The houses

Let me tell you a little about the homes we built. If you read my blog while I was gone, you know that after the first day, we only had 1/2 of a house built. The math doesn't work out if you try to finish 5 houses in 5 days if you are averaging 1/2 a house a day. We didn't have 10 days to complete this, so we hoped that the lessons learned on day one translated into a bigger number completed in days 2 thru 5. I'm happy to report that day 2 was a 2 1/2 house day. We were able the first house we had started, plus 2 more, giving us 3 days to finish the remaining 2 houses. We didn't chance that we could slow down and still get them done, so we had all 5 houses done by 3pm on Wed. I can't tell you how happy we were that the actual construction was done. The last 2 days were spent cleaning, finishing the rock work and then the dedication. Here are a few picks: Delivery of the houses.


Day one of the work.


First completed house.

All 5 houses done.

The dedication.

Inside of a finished house.




The construction of the houses was pretty easy, in design, but we had to use pop rivets to hold it together. The tool you use to apply the rivets hurts your hand after a couple of hundred, so my hands were aching after day one and we still had a long way to go. You can see, what I call the spines, arrived assembled and the crew from the manufacturer put them in place. When we arrived, we bolted them together and then bolted them to the ground. If you have ever bolted something together that had pre-drilled holes, you know that rarely goes smoothly. These, however, bolted together with almost no effort. There were a few we had to persuade into working, but not much trouble. We then bolted them to the ground, which I have a lot of experience in. In Mexico, we bolt the house we build to the concrete, so I've drilled hundreds of holes over the past 5 years. After that, we cut the shipping braces out and started the outside panels. You start at the top and try to get the first piece centered as best you can. Chad and Brad from our group figured out that if you measured the beam going across the front of the house, found the middle, then dropped a plumb line from the top of the arch, then all you had to do was line up the center of the first sheet with that line and your good to go. That isn't exactly how we started this, but we figured it out by house 3, so it went much faster. Then you just add layer upon layer of the sheets, drilling holes through the metal sheeting and steel spine and riveting it all together. Once we got the hang of it, we flew through the process. Like I said in an earlier post, if you have 7 people working on a house, you can have it done in 3 hours, maybe a bit more depending on bit breakage and supplies. It took us a bit more than 3 hours because people were being pulled away for other projects. Not a bad thing, just perspective.

Here is a picture of an impromptu concert givin by the kids.


And finally, the most important picture we took all week. These are some of the kids that will be living in the homes.


May God bless them and keep them safe!

The animals

Here is something I wrote last Saturday, but never posted. Not the most exciting, but it shows what the day was like.

What can I say about today, Saturday. We started off with a 4 hour walk up and down the mountain, several times. Chad spotted a zebra on the opposite mountain, so we spent a lot of time watching him, then a kudu showed up. Something made a sound that echoed down the valley that had Chad and I wondering just how fast we needed to run to stay ahead of it. Luckily we didn't get chased. We talked to a couple that said they had seen the cape buffalo just an hour earlier where we had just been. There are two of them on the farm, but they are rarely seen, that would have been huge to have seen them. We then went to Entabeni, which is a game preserve, that has the big 5 African animals, lion, elephant, rhino, cape buffalo and leopard. The drive into the park had zebra right next to the road
a herd of empala in the road
and a group of about 15 wildebeast about 10 feet from our car. We hadn't even started the official game drive and we had all ready seen about 50 animals. When we arrived at the starting point, the staff of Entabeni greeted us with a glass of apple juice. After a few minutes in the gift shop, we loaded up the vehicles and headed out. The first 20 minutes were spent with our guide tracking a lion, so we could see it. He gave up and said we would look for the rest of the pride instead of trying to find just the one. We saw some of the old standby's, wildebeast, empala and birds, but most of us were ready to try and find the lions or elephants. We pulled up to a little pond and there were 10 giraffe drinking and eating.
It was amazing to see that many animals all together in one place. We watched them for quite awhile, drove around the pond and got right in the mix of them. We even had a younger one walk right in front of our vehicle. We continued on until our driver stopped to give us a poop lesson. He picked up a piece of elephant poop to show us what it looked like. He said it was probably 3 days old, so I was ready for him to drop the poop and move on. A few minutes later, we drove up on a black backed jackyl. We didn't stay there long because our guide got a radio call about some elephants, so we took off to find them. As we came around a corner, we spotted a rhino and a baby rhino, so we stopped to take pictures. Some of our crew spotted something in the weeds behind us, so our guide backed up just in time to see two lionesses jump up and chase a warthog. It's hard to see, but that black area in front of the lion is the warthog. I tried to get the chase on video, but wasn't able to find it on the view finder, since I was really trying to watch it with one eye. We didn't see the end of the chase, so I can't tell you the outcome, but that was cool. We thought our lion action was over, so we turned our focus on two more rhino a bit further down the road. As we were watching them, two more lionesses came out of some trees and started walking towards the rhino.
They passed the first group of rhino, so we knew they were after the baby.
We actually got to see them stalk this baby rhino, plus we saw how the mother rhino defenede her young.

Oh, I forgot to mention, the male lion showed up as well.
This may just have been the coolest thing I have ever seen. The ride ended with a cup of hot chocolate provided by the staff and a ride home. Just when you think you have seen everything, you step out of the car, look up and see more stars than you ever have in your life. We could even see the milky way, which I have never seen before. Crystal clear and breath taking. God has created something so beautiful, it is amazing. If you ever get the chance to go, I would highly reccomend it.

I'm home!

In case anyone is watching this blog, I'm home safe and sound. I'm trying to get back in the groove of life and hope to start posting stories soon. Here are a few pictures of the Abod homes and some of the children to tie you over. Thanks again for making this trip possible, I saw how God changed lives and you helped change them.