August 2005 Report & Photos

August 2005 report

Dear Friends,

We are glad to be back from Lajas. It was a great blessing having

Phil, Vernon, and Michael come from Tasmania to help build the house in Lajas. See the 3 amigos below...

It was a very trying drive out to Lajas with a very full load. We got

seriously stuck on a very muddy slippery hill, but amazingly the Lord

seemed to get us out of the mud and up the hill. Later we were amazed, as

humanly speaking, we shouldn't have been able to. Below is not the

hill!!!

We spent 8 days in Lajas and achieved all and more than what we had

originally estimated. All 3 guys had experience in building their own

homes and Vernon especially in brick laying.

The first day we built the rock footings...

and then the following days, we laid mud bricks. Here's the first

brick...

We framed in the windows and door and there was much digging to get the

floors level.

Here's the brick we were looking for...

The highlight was heading off into the mountains to get a ridge pole.

This achieved, it was a gigantic effort to get it up in place. Needless

to say it took much planning and setting up to get a 500kg ridge pole up

on top of the house.

We really needed it to fall uphill which was a bit of an effort.

and then finally...

It was a lot of fun working together and a good time of fellowship. The

greatest thing is that folk from Tasmania, especially our home church,

got to see the work first hand. They were able to see how the Tepehuan

lived and to taste their food, and also to experience the difficulties

of traveling into the village. A sad moment for us all was when we

heard of the death of a Tepehuan lady, whom Anne Marie and I knew

personally. Her name is Esmeralda and she fell 400 metres down a cliff

to her death. Ironically she is the mother of the young girl "Anna" who

fell from a cliff last year, and we brought her into Durango for

hospital treatment. With the death of the mother, and the murder of the

father some years ago, this now leaves Juan, the grandfather, with three

young girls to take care of. As adult Tepehuan are like mountain goats

in the mountains, and it is most unusual that one would fall, many

believe she was pushed due to a long line of revenge murders running in

the family. Who knows??? All we know is that another Tepehuan dies

without Christ.

We had planned to stay out in Lajas a day longer, but Joseph ate some

yogurt that had been sitting out on the table way to long. We all

thought the container was empty and paid it little heed. Joseph, however,

found that it had a small amount in it and unbeknownst to us, emptied it

on his cereal. About 1:30pm, he began to vomit and also developed

diarrhea, it became so bad that we could see he would get seriously

dehydrated if it continued. It seemed not to be letting up, and the

medication we gave him wasn't helping, hence we decided it would be best to pack up and leave for Durango. We left Lajas around 6:00pm and drove through the night arriving in Durango around 5:00am. Joseph recovered and needed no further medical attention. Needless to say we were all shot, and it took a few days to recover.

We have another trip planned for mid September with Brent and John who

accompanied me a few months back. We hope to frame the roof and put on

the tin. We will drywall the inside, build the interior walls and fit

the windows and doors. Lord willing, if we can find a transport company

that would be willing to take gravel and sand out to Lajas, we could

also pour the floors. We have ordered some solar panels and so things

are on the go for getting ready to be able to live in Lajas full time.

Our coworkers Barry and Candy Wingo, are scheduled to arrive in a little

over a week, and so that will be a great help and we are looking forward

to being a team again.

Anne Marie and I and the kids will be heading out to Lajas again on

Saturday. We'll be taking a load of building materials out but we will