A City Not Forgotten: Day 3 - Drywall and Dedications

Day 3 (Wednesday) is another day with lots of little jobs and some more downtime, but it's so much fun to put the final touches on a house! Day 3 is typically the day that you do drywall and stucco, touch up the paint on the trim, clean all of the construction stuff out of the house, do a final tool inventory and more importantly, dedicate the house and give possession to the family.

Rain on Tuesday set a couple of the teams back because of insulation that was getting wet, so FSU Team 1 and MTU both had longer days to get everything done. CMU stepped it up and not only finished first, but also came back to the SHOC and helped clean, pack the kitchen, make lunches for today and helped make dinner. They were incredible servants and everyone appreciated their willingness to help out when dinner was ready as the last team walked through the door.

For many of our students, the dedication is the part that stood out for them the most. They were able to tell the family (through translators) how much they love and care for the families and the pastors told the teams about the impact that this house will have for not only the family, but also on the neighborhoods around them. As part of the dedication service, students who went above and beyond on the work site were chosen to give the family a Spanish Bible (that the whole team signed), the keys to the front door and a plaque to nail above the door. To end the time, the team prays over the family and the house before saying their goodbyes to the family. It's an emotional day because even though you only met this family on Monday, you have become so invested in their lives and in their situation, it's hard to leave.

We ended the day with a celebration (aka clean out the fridge and eat everything we can't take back across the border) dinner, an awesome worship time (seriously, these students have great voices and the praise team has been doing SO well!), some small group time to talk about the day and dessert. Some students stayed up late to play a crazy game of euchre, but the rest of us went to bed early for a 5:45a wake up call this morning.