Heavy Metal

This blog is taken, with permission :), thanks Brett, from the New Life blog. Enjoy!!!

Well, this post is from Brett today, not Brian. No reason other than Pastor Brian smells bad after a long day washing everyone's clothes....seriously.....and so I jokingly said, "I'll write it" and he said "Okay" and went off to the showers. So here we go.

We woke up in the morning to wonderful sounds of the man yelling, "Huevos, Huevos, Pinas y Pipas", and the wonderful smells of breakfast which happened to be orange whole wheat pancakes and an array of fresh mangoes and pineapple and coffee like you would not imagine which is drank morning, noon and night. After breakfast and a short discussion about the gospel, Pastor Brian tells us that it is laundry day and graciously volunteers to do the laundry for everyone. We all brought him our dirty smelly clothes and I even found some socks that I put outside to dry after they got wet the day before and they were so stiff that I could hold them sideways and they did not droop down. YUCK. So I handed them to Brian :)

As Brian, our mommy for the day, washed our clothes (have I mentioned that?), we got ready for the work of the day which involved children's ministry for some and and for others, putting the inside and outside walls on the house as well as the roofing. We were like ants coming in and out of Yogi Bear's picinic basket as we carried carefully formed yellow sections of wall and loading them on a truck and then unloading them on the work site while Carlos El Guapo Santana led the way. We got them fastened to the floor amidst the differing and almost arguing cries of 4 different men--imagine that ladies--telling each other what to do, "Yes the top is flush.....No! Bring it up a hair......Back some......Aye Aye Aye loco gringos......"

Then came the aforementioned "heavy metal" which is not slang for the type of music Mama Brian was listening to as he carefully added laundry detergent to our clothes. It started with Steve who is one of the workers here, who is a gringo himself and affectionately known to the locals as either "Shaggy" or "estiff". Steve saw me, Brett, standing around not doing much and he told me we were going to get the roofing. I knew it was sheet metal but I did not know we were going to tie 4 sheets of it together and carry it down the crazy, uneven, sometimes wet, half tiled, steps to get to the work site. He also so kindly told me that every time he works with the roofing he usually cuts himself and that he had seen someone nearly cut their hand off with it. So we carefully rolled up about 4 sheets (8'x3') at a time which weighed over a hundred pounds and went down the stairs. We had taken about 3 trips with the same type of bundle, when out of nowhere, there stood Mama Brian who had come out of the laundry room to help carry sheet metal. Could he? Should he? Would he? HE DID!!!!!!

So with sheet metal added to the roof....wait wait wait, there were no injuries from the sheet metal.....until I was done and sat on top of a pile of old ceramic roofing and one of them broke and took a small chunk out of the skin on my right calf. Its fine though.

The work for the day was done around 5 and as we do every day, we take off our shoes and a few of us sit in Harry's favorite leather Costa Rican rocking chairs until it is our turn in the shower.

So as the day winds down, some of us decide to go to a Bible study in a yellow house which had been built for someone in the community by Harvest Hands. The Bible study was led by Luis, who has been helping with the construction all week and considers himself to have been called by God to be an evangelist, which he is. We sat for 2 hours reading scripture and encouraging a few of the local people who were with us. Lisa translated EVERYTHING for 2 hours into English as Luis shared the gospel and other words from God to all of us in Spanish. It was amazing how God orchestrated others in the group to share Scripture as well as just sit and listen to the stories of God working in their lives.

One small highlight of the Bible study is when I sat down next to a little girl on the couch and she pointed at my shirt seemingly trying to see what the design was on it, so I showed her and made probably what looked to her like some crazy gringo motion with my arms as if to say, "I don't know what it is either." and then she laughed and pointed again, and it was A SPIDER on my shirt and I jumped up and wiped it off and then it ended up on the little girl and she wiped it off on to the floor and we didn't see it again. I hate spiders.....ask my wife at church.

Well, I hope that was not too much about me, but I really saw how God can use such a diverse group of people who all love him to get the work of sharing the gospel accomplished AND how he can use so many different people to build a house.

Even though there are times here when we smell the aromas of food being cooked all around the local city and there are times when we cross over a bridge and smell the horrific smells of a trash and sewer filled river flowing through that same town, we can know that the body of Christ which is made up of gringos from Ohio and ticos from Los Anonos is a fragrant aroma to God as we are following him and walking in love, together

Until tomorrow's blog....hasta luego