Monday, September 24, 2007

Ok, so today I slept in until 630, which was nice, and then we all woke up to a little surprise. PANCAKES were ready for us, prepared by one of the Haitian ladies that cooks when Heather and Janeil are here. After a wonderful breakfast, and clean up was over, I set my day of what I needed to do to build Sonel’s pull up bar. First thing, I had to go to Sonel’s and get several measurements before I could do any cutting. Since everyone else was busy, I got to go there by myself, which was nice because it was quite and quick. After I got back, I found Vogley and got my pipe and wood and we headed to the maintenance shed to cut everything. This turned out to be a VERY difficult and time consuming process because today just happened to be the day of generator problems. It was on and off all day and not working for most of the day. With this distraction I decided to use this down time to go downtown and find some rope to hook the bar up with. This was a very easy process that Roland and I completed quite efficiently and we even managed to have time to buy some REAL bananas, since the last time we purchased “bananas” they were the wrong ones. We got back just about in time for lunch and the generator was on so I real quick cut the pipe and almost all of the wood that I needed. To better help you envision this project here is what it entailed: a 3 foot hollow lead pipe, a 12 foot piece of ¼ inch rope, a 7 ½ foot board, and 4 3 inch blocks of wood. I put pictures on my website of it in use if you want to look they are in the St. Louis link. Ok so after lunch, I babysat a two year old American girl named Ne Ne for about 2 hours, while her mother got a little rest and recharged. This is one of the funniest little girls I have ever babysat. We colored and took a walk and colored some more. At about 2 I took her to go see her cousin, who had just finished school. She played with her for about an hour which gave me enough time to finish cutting the wood I needed for Sonel’s. Unfortunately the generator was inoperative so I had to hand saw cut the rest of the 3 inch blocks. What a glorious time that was, it had been a very long time since I had cut something by hand. Oh well, it was well worth it and I would do it again in a heartbeat, and plus, I had nothing else to do anyway so why not, not waste that time block. So now it was 4 and time to go to Sonel’s, so Melissa loaded up the meds she needed and I got my wood, pipe, and rope and Mike got the power drill, the screws, and the step ladder. I passed the pipe and the rope off to Vogley and Mike put the blocks in his back pack to balance the weight and Teresa carried the step ladder. By the time we got to Sonel’s we had half a dozen followers wondering what we were going to do with all this stuff. Sonel knew and was ready for action, when we got there he was already in his chair, which made Melissa happy because it is good for his bed sores if he is not in bed. So Mike and I moved his bed to the other side of the room so that Melissa and Teresa could change his dressings and Mike and I could install the bar at the same time. Mike let me do most of it because, he said it was “my project,” which I never thought of it like that because I just wanted something for Sonel to be able to work his good muscles with. It was a fun process, because Sonel’s dad and uncle helped out a lot and we got to see how they do some of their constructing. Well with the finished product installed we put the bed back and had Sonel try it to make sure that it was the right height and position. He was so excited, and said that he could feel his muscles being worked, which was good. We were at Sonel’s a little later today so we got back just about 10 minutes before dinner, which after that work was very wonderful. We had a few visitors today that we got to meet at dinner and spend the night getting to know. Mike, Joe, and Andy, who as I understand it go all over the world starting children’s homes and orphanages and then donating to them to help them run. They are really nice gentlemen and are looking forward to working with the NWHCM in the far west. At 7 we had a group devotion and then chatted for about 35 minutes before everyone called it a night and went their separate ways. I took that time to get on my computer and catch up on emails and write in my journal. Now as it looks like it is going to rain and the boys would like to turn off the generator, I am going to go to bed. Peace.