After an amazing weekend of meeting the Convoy team, touring their distribution center, and getting to see some of the beautiful scenery in this country -the team woke up Monday morning ready to get to work!
Breakfast was at 6:45 sharp… Even though that was extremely early for most, everyone made it on time, which was the first miracle of the day! 😉 There were others and I’m excited to share those with you and to commemorate them in this blog -as our goal is to make some memories while we make a difference!
To start our day, we nourished our bodies with some delicious local cuisine and our souls with prayer and some encouragement from Cooper who led us in our devotional. There was a sense of excitement that you could feel around the breakfast table and in the bus ride to Fountain of Life Church as this moment was months in the making.
Fundraising, planning, meetings, spinning wheels and pies in the face followed by red eye flights, flying over oceans, bus rides and jet lag etc etc …all for the chance to do the work we started today!
Convoy of Hope sets the bar for loving people by meeting needs. They wisely ask the many communities they serve (all around the world) what it is they need. Oftentimes it’s very different from what we would assume or guess. For example: Fountain of Life Church serves an entire community and has no permanent bathroom and nowhere for people to wash their hands, so they asked Convoy to help solve this problem. This is much more than convenience… its directly connected to health, sanitation, and hygiene. Here in Central America, the church helps to educate the importance of these things to the children and families in the communities they serve
We assisted the construction crew with the foundation work for these bathrooms… While they framed the rebar support structures, we moved very large piles of soil and gravel from the front of the church where the dump trucks could access, to the back of the church property where the bathrooms are being constructed. This required just under 100 wheelbarrow trips across the property in high temperatures and high humidity! We also helped mix the concrete with the sand and gravel before delivering this mixture into the footings via 5 gal buckets.
This was hard but rewarding work! Each of us had to dig deep but every single team member contributed in ways that made an impact.
Towards the end of the work day, we were approached by a man named Manuel that lived in the community we were serving. He saw us working and wanted to share his heart with us. Tears filled eyes as he spoke of his time in this country’s military. He shared many stories and in them you could hear both a deep sense of pride and deep sadness for what he saw and experienced… He was also deeply grateful to America for what he considered our help when he was younger. He brought us a plate of food as a way to say thank you for the work we were doing. While we didn’t eat the food, we accepted it and recognized the weight of this gesture.
After listening to Manuel’s stories and doing our best to encourage him, we were able to pray with him and speak some life into the broken parts of his heart that he shared with us so vulnerably.
To end the day, we spent some time on the patio of the hotel. There we ate dinner, talked about God moments that we experienced, and then encouraged each other with “shout outs” to recognize the gifts and efforts of our team members. Everyone had something powerful to say about a moment they shared with God or a team member… or both!
D Gluck brought his guitar and we capped a long and productive day with some songs we sang by the pool…our Convoy contact Katie and Bianca’s tia ( who joined us for dinner ) also joined in on the fun and led some worship songs.
We are looking forward to getting some rest and to what tomorrow will bring! – Jake
