Wonderful Wednesday

Today was a great day on the construction site. We completed excavation and installation of rebar on all 14 holes around the perimeter of the building. There are an additional 7 down the center of the interior where sledge hammering and digging are still taking place.

The arrival yesterday of 24 yards of sand and rock as well as 200 sacks of concrete (weighing 110 lbs each) along with a cement mixer meant today was the start of mixing, transporting and pouring (all by hand) nearly 40 yards of concrete. We started mixing around 9am when the heat and humidity was just ramping up and by lunch time we filled 6 massive trenches with 4 yards of concrete each. The heat again took a toll on one of our team members and he was not able to return later during the day or join us for dinner. He is resting comfortably, please pray for him.

The late afternoon sun tends not to be as intense as the middle of the day. We were able to fill 4 more holes for a total of 10 for the day. This may not sound like much but some quick math may put this into perspective:

190 bags of cement for a total weight of 20,900 lbs all lifted by hand one bag at a time into the hopper.
1,560 3 gallon buckets of rock all shoveled, lifted and placed in the hopper by hand.
960 3 gallon buckets of sand, each shoveled, lifted and placed into the hopper one at a time, by hand.

All in all we moved 160,000 lbs of material today, and we are only half way finished The fact that we are still awake and able to type legibly for tonight’s blog entry is a minor miracle.

We ended the day with a nice dinner at the home of another missionary couple who are based in Togo and live on campus. We haven’t had time to explore Lome or Togo yet due to our intense work schedule. We are planning time off campus Saturday and Sunday so hope to share some photos from that.

We would greatly appreciate any comments or questions you may have for us or any of the other team members. Thank you for following our blog. We hope you are enjoying it. Here are some photos from today.