Message From Grayson

Saturday, May 24, 2008

Another amazing day in Mwanza! After our excellent breakfast prepared by Lucy and her crew, the container arrived. We hired much of staff who are preparing the foundation for the eye clinic to unload the containers. The Africans are amazing…. The women are very strong and are able to carry tremendous loads on their heads. We took pictures of both the men and women carrying various loads. The contents of the container came through with very little damage (e.g. the doors and window glass, no breakage, the tools are all operable and the wood had some mildew). Our personal bags sent in the container seemed to suffer the most as many had opened and the contents were damp. Other than that your prayers were answered. During the unloading of the container, there is a tendency for things to walk away. Denny & Paula suggested we all wear yellow name tags so unwanted persons on the site would be easily identified. We divided into two groups, security and those directed where the contents were to go. We only had one minor incident of possible theft that was quickly and effectively handled. The unloading lasted most of the day, but after lunch about half of the St. Matt crew started building walls and assembling tresses. The construction consisted of cutting 2x4s to the right length for the walls and the sill plates. Assembling and drilling holes in the lumber for the roof tresses and bolting these members together with the steel truss plates. YES-we now have one sector wall up!!! And part of a roof truss assembled. We worked to sundown.
That evening at dinner we thanked God for all that we had accomplished. Everyone had worked hard and you could see contentment in their eyes. We also prayed that God would soothe the aching muscles and refresh us for another day’s work. Tomorrow we plan to attend church at 7:15a.m. which could last up to 3 hours. The service will be in Swahili and hopefully we will have some translation.
SATURDAY WAS AN AWESOME DAY! Keep your prayers coming…perhaps a miracle is in the working!!!!
-Grayson