Monday - working day one

This is Phil Starr from Trinity - and this is probably my 14th Esperanza mission trip!!!

This morning most of the group walked to the flea market which moves around to different colonials each day.  We didn't buy anything except doughnuts from the bakery.

There are a total of three groups sharing the Posada this week.  Seven from USC, 11 from Boston Mass and our group.  We had our opening circle with Eduardo to start the day - we sit in a circle and we introduce ourselves to him.  

Today was our first workday.  We went to the colonial - San Antinio (I'm probably butchering the spelling) and we poured a floor for Esperanza.  We have been in this colonial in previous years.  We saw one of our previous places - and for those who were on the trip - in maybe 2006 or 2007 when we worked on a place that was going to be a garage.  It was never used as a garage it is a store.  On that trip we had a number of Sr High youth.

Myself and six students (three from Boston and three from our group) went over to another house and made cement block for a few hours.  This is something that I've never done before.  It takes 5 buckets of sand, 50 lbs of concrete and probably one bucket of water.  It goes into a smaller cement mixer.

Then the machine that makes the block is electric - you put the cement mix in the mold and it tampers it down.  Two blocks come out and two people carry them on their wooden platform.

We came back over to Esperanza's house to help with the floor cement poor which was 30 bags of cement.  I took my usual post working back of the mixer working with the sand and gravel.

We had a few neighbors helping us with the cement pour today.  It went pretty quick and I'm sure our entire group will be sore and tired tonight.

This Esperanza Mission Trip is such a good trip.  I will take some time to reflect later in the week.  I'll close for now - I'm very impressed with the students - we all put in a full days work.

Phil