Well, it has been an awesome three days of work on the "Extreme Makeover, Honduras Edition" and we will return one more day (Monday) to finish it up. We will use tomorrow as a well deserved day of rest. We still need to finish painting an add some more odds and ends. On the first day we met the delivery truck at the lumber yard at 8 AM and got the first load of wood. We then drove to San Miguel and unloaded the wood up the hill a good distance from the site of the house, but it was as close as we could get. We enlisted the help of some young friends there in the community and moved the entire load before noon. We had to pass by an older woman's home and she was none to happy about it. The boys there said that she was "muy loco" (very crazy) and was always yelling at them. She never came out from behind her fence and we could not see her at all, but she yelled a lot of nasty things the entire time we were moving the wood. It was pretty interesting. After we moved all the wood from the first load (about two-thirds of what we would need) we began building what has become the girl's, there are two, sleeping area. It is a new 11' x 14' building. We got 3 walls up before the rains returned and ended our work day. We need to leave this community before the river rises and cuts us off so when the rain starts coming down we get out of there.

On day two we arrived at 7:15 AM to meet the wood truck there with the rest of our materials and we had everything we needed at the site by about 9. We proceeded to finish the new building and begin repairs to the 8 year old TORCH home. Once the new home was complete we moved all the stuff from the old home to the new one so we could rip off the old worn out roof, replace and repair the termite damaged supports, and install a wood floor. As you can see from the pics we had lots of help from the locals there. It was great to work alongside them rather than instead of them. By the time the second day (rain free until after 5 PM) was complete we had finished the new structure, and replaced the roof and added the floor to the old home (we know now that this is where the four boys sleep).

Day three was a beautiful day and we headed to the warehouse for paint and other supplies for the day. When we arrived at the worksite we began painting both buildings, white on the inside, blue for the exterior. What an amazing difference a little paint can make. We also built one set of bunkbeds for the girls and two single beds for 2 of the boys. They already had another double bed for the other 2 boys. This project has been an incredible experience and we have had a blast! We have spent a lot of time in San Miguel and have really had the chance to develop some great relationships with the children there, especially a group of about eight 12-15 year old boys. Jonathon, Aldo, Eduardo, Bryan, Orlin are a few of them. Yesterday, Saturday, I left around 2 pm to get some mattresses and brought five of these boys with me. I knew the store I was going to go to and it was very close (5 minutes), but what I didn't know was that it closes at noon on Saturday. I asked the boys if there was anywhere else they knew of close and Jonathon said, "Si, abajo," which means Yes, down the road. Well, there wasn't one but as we drove I passed a Campero's (Honduras' Chik-fil-A) and I decided to get all of us some lunch. If you could have seen their faces when I pulled into the drive-thru, it was priceless. All the while we are rocking out to Jeff Beck and Ozzy Osbourne from my I-Pod. Then I put it on a local radio station from here and all the boys were singing away and I had my own private show. We never did find mattresses (I'll get them on Monday), but we sure had a fiesta along the way.

This morning I have come down with the British Open Flu, a new disease that seems to take me down on Sundays right around this time of year. I'm sure I'll feel better this afternoon as it only seems to last about 6 hours.

Later