to see more of the project on Facebook]