Several months ago when Jason's Father, Paul Furrow, came to visit, he spent time up at the elementary school while Jason was teaching English classes. He got it in his heart to help put new roofs on two of the buildings there. We teach our English classes in the assembly hall of the school and the roof on that building was getting dangerous. Many of the wood rafters had termite damage or were rotted and part of the roof actually had several inches of plant life growing on it. It was time for it to be fixed.
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We just enjoyed having a group come from Life Church with Jason's Dad, Paul Furrow. The big project for their trip was to get the new roofs up on two buildings at our elementary school. In preparation, men from our village pulled off the old roof and took down a few trees. Then our Honduran work crew built the rafters and prepared the buildings for the new roofs. When the group arrived we were amazed that they got both roofs up in just over a day of work. With another few days of work they put in all new wiring into the assembly hall and the kindergarten, both for lights and for a little computer lab (that we hope to put in as an upcoming project).
We are excited to have such a strong group of visionary leaders behind us and we appreciate the time they gave to come and walk our property with their own two feet.
Watch some of the construction process and hear Jason talk about our vision for this space.
Our activity center is almost finished, thanks to Faith -- both the group from Faith Church in Indiana and through the Faith that kept us building even when we didn't know if the finances would be there to keep going.
Lots of the neighborhood kids were around to watch and help. We can already sense the excitement in the community about what we're building. Many people have stopped to ask about the building and how people in the community can use it. This will be such a great space for us keep kids moving and having fun even when it's raining outside, with our 100+ inches of rainfall every year. So, thanks to everyone who helped to work on this project or who gave towards the construction costs -- we couldn't have done it without you.
P.S. We wanted to proudly announce that this is our 100th blog post for Give Hope 2 Kids! Thanks to all our readers for your continued interest in our work. During the summer months, while college classes were out, we had two guys who came to help us out. Preston and Matt were very different people from different places, but both excelled here in their time volunteering with us. They taught our English classes and ran the library during our trip to the States in June, as well as helping out our construction crew and managing other projects. They did a great job connecting with the kids of our community, keeping our educational programs running, and just helping out in general.
We want to say thanks to both of you for all the hard work you've done this summer. We appreciate you and hope to see you both down here again some time.
We wanted to show everyone the progress we've made on the Activity Center. Right now we're getting close to finishing the structure of the building, including the columns, support beam, and footers for the floor. In a few weeks time we have a group that will be coming to help us pour the floor and put the roof up.
We are excited to have this building finished. Already we have so many uses for a covered area to keep lots of people dry, whether they're reading books or kicking around a soccer ball.
We have just returned from our annual trip to the US and we're back to business here in Honduras. The next three months will be a busy time for us as we host construction groups and do a lot of building. While we were away our construction crew kept diligently working. The walls are now up for our future volunteer house and we're almost ready to put on a roof and do the wiring for this building.
Our main project at the moment is constructing our activity center. This will be a covered basketball court and will finish the community portion of our place This community complex will include the activity center, library, and playground. We are excited to have this building up, as it means we can greatly expand the our library facilities, host more community events, and of course, have more room for kids to play.
The main obstacle to realizing this goal is that in the past it has been difficult for people to obtain government permits to cut the wood they've grown. Several months ago, we became aware of a new move in Honduras to give incentives to people who have planted tropical hardwood trees, now that people are committing themselves to reforestation. We jumped on the opportunity and joined a USAID program which provides free permits to a limited number of hardwood plantations that are already underway. This will save our ministry thousands of dollars and means that we can grow with our trees into future self-sustainability.
We often struggle with how long we’ve waited for the government's permission to take in children and this reminds us to look at the great number of positive things happening as a result of our ministry. In the past couple of years we've made big strides in the construction and development of our facility, which will propel us into a great future. Already we’re touching the lives of the children in our community, through the classes we teach in our local school, as well as our weekly library activities. And, as you can see in the above photo, our two-year-old trees are growing tall and strong. Some are already 14' tall and have a 6" diameter and speak of the great future to come. |
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