Week 13

Well we've had a nice week. Joel started out the week concentrating on the shower upstairs. The third floor of the lodge has 2 rows of bunk beds and a shower room and a bathroom. The shower floor has been leaking for awhile, since we've been here anyways, and whenever people stay up there and use it there's a huge puddle in the 2nd floor boys bathroom. Here's what it looked like before, not that it was bad, the leak just needed to be fixed:

Sorry the pictures are really bad, we're using our video camera for pictures lol.  Anyways he tore out the tile and shower floor and moved the plastic floor against the wall. Then he put up a new wall on the left side and covered all the walls with vapor barrier:

He put cement board over the vapor barrier and covered that with brown polymer grout. The floor in front of the shower was leaking too so he poured a little cement pad and put a drain in the middle. Then some stained wood to hold up the shower curtain and new paint and it's a beautiful functioning shower!

The pictures don't do it justice, it's really pretty :)  

He also made a boat ramp for the small aluminum boat. This makes it take like 5 minutes to get in the water if we see birds/fish out there or for when people come here to fish. He's going to paint it yet but here it is:

So the boat just rolls right down the ramp and is super easy to pull back up.

In his spare time (lol) Joel's been prepping the lodge for painting! We went to Dangriga this week and got paint (and visa's and groceries and supplies and car parts etc.) so we could start working on it. A big problem was the windows on the lodge condensate and drip down the wood so there's mold under all the windows. He made flashings under the windows so the moisture won't drip any more and bleached and cleaned the wood underneath. Here's what they looked like:

  

He made a break to bend all the metal the right way:

Then here's them installed under the windows:

So the front of the lodge was all prepped so we started painting!  Basil and Vera let us pick out the color (this was rather stressful lol, especially since when we went to get the paint all they had were primary colors....ok I'm exagerrating a little but pretty much there were light and dark of each color and nothing in the middle) so you'll have to stay tuned next week to see the color we ended up with!

Joel went to bible study on Wednesday and there were a lot of people like 20, that is so cool. He is really enjoying getting to know people and share in their lives and walks with the Lord. Pray that people continue to come and encourage and pray for each other.  

The dogs are doing great, if you read last week they had an encounter with a wild animal that left them pretty tore up but they are back to normal and gaining weight again :)  And hopefully they learned not to do that again!

Sage's baby chicks are doing great too, the one loves her and climbs up on her shoulder when she plays with them, it's really cute.  

Joel has had the chance to go fishing a couple times this week so we have some fish for meals which is great.  Thanks to the new ramp it's even easier when people from the village come out to fish for them all to just get in the boat and go. 

We have been talking lately about how much we've learned since we got here. I am so thankful for the opportunity to live here. We get to spend time every morning in the Word. We are together as a family almost all the time. We have endless opportunities to teach Sage. Sage and I go for walks on the beach whenever the weather permits and discover new things, make stuff out of nothing, learn about sea life, the things that wash up on the beach are all potential toys. We'll discover something then go google it to see where it came from and what it is. I am continually amazed at God's creation. The way a coconut can drift out in the ocean and grow wherever it comes to shore, same with all kinds of seeds and nuts...Not to mention what we're learning about living with less, making things stretch, fixing things when they are broken instead of throwing them away. Appreciating things like long showers, being away from bugs (even if for a few hours), food....I could go on and on. I don't get to spend a lot of time with other people right now being at the base all the time so I try and make the most of any opportunity to talk with people and learn from them. It makes me appreciate that even more too. I've learned more about cooking, preserving, using every part of everything for something, buying in bulk, things like that. I believe that is exactly why God gave us the gift of creativity - to make things out of nothing when you're low on food or finances or materials or toys or whatever. There are endless ways to use that creativity!