Not too chicken

We are greatly encouraged by people who are not too chicken to come to this fine country.  This last couple of weeks has seen a constant stream of visitors going through our house.  Cynthia has done supremely well keeping up with all the bookings and managing food and places to sleep.  Serenity has appreciated the bounteous supply of teenage girls.  Samuel and Israel have thus suffered.  Xakira has turned on her cute looks for the occasion.
Serenity was able to help a team connected with the Yooralla work and Greg Buxton to build a small house for a widow.  Greg, Perry, Paula and others did a great job in coordinating the work.  A friend of Serenity’s was also able to visit and get up to all sorts of mischief.

Two cool chicks - Serenity and Grace with homemade facials.

We’ve been blessed with Entrega Ba organising cooking training for our cooks resulting in some delicious meals.

Emmy with a tray of buns cooked in our oven.

I’ve also (finally) completed our chicken pen.  This has been the result of 5 years of trialling different local materials and designs and even importing rolls of chicken wire from China.  The final product is a simple rectangle pen with a covered roof.  The chickens are endowed with expert acrobatic abilities through generations of having to out run dogs, cats, rats, snakes and each other. 

Tobias learnt how to make a sturdy chicken pen door that he hopefully wont need to fix for some time to come. 

Raising chickens in Timor-Leste is actually a real challenge.  The first step is to find a mesh that wont rust.  Thanks to cooperation from the Nazareth Foundation and Concrete Products Business we were able to bring in 100s of rolls of quality, rust proof chicken wire which will hopefully save 1000s of chickens.

We now have not two but ten mildly happy chickens!

Rob at the Training Centre

We’ve had lots of visitors over the last week or so.  One of these was an old friend, Rob, and his lovely wife and daughter.  Rob is a wise builder filled with the spirit -  well that’s the way I describe him.  He also speaks Indonesian. 

Rob shows Amau how to check the slab height level.

He spared a couple of days with me to share a few skills on the building site.  Of course, I had great dreams of what we could accomplish in two days but it was not to be.  In the end, we put together a few window frames and laid half a slab.  But we nutted through a few issues on the site and came up with some ideas to try.  I now feel a little more confident to tackle a slab and we have a bit better plan about the second floor slab.  The building now has blocks laid up to the top of the first floor for the sewing room and kitchen. 

The sewing room of Bele Kria with lots of power points at waist height for sewing machines.

The kitchen end up to the final block level ready for the slab to go on top.

Around $8000USD have been donated toward this and I’ve burned through $17000 so far.  Its a bit scary.  I’m going to have to go over my estimates and see how I am travelling.  I still blindly believe God’s got this.

We love to have a brick layer up here in the near future and  someone who knows how to put on a roof.