On a rollercoaster ride!

The last three days have felt like we fit about 3 weeks into them! It's pretty much felt like a rollercoaster ride going between heart-wrenching stories and extreme poverty surrounding us to moments of joy playing with the children and seeing the gratitude and relief on the faces of those who we are building homes for. It's overwhelming to see how much need there is here and how there are virtually no opportunities for people to get ahead. They are concerned with how they will feed themselves for the day and how they will have enough to make it through the week.
 Their poverty often leads them to making poor choices - husbands and fathers abandoning their families, girls getting pregnant at very early ages and then left with no one to support them and no way to provide for themselves.
And yet we come here and they open their homes and their hearts to us. The community has come together to build these houses. And I'm not kidding. Our truck pulled up to the first building site and over 30 people from the community walked down the hill to meet us! They were ready to work! It's been amazing to see the transformation from a kind of shyness and awkwardness between the locals and our team, to working side by side and communicating as much as we can with pointing, hand gestures and the few words we know.
And of course, there's no awkwardness when it comes to the kids ministry! Pull out some sticker sheets, some suckers, or a frisbee and you've got some amigos! I will never forget the sight today at our first building site. It looked like it might be a slow start with just one little boy within sight. And then as I looked down the hill where the building was just getting underway, a group of between 30 to 40 kids came running up the hill towards us! That's when a few of us thought "what have I just sijgned up for!"  We had so much fun with these happy kids. One of the activites we had along was a sticker sheet of the Easter story. And as it happened that the pastor we are working with was there, he could share the Easter story with this group of kids!
We know we can't take away the hurt or put an end to poverty here, but we can build one house at a time. And we are seeing firsthand the difference that it makes and how it changes the lives of the families we are building for.
We have completed 8 houses in two days!! Yes, we are exhausted! But we know that we are bringing hope and bringing a message of eternal hope in Jesus Christ!
Posted by Rose Loewen - so that Valerie has a break :)