The sun was out for our entire last day of work. We shared a prayer of gratitude with Cherry, who thanked us for 'building their home and their life'. It was a beautiful moment and as her voice quivered we all felt the reason why we were here. We are not building Cherry's life, her drive and love of her family is doing that, but we are helping. We are doing a small part to help her reach her dream, a home for her family.
We began as per usual, in the rock pile with shovels and bags. This time, we had to bring the gravel to a different foundation, across Mud Lake. They had built a brick walkway up to both sides of the water, but kept it open so trucks could drive through. We decided to build a bridge across so that we didn't have to walk all the way around with the cart. Good thing too, because after we finished with our gravel bridge, we realized that the cart was broken anyway. So we mobilized and began hauling bags of gravel.
The pile of gravel (that did not exist) at the beginning of the day
George was a pioneer in the gravel bag carrying. He started with the bags on his shoulder like the REAL MEN. We all tried it out, and it's actually not too hard because the bags are closer to your center of gravity. Once the kids saw us carrying the bags, the immediately wanted to try. We tried and tried to distract them and take the bags but they were so into it. We started giving them 'superman rides' on the way back to the rock pile, which definitely did not make them want to leave, so we created a 'kid bag' with 2 scoops and an 'adult bag' with 4 scoops so everyone was happy. I may have taken a kid bag once or twice, shhhhh. The least we could do was reward them with Popsicles when we were done, thanks to Leon.
We broke for our last lunch and introduced jumping photos to the group. The first one is Cassandra and my demonstration... They picked it up pretty quick, huh?
One of the kids makes this pic of Joan so hip and edgy, with the 'I'm handsome' pose...
Everyone stopped work at 2:00 for our dedication and prayer. Cherry's daughter passed out adorable flowers she made and Cherry gave us a very emotional expression of gratitude that, if I could sum up this trip in a moment, was the reason we were all here. It was so heartfelt, sincere, and so thankful that we came all this way to build a home for her. We thanked everyone, Jun, the workers, the kids for helping, and the whole team that collaborated for these two weeks. It was hard to say goodbye, but we all knew that we would be back on Friday.
George and I squished into a motorcycle tricycle and took the Jeepney called 'Christ the Conquerer' home. George said that he liked the feeling of being a rockstar, which is just how we felt when all of the children were walking us to the motorcycle stop. What a farewell that was. By the way, I have not yet seen one Jeepney with any dashboard gage that works. I think they are just for show.
And finally at dinner, we organized all the photos for our pins. Joan had the awesome idea to make all the kids buttons with their pictures on it. We passed a cart in the mall and went back to get about 30 buttons made. It was quite an adventure. Once the mall closed and the lights were turning off, after taking photos with Marcos, after packing up all his other jobs so he could focus on ours, we got our buttons, and they look great. We can't wait to see the kids' faces! Leon also got the kids a couple basketballs and the team sprung for 2 wheelbarrows for the workers.
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