Final night!

We finally made it to our hotel in Villahermosa after a detour from our uninformed driver. It took about 30 minutes longer than it should.

We ate dinner and had worship. Afterwards, we had our final meeting and discussed the early morning tomorrow.

Since Eliel and Antigoni were late, they had to do the chicken dance! Antigoni had to teach Eliel and it was entertaining!

We are having our final Uno game as is our tradition. We pray for a safe flight tomorrow and return home.
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A rainy start in Palenque

We were greeted with rain this morning when we woke up. The Weather Channel is NOT accurate for Mexico (and neither is Accuweather)! It said there was only a 30 percent chance of rain starting at 10 am.

Regardless, we got a good early start to the day with our tour guides. We walked through Palenque in the rain (my favorite thing!). Everyone enjoyed it, in spite of the rain. One of our groups met a VERY interesting character on the tour. She was a little crazy and had been living there for two months. She had too many mushrooms one day and was walking around naked. Eliel got a picture with his new friend we will post when we get back!

After we got done with the museum and the gift shop, we are headed to Agua Azul and we hope for no rain!
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Maranatha Idol continued

Since we had a few team members lat Friday morning, we had a great performance of YMCA by Bobby, Antigoni, David and Ashley. We will post video when we get back. Well worth watching!
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Agua Azul

The group had a great time in Agua Azul. We made great time getting there. You can see the pictures of the waterfalls--there are seven of them.

Cesar and Cole got in the water. You can see the picture I took of Cole jumping off of a rope into the water. If it was warmer, we would have had a lot more join them.

Everyone got a good chance for shopping and food. We are now headed back to villahermosa for the evening.
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Fair at Palenque

They were having a fair and festival in Palenque with some dancers. A couple of our group joined in!
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Flav's new glasses

With his glasses and hard hat, claudell looks like Flava Flav. He found some new glasses tonight!
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Nacho Carne

No words necessary.......

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On the road to Palenque

After a long week (or two for some of us) of work, we are on the way to Palenque for our excursion. We are looking forward to warm showers at last!

As you can see, we have a few tired members enjoying a comfortable bus!
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Church service in Ixhuatan

We are leaving the church in Ixhuatan after a very nice church service. We had a Sabbath School led by Neale and Pastor Billy had the worship message.

Cesar translated for us again and has gone above and beyond the call of duty with that this week.

The members gave each of us a keychain and a toy as a token of their gratitude. It is very touching because it is an expense they didn't have to go to and that they don't have to give. We will try to take up an offering for chairs to send to them.

As always, a very touching goodbye with lots of pictures and smiles!

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Romeo and Juliet

We are imposing penalties for those who are late to the bus. Eric and Mayra were late today so they had to renact Romeo and Juliet for us! Well done
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Ray on the way to work

No other description necessary.....

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Hello and goodbye

We said goodbye to the first week team. After they dropped the six of us staying for both weeks at the campground, they headed to Palenque for their excursion.

The second week team arrived on Friday night--except for Cole and Charlene. They arrived late Saturday night. So, we have our full team and our headed to the job site.

We did our typical introductions and orientation last night. This group is a little different than most in that all but one are from Houston. So, wee have less getting to know you than usual.

The campgrounds are beautiful. We have a river running through it and we hear the water all night. We will not have many comforts this week (no mirrors, hot water, etc), but we all have the right attitude to start out!
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We got done with the church today! We got all the block done and the roof on. We will put the ridge cap, steeple and sign on tomorrow and get the church ready for Sabbath tomorrow. Awesome job by the entire team!
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(Post for Wednesday, March 17, 2010)

A very muddy day. It rained all day, but we got done with quite a bit. We got done with all the side walls, tore the scaffolds down and set up for the end walls. We got all done with 15 on the front and almost in the back.

As long as it doesn't rain tomorrow, we should be able to get done with all the block and maybe all the roof. Very pleased with what we got done especially considering the rain.
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(For Tuesday, March 16, 2010)

 

Got done with 11 courses minus one block and got half poured.  Team is working well and everyone has been on-time--no embarrassing skits (which people have to do when they are late to the bus)--unfortunately.

 

(For Wednesday, March 17, 2010 - Morning)

 

Last night--played Mafia and had fun.  However, it rained ALL night and is drizzling now.  We pray that it slows to a light drizzle so we can work.  There was a waterfall crossing the road this morning that we had to drive through!  The bus also got stuck as it let us out so we pray it gets unstuck.

 

Update on the above status.......It rained lightly all morning, but we were able to work.  It is slower with the weather, but we are thankful to be able to push through it.

(Post for Monday, March 15, 2010)

 

Another successful day!  We got the sixth course completed along with the re-bar and cement/grout pouring and part way through the seventh course.  (Rachael's note:  Sorry there isn't more information.  He only had a couple minutes of cellular signal to give me an update.)

(Post for Sunday, March 14, 2010)

 

We had a good first day.  We got the steel structure up by 1 pm -- minus 3 pieces that were missing that we will install tomorrow.  We also got all of the first course and about 30% of the second course completed. 

 

It was a good day considering we have a lot of first-timers on the crew.  It was fairly hot today, so we have a few folks suffering from sunburn and one with an upset stomach.  Hopefully a nice cold shower will solve that!

(For March 15th via Rachael - Greg cannot send nor receive email this week)

 

We said goodbye to the first week team.  after they dropped the six of us staying for both weeks at the campground, they headed to Palenque for their excursion.  (Rachael's note:  The first weeks team made it safely back to the States today - thanks for all your prayers!)

 

The second week team arrived on Friday night--except for Cole and Charlene.  They arrived late Saturday night.  So, we have our full team and are headed to the job site.

 

We did our typical introductions and orientation last night.  This group is a little different than most in that all but one are from Houston.  So, we have less getting to know you than usual.

 

The campgrounds are beautiful.  We have a river running through it and we hear the water all night.  We will not have many comforts this week (no mirrors, hot water, etc.), but we all have the right attitude to start out!

Wonderful church service!

We are on our way back from the first church service in the new church in Liquidambar!

As you can see from the picture, it was filled to capacity! When we got there, we found out we were responsible for worship! So, Tito put a GREAT sermon together in 30 minutes, Doris and Tanika led song service, Renee and the VBS team led the children in the VBS songs and Gino had scripture.

After Tito's sermon, we presented Ramiro (the Elder) and Maggie a team shirt for their help during the week. We always have a couple of extra shirts for some of the church members that help out. Ramiro then thanked us for what we did. It was very touching.

The Sabbath where we dedicate the church is always moving and a very tearful goodbye. We are sad to go, but will keep them in our hearts always.

We head back to the University for our final meal there and then head to the excursion (or the second week of work for 6 of us). We pray that Bobby, Glenn and Thelma are feeling better. They were not able to make it today because they are a little under the weather.
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A rainy day in Buena Vista Coracol

We had a great, but wet day in Buena Vista Coracol. 10 of us went there first thing to build the one day church. We got the fram up in 3 hours and started on the roof at about 1 pm.

It was a beautiful day in the morning, but during lunch, a fog rolled in quick and the rain came shortly thereafter--a cold rain! We worked (slowly) through the rain and got one half of the roofing done. That took much longer than it normally would. Because of the rain, we couldn't walk on the roof. One of the Maranatha guys had to tie himself to a rope and crawl on the roof! It took over two hours just for that side.

The maranatha guys correctly said we shouldn't start the other side if we couldn't finish because it wouldn't hold without being complete. So, we helped clean up and left without it being finished. We are dissapointed, but know there is a reason for the rain!

The rest of the group stayed in Liquidambar and did a few other things like putting the roofcap, sign and steeple on. They also cleaned the church and put up pews for church tomorrow.

One of the deacons had wanted to play basketball with us since we visited with them in June. So, we had four of our team play against them today after they got done! It was a lot of fun, even though we beat them two games to none.

Our medical and dental had a very busy day as well, even though they had to wrap up early to pack up their equipment.

VBS had about 70 kids today as well. School wasn't in full session today either.

We are headed back to shower and have dinner--our last dinner and worship at the university.
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