Day 4/5 with Mama Byxbe
Yesterday was a long, tough day. Started off by sending Mom, Aunt, Autumn and Byambison off to Cite Soleil to work with the kids at school. They are doing crafts, music, art, Bible lesson and all kinds of things.
After they left I worked on getting the roofing crew out the door. I had to call in 50 more 2x6x16 plus 100 more 1×4′s. We are building a CRAZY amount of everything right now. It is so much fun to be a part of something HUGE that could not happen without God’s hand holding it all together.
I ended up working on finances and bill all morning. Got everything accounted for and cleaned up. We have been building so much I have had receipts stacking up. It was good that I got to take the time to clean up. As soon as I was finished with that I headed to the bank. I love the bank now… It is so much fun once you make friends. We sit in there and laugh and talk and carry on. It is a good ‘ole time. When I finished at the bank I ran to the grocery store to pick a few things and then back home for a meeting with Pastor Leon.
So I make it home and jump in the car with P. Leon. We head to Cite Soleil to talk about the next houses we are building. As we drive into Cite Soleil, little kids start screaming “STEPHEN STEPHEN!!” As we get out of the car there are even more. Pastor Leon says “It seems that you are more popular here than me… I think I love it.” As we walked around kids continued to come up and grab on me and scream my name. Pastor Leon laughed and said for the first time in 20+ years he could walk around and be normal – invisible! HAHA. He just laughed. We walked around looking at job sites for almost 4 hours.We were in one of the poorest areas of Cite Soleil walking around and I feel the same every time… “How do these people do it?” These houses are not even close to a house. Kids are so nasty in the streets. I feel so bad, I just want to knock it all down and start over.
I made it back for the last part of dinner but was worn out. A lot of things happened during our ride around.
On to today. Mama, Aunt, Autumn and Byambison packed up again and went to Cite Soleil. I had a guy coming to exchange money with me for about 45 mins. After we finished, me and Ronic went to every house we have built and gathered some important info. After lunch I typed up a letter to the director of the airport to sort out the details of our newest plan. I barely made it back in time to join P. Leon on the trip to Ibo Beach to look at the new potential job sites. It was a lot of fun.
It is always an interesting time picking out job sites for new houses. Everyone has a story or a complaint or a reason why you shouldn’t build them a house and why you should build this house over here… like I said – fun stuff.
This is our last night without any teams.. so the pace will pick up a lot tomorrow.
Go figure.. I am falling asleep while I am typing this…
I am heading to bed. Have a good night!
Always with Love
Stephen