Connecting and Bonding

By Josh Gross

IMG_4334Today was a big day! We started off our day by going back to the Faith Village site and helping with construction on the children’s homes. The workers at the Faith Village site were the same men that we had been working with on Eric’s house yesterday. Today, we gave them some multi-tools that we had brought in our team bags. We helped them mix and pour the concrete for the flooring in the house. Thankfully, the water for the concrete was much closer than it was yesterday. The whole team took turns scooping the concrete into buckets and carrying them into the house. . Even without all of Maxx and Luke’s help, we all still got dirty and sweaty, but it felt really good to be working and to help. We worked until about 1 and then went to eat lunch.

We ate lunch outside and then rested in the shade after working all morning in the heat. Then Luke, Jasmine, and I went and continued teaching the girls guitar lessons while the rest of the team poured concrete for the back patio. This was our third day teaching guitar with this group of girls. Trying to give a guitar lesson to a group of people who don’t understand you and who you can’t understand is…. interesting. However, it was a really fun experience and it was awesome to see their faces light up when they strummed a chord and it sounded good. After we had finished up the lessons, Jacob and a Rwandan girl had a drum off. They each played beats from their respective countries and tried to learn the other person’s beat. It was a ton of fun to watch and we all had a great time!

IMG_4371

For our ride home, we all piled into the compact SUVs. Imagine like a Jeep Cherokee with side-facing bench seats in the back so that the whole vehicle can hold ten people. And then we packed even more people into it. It was a long hour home, but we were all really feeling the team unity. Back at the house, we had another awesome night of prayer and worship where we prayed over people and sang some awesome worship songs. After that, some people went to bed and others played Skip-Bo until late at night.

You can also see trip updates on New Mercies’ Facebook page – updates will appear in your newsfeed if you “like” the page.