It was very hot at the work site today!--so much so that even the local folks said it was too hot to work. I've always thought that coming here in the winter meant it would be cooler than in the summer, and it is, at least a little. But the real seasonal difference here is not so much hot and cold as it is wet and dry. So we got a taste of the "normal" hot weather today.
Today's work was further complicated by the fact that the electricity went out this morning--all over town, and apparently well into the countryside as well. We were told that the power company was working on the lines, so it was, I suppose, what you could call a "scheduled outage." But with the electric saw and the electric arc welder thus rendered out of commission, the planned work on raising roof beams could not be done today. So we went to Plan B: the trench.
And here we got a bit of good news. It seems the trench was deep enough and straight enough (mostly) not to need any more digging. Instead, it was time to make a foundation. Huzzah! So for the better part of the day we shifted between making cement, searching through the rock piles for just the right sized rocks, carefully placing the rocks in the trench, and slopping cement over them. The skilled construction workers among us placed rocks. The rest of us formed long bucket-brigade-style lines to move the rocks, and later the buckets of cement, from up the hill to down the hill where they were needed for the foundation. It is to be a retaining wall, after all, so the hillside is a key element in the design. It was really muscle-straining work; and since I make it a practice not to strain my muscles too often, it was work I found difficult and draining. And it seems I wasn't the only one: by 2:30 in the afternoon we were all flagging, and when it was believed we'd run out of cement, the general consensus was that work should stop immediately. (Actually, there were more bags of cement tucked away somewhere, but as they weren't in immediate view, it was an honest mistake.) So we knocked off earlier than usual--even earlier than the ususal "earlier than usual"--and came back to the hotel. At which point the hotel's generator gave out, the water pump stopped working, and showers became an object of unfulfillable desire.
I will admit to being less than my ideal self at that moment. More than anything else, at just that moment I wanted to be very still, very silent, very prone, and very chilled. I managed three out of four. And Lee, bless her patient heart, said to me "You don't really seem to enjoy this very much; why do you come on these mission trips?"
I had to think about that for awhile--and only partly because at that moment I didn't feel quite capable of coherent speech. But the answer that emerged from some reflection had to do with that service at Espiritu Santo on Sunday. And with the ruins. And with the incredible hospitality the local church members show us. And with the way that silly trench changed, bit by bit, stone by stone, all through the day, into solid foundation, something that people who come to work after us will be able to build on, and raise up higher, and fulfill the design, and turn into something we ourselves can only begin to guess at now. What a metaphor for the ministry of service! What a metaphor for the church! And, as well as being a great metaphor, it's a concrete fact (yes, I had to say it), a real thing we built where there was nothing before. There is a kind of satisfaction that goes along with that reality, a satisfaction that is worth the aching muscles and the straining joints and the trips to the rockpile and the bucketing of cement.
And a marvelous tilapia dinner at our favorite restaurant afterwards, a dinner that gathered our whole group around a common table and a common accomplishment--well, that was pretty satisfying, too.
Tomorrow is our final work day, to be concluded with a church service inside the shell of the church we're helping to build. It will be a grace-filled moment, in many ways.
May the Peace of Christ be with you,
Paul+
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