Week 9 provided our group with its first full house of 12 people. This included three 19 year old college kids that kept us bent over laughing. All the usual evening games took on an energy that had a life of its own. If you get a chance to meet Brian, I recommend that you DON'T ask him to play the color game with you!

Things are wrapping up fast and furious on the construction side here.

The siding is going on, unfortunately with some help we have had to hire to get it done. It has taken us days to cut and rivet the flashing pieces, fab up the gutters and soffits and cue it all up for attachment.

Stucco accent pieces have been cut and coated, hoping for a couple of dry days to install them.

The water tank got hoisted up onto the 18' tower. Now that was an experience. We had roped it up there relatively easily, but then we had to get it turned upright from being on its side. As we were about to move the scaffolding over to get better access, along came Boss Rena. He, and 3 other local guys on site scampered up the tower and just muscled it upright into place in seconds. Sheer force of will and using your head to stop the tank from flipping off the tower does it I guess.

We had our first, and probably only, "finish early day" with the Week 9 team.
On Tuesday we poured a concrete path/swale 6' wide by 130' all the way around 3 sides of the building to direct the rain water to the 2 waterfalls. It was all mixed in wheelbarrows and we finished at 3:30 pm. That was a big victory and it didn't rain all day.

Block walls of the chicken coop are nearly done and the concrete floor got poured.

We started framing the steel stud wall partitions inside. We will not be hanging the drywall since they want more time to detail out their use of the spaces. Kathi also has someone who is willing to outfit the clinic, so they will decide the layout of things.  The local women who make the beaded jewelry can hardly wait to use their new workshop in a week. Now that micro finance business can grow to serve substantially more women.

Week 10 arrives and that includes Faith who will cook for us!!! I can't tell you how happy I am about that....grateful would be the understatement of the year.

7 days left in Haiti. It doesn't even seem real. Not until you see the sad eyes of those who have shared these months of their lives with us.

Rome

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