Update

Day 4 – New Years Eve
A rain free day. Good working conditions in the morning with some cloud cover and the hint of a breeze allowed us to really push on and get many bricks laid. Once Roger finished the welding of the tie rods for the roof he started working on the door frames.. He and Sandra left us for a while in the afternoon to visit a boy they have been sponsoring. The rest of us continued laying bricks and moving scaffolding. Rodney and Adam prepared a couple of the window sills and finished them off very nicely.
After dinner we gathered up some of the fun stuff we had for the children and went back over to the village to celebrate the New Year with them. We took glow bracelets and party poppers and lollipops and bought sodas for everyone. There was lots of laughter and singing and many photos taken. It was a real treat for us, and just a chance to consider how different this new year is to the last one for these children. I don't think too many of us actually stayed up to see the new year in, though we were able to share it with some rowdy locals and others at the base.

Day 5 – New Years Day (Friday)
We're going out for dinner tonight! Much of the morning conversation centered on what we might be able to have for dinner tonight at Two Friends. We are still getting over the fish from Wednesday – even though only a few of us actually tried any. The conversation was a good distraction, and with a short spurt of a little over an hour after lunch (in increasingly steady rain) we finally laid the last of the external bricks on the Admin block. So as I write this we are all getting 'dolled up' for a night out.

The dinner at 'Two Friends' was all we had hoped it would be. Lovely food in a lovely setting and a chance to relax and chill out together for a while. We must do it again some time soon.

Day 6 – Saturday
Once again it had rained quite heavily during the night making our work site very sticky. Despite this we were very productive, finishing off several of the internal walls and repairing another which had 'shifted' a little since being erected by the previous team. The children did not seem quite as active today, and chatting with Ivan later, he explained that the mother of some of the children in the village who is very sick and in need of an operation and he asked us to pray for her, so please join us in that.
We had the afternoon off to relax around home, nothing planned, just taking the opportunity to clean up, read, talk, walk, whatever.