Thursday, June 10, 2010

Return to Oz

In the last few days in Timor we had to finalise a number of jobs in order to keep projects running while we were away.  Cynthia has been working on a women's project which is looking great and she has begun a trial with a number of Timorese ladies.  Its a woman's thing so she doesn't want to go into detail here.  Two days before leaving we got to meet an American named Lon.  He flew in especially to take the Los Palos project from its foundations up to the walls completed.  He seems like a great guy with a calm composure.  He's had experience in Guatamala with building techniques in poor countries.  I think he's got what it takes to do the job.  We do not have time to inspect it together due to the remote location of the project.  So we sit down and I go through drawings and photos of the site.  There's one catch - he works in imperial (feet and inches) and I've done all the drawings in metric.  He assures me he'll work it out because he has a tape measure in with both measurements.  I believe him.  If he pulls it off in three weeks, I will return with a team of 8 Salvation Army soldiers an have a crack at putting on the roof.  But as the Bible says, its the Lord that builds the house - if not, we work in vain. 
Ofcourse, in true Samuel style, I inspect a new project possibility - the water situation in Beraka -  on the last day in Timor.  The aim is to see if we can improve the water collection point and also the water quality possibly as a side job with the team.  There are some issues in this village with many of the people wanting to give more alliegance to the water spirit in the mountain than to God whom they also profess to believe.  This has some interesting implications for how we approach any work in water here.
So we leave these things in Gods hand and return to Oz to do what we gotta do there. 

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