Walls

Yet again, everyone should be quite proud of the teens from St. Francis.

Most of the teens spend their mornings here in the classrooms. These rooms will have 20-35 children, who, despite being in the same grade, will range in age up to three years. Those in the upper grade have put together English lessons for the kids. Those in the nursery find themselves busy helping the children learn to count, learn about those in public service roles (firemen, policemen, doctors, nurses, etc.), and making sure that the young children eat every bit of the nutritious meal provided (often their only full meal of the day).

The teens are showing great compassion, patience, and enthusiasm despite residual tiredness from their busy afternoons of work. Many of our youth also have impromptu Spanish lessons each night to gain a better grasp of vocabulary to help them in the classroom. Combine this with their love of Bananagrams and our youth are working hard on their language skills!

Expert brick layers

During the afternoon, the teens gathered again to work on various construction projects. Today mostly revolved around laying the cinderblock wall around parts of the stairway to the new second floor classrooms. This sounds quite simple. Deceptively simple. In order to do this, we first have to mix the cement - sifting two buckets of sand, add in one bucket of cement mix, mix the two together by shoveling, add water, and mix. It takes a while and it requires strength and endurance as the cement gets heavy in the final rounds of adding water. The cement is then loaded into the buckets and taken to those who are laying the bricks. A second mixture of a finer cement was made to use in the final covering of parts of each classroom entryway.

Cleaning cement off of shovels has become a speciality.

The teens are enjoying a well deserved rest right now before dinner. However, we will be practicing our show later tonight. At the farewell assembly tomorrow the teens will have an act.

In our reflection this morning, the teens were asked to start reflecting on what they have learned and what they are taking home from this trip. Simple questions to ask, but as the lengthy discussions and prayers each night show, the teens are finding these new experiences challenging, full of grace, and life-chaging.