6-30-10

Day 3 has come and gone. As I sit here writing this, I cannot move my arms from all the construction work we did today, but I will get to that in a minute. Another early morning came really fast, we were up and moving by 6 AM. There was a miscommunication with our transportation to breakfast so we all got to take a morning stroll down the mountain. At breakfast the construction assignments were handed out and we split into four work groups to serve “Hope of Life” with many different projects. Our first group went to the baby rescues house. Cindy Cook, Rebekah Meredith, Kaylee Bryant, Rita Linton, Sarah Beth and Renee Marilla spent the morning holding and loving the babies. The second group went to work on the greenhouse. The entire Wood family, Aubry, Jessica and Lee Ann along with Stephen Burrill, Jannah, Caleb Lee and Samantha Chapman carried concrete blocks and laid the foundation for the greenhouse the group paid to build. The third group, all women, went to the school to work on building a retaining wall. Stephanie Combs, Laruen Good, Natalie Cook, Tamara Mock and all the Phelps girls, Jessica, Betty and Christa struggled through some very manly work mixing and pouring concrete, and when we joined them later in the day you could see all the work that was done on Stephanie’s (my wife) shirt, you would not believe the amount of sweat dripping off of her. The last construction group was THE MEN (insert grunt here) who spent the morning working harder than most had ever worked before. Pastor Alley and Ed Maddox led the way hoisting 100 pound (exaggeration) bucket of concrete on their backs. Jack Phelps jumped right in and was carrying two buckets of concrete at a time, after 30 seconds of that he was down to carrying one half bucket every 15 minutes (a joke he worked really hard). Steve Linton and Seth Parris had sand shoveling duty and spent three straight hours filling five gallon buckets to mix for concrete. Matt Combs and Michael Duncan had a similar job shoveling gravel into buckets for the same purpose. Zach Pulliam, Ben Fisher, Chad “Grover” Hamel, Govinda, and Michael Ertel were “transporters”. Their job was to take the mixed concrete in buckets to the Guatemalan workers to pour. After 4 hours of that Zach and Grover had to throw their clothes away (Debbie, Chad said you told him not to bring anything nasty home so he won’t). Michael Ertel had the “story of the day” experience. He was carrying a bucket of concrete and while trying to lift it up over his head to one of the workers it slipped out of the workers had and landed on the floor and splashed all over the place, mostly on Michael. It not only got all over his clothes but it got in his nose and mouth (don’t worry mom and dad this is a funny story, he is fine and everyone including Michael and the Guatemalan workers had a big laugh). At 12PM we went quickly up to the dorms to clean up and then went to a lunch of fried chicken and mashed potatoes. After lunch we split into two groups one group stayed at “Hope of Life” to serve however they chose, some construction others with the babies, while the teens and their families went to feed the homeless at the local city dump. This was an eye opening experience for everyone, to see all the children and mothers waiting in line with their old bowls and cups to be fed one of three meals they will have for the entire week. Every teen got to serve food and drink to the people. You might think that was a busy day, well . . . we still did a bunch more. After returning to the mission we went to the orphanage and new and old relationships were rekindled. The kids ran around and around and around and around and then they ran around again, the important thing was they were having fun for the kingdom. After the orphanage we returned to the mission house to finally partake in showers and cleanliness and as I (Matt Combs) stepped into the shower the water in the whole dorms shut off. Michael Duncan was left with a nice lather and nothing to rinse with; it was quite a fun time. Anyway we headed down for dinner and tonight was the “fiesta” (party for those who have never watched Dora the Explorer or for you older folk Speedy Gonzalez). The fiesta included a live Cuban music and a smorgasbord of authentic Guatemalan food, it was the essence of GMALA (a word coined by myself to signify the finer things of the Guatemalan culture)! We returned later than normal from dinner so we split into small groups for devotions to talk about God’s love. God is truly working in our hearts and we cannot wait to see what He will do tomorrow! Please pray for the people that we are sharing the gospel with, that we will be clear in our communication and the Spirit will move. Tomorrow in devotions we will be focusing the attribute of God’s immutability. We love you!!

Matt Combs & Michael Duncan