Day Five

After another wonderfully beautiful Mass and delicious breakfast, we hit the ground running and got straight to work. Still broken into multiple teams, most of the missionaries converged on the Holy Emmanuel site. We are racing the clock to try and get this community center finished. 

The siding team surveying the scene while awaiting boards to put up. We’re told they were actually watching a family of ducks waddling around on the other side of the greenery. 

The on-the-ground half of the siding team working hard to cut the pieces down to size. 

Our “expert” know-how and ingenuity of using a cooler, generator and long board for a cutting table proved to be successful! 

Looking good ladies! Working hard! 

Some of the men focusing on finishing the walls to enable siding and roofing to get up. 

We discovered the saw worked better with more weight on the long end of the boards. These women know how to get it done! 

Final look for today. We’re one board shy of having the first wall complete. Tomorrow, we hope to get all the siding up, roofing laid and the door and windows installed. 

We likely won’t have time to get the stairs complete. If that be the case, a local building crew will finish for us. 

Meanwhile, our Belama team has all but completed their house! They hope to finish building a bunk bed tomorrow before heading over to the Holy Emmanuel site.  

This piece was an addition to a pre-existing structure. 

There are two other homes (apartments) with bathrooms that house two families now, and a shared kitchen amongst them all. Each piece is a different shade of blue, to distinguish the different dwellings while still tying them together.

Our priestly contact, Fr. Scott, will come by both construction sites tomorrow to bless them. 

After lunch, our missionaries had the chance to head over to Altun Ha, a Mayan ruins site. 

Diagram of the layout of the temples/tombs, with a little background. 

Aerial view of the ruins. 

This depiction of the “sun god” is carved into the lower portion of the biggest tomb/temple. 

The main temple, B4 on the above diagram. All the shopping vendors and employees refer to it as “B4.”

These specks of people walking around are some of our missionaries as seen from A6. 

Missionaries atop A6, looking down on the rest. 

This small cafe outside the ruins provided a show, with a snake charmer and his Boa. 

One of our missionaries even got in on the action! 

The end of the night found us at a local eatery enjoying copious amounts Chinese food. Delicious! 

As we look ahead to our last work day, we ask for prayers from all of you reading and following our journey…

We ask God for the energy, drive and ability to complete our work as we would like, in the time we have. 

We come in agreement with His will that we may leave this place a little brighter than it was when we first arrived. 

Come, Holy Spirit and fill us with the Grace we need to accomplish our mission. 

In Jesus’ name we pray, 

AMEN.