After saying goodbye to all our friends at Cdf yesterday we moved on to do a one-day service project. Instead of doing any construction work as a traditional missions trip would partake in, we worked on painting half a dozen classrooms and refinished the outside of a church building used for over 50 years. Currently, that building is being used as a school during the week and a church on the weekends.
We started the day with a well-rounded breakfast of rice, beans, egg, and fruit. Then we left at 7:45 on the bus, ventured onto the busy Nicaraguan streets and safely got to the school about an hour later. We were welcomed by the team of construction workers led by Neddi – the foreman and with him, his two sons and son-in-law. We also had the help of Trudy and Peter Kuipers and Nilda to translate the instructions.
We got to work right away painting the classrooms and Peter and Trudy helped us get the supplies that we brought from Canada beforehand and helped with finding supplies on-site to use. We got to work painting, about half of the team was on the cutting crew and helped with painting around the edges of windows, corners, outlets, etc. The other half of the team was on the roller gang and they came behind the cutting crew and filled in the rest of the walls and quickly turned the stained lime green walls into the new tan yellow color. A few hours we were covered in paint and hot from the 35-degree weather but we completed most of the painting faster than expected.
During the day we had a coffee break to chug some water and a wonderful take-out lunch brought back by Peter and Nilda. We left the site just after 4 and headed back to the NC and stopped for ice cream at the local grocery store “La Union” and got back just before dinner time. We ended the day with devotions led by David and Juan and talked about our days, this week, and the week to come.
Our hearts are all very full and we are all thankful for the experiences we had together. Thank you for everyone who has been following along with this lovely blog and we would love your prayers as we spend the day tomorrow traveling back to Canada.
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