Alta Vista Construction

We had a lot of things going on this week, but the biggest thing was our construction at the Alta Vista site. We had talked last week about things we wanted to do in the community and one of the things that came up was building shelters at the feeding sites around the island that didn't have them. We decided we all wanted to help with that and get it going. We have a contractor on our team and so he's been looking around at the different sites to get ideas and figure out the least expensive way to build the best shelters we can. We decided this week that we were going to start by repairing one of the shelters at a site on the other side of the island. The shelter was built a long time ago and it was in really bad shape so we decided to fix it up to get some experience with building them and figuring out how to do everything. This site needed a lot of work but fortunately not a whole lot of supplies. We got there and figured out what supplies we needed and went to the lumberyard to order them. While we were waiting for the materials we got the place cleaned up and ready to go. There are benches all the way along two sides of the shelter for the kids to sit during the feeding. They were really beat up and broken in a lot of areas. We needed to fix the supports that held the benches up. Several of them had rotted out or were just missing. So some of the team started on that while me and the contractor tried to figure out how to fix a nepa roof. Luckily we had a Filipino man come start working on the roof for us which was awesome because we definitely didn't know how we were going to do it efficiently or effectively. So we started working on cutting the braces for the benches to support the bamboo that goes across the top to sit on. We needed to put in new ones or replace a lot of the ones already there. Two things I learned pretty quickly are that most Americans aren't very good with a hand saw, the contractor and I were really the only ones who could use it, and also that banana wood is very tough, and Filipino nails not so much. It was so hard trying to nail all the way through the wood. The nails here are so weak that if you don't hit it exactly square on it'll completely bend and it's a lost cause. I did a lot of sawing and nailing. We also needed to put more bamboo slats in some areas of the bench where they were missing or broken to be able to finish the benches.

Our contractor working on one of the braces, with some kids taking notes.

One of our missionary kids nailing a bamboo slat down on the bench.

A kid from the community helping put a bamboo slat on the bench.

This girl got the nickname Miss Muscles. She tried to take over for everybody. She would have built the whole thing if we would have let her. I have never seen a 10 year girl hammer so well. She saw Carla miss the nail and shook her head and took the hammer from her haha.

Miss Muscles nailing down a new piece of bamboo onto the bench. I was willing to hold the bamboo down for her, but I wasn't going to hold the nail, she hits it way to hard.

Another one of our MKs nailing down the bamboo on the bench.

The best part of the whole thing was definitely the fact that everyone helped chip in. On Saturday we had a couple people help us with things and the guy who did the roof, and some kids who tried to help, but on Sunday we had everyone helping us. We had women from the community, teenage boys, teenage girls, little kids, and even this little guy going around with his rock trying to nail anything he decided needed it. It was so awesome to see the community come in and take ownership of the shelter and show us how much it meant to them. We could have done the whole thing by ourselves but it was so much better for them to be able to put their own wok into it because it makes it so much more meaningful to their community. We were overjoyed to see how much the community put into fixing the shelter up and it really made us feel so much better about putting in our time and money to fix it to know that it wasn't taken for granted by the community. They truly were grateful for our help and wanted to have the shelter be nice and were willing to put in the work to be able to get it fixed up but probably just didn't have the money to do it themselves.

Another thing we needed to do was fix the walls. The walls had bamboo slats going up along the sides the whole way around but a lot of them were missing, or the nails had come out. We made new slats to replace the sections of the walls missing them. We also went around nailing the slats back onto the wall and also using some tie to keep them there for a long time. This boy was nailing some slats down.

The girls went around tying the slats so they wouldn't fall off again.

We had some teenage boys help us out at times which was really awesome. A lot of the teenage boys stay away from the sites because it's just not "cool". They think it's for kids and like teenagers anywhere have a lot of pride and rebellion that keeps them from wanted to be involved in church activities or the feeding sites. To have a couple of the teenagers around helping was awesome and I really hope we were able to reach out to them in a way that made them more attached to the community and to the church.

Whether they were hammering or tying, the girls did a ton of work on the site. They were always helping with something.

Me with some help from two of our MKs putting some slats up on the walls.

Making the bamboo slats. We had a piece of bamboo and a machete and turned it into slats for the benches and the walls. They used the machete to split the bamboo into strips and then shave them until they were clean.

One of the biggest jobs we had was fixing the holes in the roof. We had four holes that we needed to fix and we really weren't sure exactly how to do it. We could see how to do it if you were started from scratch and doing the whole roof, but to patch we really weren't sure how we'd do it. Luckily as our contractor and I were looking pretty clueless up in the rafters trying to figure it out we had a Filipino man who knew how to do it volunteer to help us. He patched the biggest hole on Saturday for us. On Sunday we had one big one and two smaller ones to do. One of missionaries had watched the man do it the day before so she decided to give it a try. She patched up the hole with the help of some of the kids.

Some of te boys climbed up to help with the roof, but were soon kicked out by the girls.

The girls took over and helped get the hole patched up. It was actually really amazing to see them take over and do such an awesome job fixing it.

Almost done. This was the last picture I was able to take before my batteries died, so unfortunately I don't have any finished pictures which is definitely a bummer. We were only able to do one hole at a time because we only had one piece of wood that could hold us to to be able to put up in the rafters. But that didn't stop some of the girls to go start fixing the other holes while Carla and Miss Muscles were finishing this hole. They were light enough and flexible enough to just hang from the bamboo. I was amazed by those girls and I really wish I would have been able to take pictures of them up there doing it.

 A view from the front of the shelter.

This was funny at the time seeing this little girl trying to carry around the hammer. Unfortunately it became less funny later when she used it to hit a little boy on top of the head. Luckily he wasn't hurt bad or anything it was more of just a tap, but she was so cute and innocent until you gave her a weapon and then she turned into a bully.

Using a crate and a string as a sled. This kid was pretty tough, he was getting pulled around pretty roughly and he wasn't wearing any pants, and there were holes all along the bottom of the crate. That couldn't have felt good at all.

We should have known not to give her a hammer when she was using a piece of bamboo as a sword.

If these girls don't make you smile I don't know what will.

Another exciting thing to happen this week was the girls basketball tournament in Manila we sent our girls team from Boracay to. We sent to of our MKs, three daughters of our Filipino staff, two Ati girls from Carla Village, a girl we met while playing basketball a couple months ago and a couple other girls from a high school on Boracay, and Shane, one of my 5th graders from Agape. They were in Manila for 5 days while they played in their tournament. They did incredible in the tournament and took 2nd overall, which was especially incredible because they were playing against high school teams and these girls had never played all together before this tournament at all. The school putting on the tournament scheduled us the first game and we beat them and then continued to win until the championship game. Even more awesome than how well we did though was the experience the girls were able to have. I don't think any of the Filipino girls had been to Manila before and had never experienced a trip like this. Our principal had her daughters playing on the team so her family all went on the trip and she said this about it:
"I feel so blessed to witness a day of "firsts" for many of the girls we brought with us on this trip ... first time to Manila, first time to a mall, first time up an escalator, first time buying/wearing shoes, first time at Wendys....and that is all before the BB tourney! Seeing the world through their eyes and GIANT smiles is so so fun! Joy is contagious!"
The girls had an amazing trip and did so many things they would never gotten to do normally if it wasn't for this tournament and the people who supported them financially to go. I am so glad I was able to financially support my 5th grader to go on this trip and to experience Manila and everything they did there. 

another thing that happened this week was an English Contest on the other island. We had students from our school go to compete this Saturday in different competitions. Unfortunately the contest didn't separate the competition in grade levels so all of our kids were competing in basically the grade 6 level. One of our sixth graders took 3rd place in the poetry contest. One of my fifth graders took 2nd place in the essay writing contest. We were really excited about how well they did and how well all of our students did. There were a lot of schools at the contest and we were able to show the skills our students have in English.
We have a lot of things going on and things are going really well at the school and on the island. It is so great to start to do more things and see more things happen. We are continuing to try to do more and figure out more ways to make an impact on our students and our community. Thank you for your support and helping me be here to be able to be part of these things.