I'm no Kevin Spacey

To those of you who are good at negotiating: Congratulations. Me? I suck at this stuff.

I just sent an e-mail to the software company I'm going to buy my administration software through. It's not like I was even asking for that much off; I think it would bring it down another 10% or something (which in this case is hundreds, but still). But I still had such a hard time typing that out! I feel like I'm stealing from them or something. Which is why I do this over e-mail, because if I talked to them on the phone they could talk me in to pretty much anything. Be strong!

In other news, I am back from South Africa! The whole team had such a great time over there, such a blessing to be able to work with, minister to, and be ministered to by the people of Red Hill and Living Hope. Living Hope actually came back after we left to finish the clinic, and it looks awesome! Here are pictures of the clinic we were working on, before and after:


































What a change!

Lastly, now that I'm back in the states I can start recommending music on here again! I went to a show Sunday night that featured three up and coming Nashville singer/songwriters: Ben Rector, Steve Moakler, and Andrew Ripp. All three were excellent, and I'm sure I'll be featuring each of their music on here in the coming weeks. But today's music is a new guy out of the UK called Daniel Merriweather, featuring my favorite artist of 2008 (and hopefully 2010 if she gets around to putting out an album), Adele. Glorious:

Water And A Flame - Daniel Mer...

Broken and restored in three days time

All right, I've finally got some time here to lay out what happened over the last three days of construction:

Tuesday: The Day of the Crane

So, as I said on Monday, Tuesday was a critical day. We had this crane, which they were renting by the hour, so we wanted to get its part done as quickly as possible. The crane arrived on time, and they attached the hooks to the containers they were supposed to lift. As this was happening, we were readying the materials to level the footings under each container corner. So far, so good.

Then, the crane operator lifted the containers. Everything held together well, and I was in charge of building the supports so I got busy working in the back corner. As we finished that support, apparently the crane operator decided he needed to shift something, and in the process the back part of the building descended onto the support, simultaneously separating the three containers from each other.

At this point, what we had hoped would be a simple matter of the crane lifting the two attached containers simultaneously while we fixed the supports had now become three completely independent containers we were going to have to lift one by one, fit back together, and level to each other... wow.

And so that's what we did. The team leader spent most of the morning dealing with 3 different people telling him what we should have done. They were:

1. The project manager with Living Hope, a man who is apparently a nice guy but who we always dreaded seeing on site because we knew it would mean several shouts of "Time is money!" and the revelation of materials he had that would have made whatever we spent the last three hours on markedly easier.

2. Arthur, the man from the Cape Town Health Department who was relatively quiet but his presence always put the Living Hope guy on edge.

3. The man who drew the plans for what we were doing, an 83-year-old widower who I called Old Man River.

Eventually this trio left, and we were finally able to get some work done. The crane was on site for about 3 hours longer than anticipated, something we were worried about because they made it sound like this thing cost a fortune, and our frame of reference reinforced that. Imagine how hard we laughed that night when it was revealed the crane and two operators cost $40/hour.

Wednesday: Picking up the pieces
Part of the destruction of Tuesday was the loss of the front door to the clinic, which we replaced before leaving but didn't have the materials to install the handle. As such, I spent the first half of Wednesday digging out the handle portion of said door. Meanwhile everyone else spent the morning getting ready to install the beam for our new roof, and they got it up in time for me to spend the afternoon working on top of the containers, installing supports for the rafters.

We needed to get the rafters up before the end of the day because leaving materials around the job site was not an option: anything left around Red Hill gets used on someone's house in short order. Early in the afternoon I was not feeling good about getting it all done, but our local help stepped up big time and we were back to The Team House just an hour later than planned.

Thursday: Redemption
Our overall goal for Thursday was to get the sheets of tin roof installed on the rafters. We got off to a slow start when the big three stopped by and Old Man River started telling us everything that wasn't right. He would stand over on the side looking disapprovingly and I'd look at Ethan and say "Looks like Old Man River's about to strike," and then he'd call over the Living Hope guy, who would then tell us what should be happening.

Again, we were able to get real work done when they left. I was put in charge of getting the tin installed, and I spent the afternoon crawling around on the rafters and drilling it all down. I may have put myself in some of the more reckless positions I've ever been, but we got it all done, again thanks to the local guys who were helping us. Getting that last piece on was just an awesome feeling.

We followed up the end of our time in Red Hill with a community party, where the kids club sang, the youth choir sang, the audience sang a couple of African hymns and we served 200 frankly awful looking hot dogs.

And now we've spent today (Friday) touring around Cape Town a bit more, visiting the Victoria & Alfred Waterfront, the Malay district (where Malaysian slaves used to live and now all the buildings are brightly colored), the District 6 Apartheid museum, and Signal Mountain.

This is all a bit disjointed, and for that I apologize. But I'll close this post with the news that I've discovered the joys of Pineapple Fanta on this trip, and I don't think my life can be the same.

Down the home stretch

Sorry I don't have much time this morning, but just wanted to let you all know that things went slightly crappy Tuesday, very well Wednesday, and I feel great about the condition we're going to leave the building in today! More details to follow later!

Step one: complete

It's the end of our first day in Red Hill. I'm tired, hot, and hungry. But what a day!

Just to catch you up on what exactly we're doing: There's a clinic in Red Hill, a shanty-town of Cape Town, that has fallen into disrepair. It's made of three shipping containers welded together, and two of the containers are no longer level. There's also a porch area that is currently uncovered. Our mission this week is to level the containers (with the help of a crane), build a roof over the porch, patch the roof of the containers, and replace some of the floor of the clinic. And we're going to do it in four days.

Today was critical in the timeline for our jobs: we needed to get posts for the roof grounded in concrete, clear away brush and debris, and get measurements for the rest of the week. And we got it all done! Tomorrow is the other really pivotal day for us: the day of the crane. It will be lifting up the containers so we can raise the footings where necessary. If we don't get the footings level tomorrow, it most likely won't happen this week. And that, obviously, would not be ideal.

I also got to spend a bit of time this afternoon at the kids club the rest of the group is running. It was so refreshing to hear forty kids singing and jumping and dancing in praise! And it gives me motivation for the rest of the week, because this clinic we're working on will be used to house kids clubs going forward.

I would be remiss to not mention that we spent yesterday going to church (where we learned about all (and I mean all) the women's groups operating in the church), seeing penguins, eating the self-proclaimed best pizza in Simon's Town, hiking to the Cape Point Lighthouse, being chased by baboons, watching ostriches, looking out over the Cape of Good Hope, and listening to Prime Circle rock Kirstenbosch. What a way to waste the day away...