Last Work Day in Maputo

Three wheel barrow lanes are open, no waiting.

Last dump truck of the day got stuck in the sand so they had to unload by hand

The stone is spread and compacted. Ready for the finish pour to start next week

The crew that helped us these two weeks. These guys will be the ones to pour the floor

The dinner bell rang and people came from every direction to the cafeteria.

The women of the team receiving wraps and scarves at the dinner.

Today was our last day at the Seminary. We wanted to get as much done as possible today. Carlos had originally planned for us to pour a portion of the floor today so we could have pictures of the finished product. We told him we were not concerned about pictures, just making sure the structure is built right. So in the interest of a better finished product we spent the day preparing the ground properly and spreading and compacting two dump truck loads of large stone. By the end of the day and with the help of numerous seminary students and a gas powered compactor, the entire floor is ready to receive rebar and concrete. We would like to have poured the whole floor this week, but it was not meant to be. Had the excavator shown up when Carlos requested to level and prepare the site before we arrived, we would have been pouring concrete these last couple of days. We can leave confident that Carlos’ crew and the students will be able to finish the floor and hopefully future crews will put the roof over the court and add the rooms they wish to add to the end of the building.

Today is Bob McMillan’s birthday. He claims to be 39, but we all know he is really younger:-). The team presented him with a card and two small handcrafted bicycles to add to his miniature bicycle collection.

The Seminary prepared a farewell presentation and dinner for us this evening in the cafeteria. It was a very nice event. Director Margarita made a “Welcome” presentation. She says that in Mozambique culture they do not make a big deal when people arrive because they don’t want the visitors to think they want them to leave. So they say “Welcome” at the time of farewell. The Seminary presented the ladies of our group with traditional wraps and head scarves. They gave the men in the crew carved wooden maps of Mozambique to show people where we were. The dinner was very good: chicken, rice, french fries, and several other traditional local dishes. And the hospitality was great. It was nice to eat with the faculty staff and students and the families of the married students.

The team revealed prayer partners and coincidentally every person’s prayer partner was the other prayer partner’s partner. So we had some comical moments as we found that we had reciprocal prayer partners. After some pineapple Fanta everyone was off to pack so we are ready to leave very early in the morning.

We will leave about 6AM for the 3 and a half hour drive to the south gate of Kruger National Game Reserve. We will drive into Swaziland first since our drive is from Swaziland and needs to enter into South Africa from there. By midday tomorrow we should be "on Safari".

Ready to Pour the Floor!

Click here to see/hear a song from Seminary Chapel Wednesday morning

Chapel at the Seminary today. We presented Gideon Bibles to the students and staff

Ring beam is done and now we prepare for pouring the floor.

Moving dirt from the high places to low paces to prepare for the floor

The morning Juniors and Seniors at 7AM lined up to sing the national anthem before heading to class

Today the crew took the form boards off the concrete poured yesterday and reattached them atop the last sections of block yet to receive the ring beam concrete. By mid morning that process was done and we were ready for concrete. However the mixer had different plans. It ran for a about a minute before stopping for good. Fortunately the immediate problem was the familiar spark plug issue which indicates a much bigger issue of oil getting into places oil is not supposed to go. This time the plug could not be cleaned well enough to make the mixer run again, so over lunch Carlos got another spark plug to try after lunch.

In the mean time this morning Tim and I, accompanied also by Vivian and Connie attended the Wednesday morning Seminary service to distribute Gideon Bibles to the students, faculty and staff of the seminary. We met with all the students in the Junior Senior, college prep program last week. The seminary students number about 45, so it is a much smaller group but preparing pastors for the ministry is the original and still core purpose for the Seminary to exist. It is a wonderful thing to have the high school program on campus as well and the two programs complement each other well and bring the campus a vitality and energy that would not be here if they had not expanded the ministry to include educating the college prep students.

Right after lunch we quickly learned that the new spark plug was not the answer to fixing the mixer. After an hour of tinkering the decision was made to give up on the gasoline mixer and go see if the diesel mixer in the back of the storage garage still runs. It actually started pretty easily in the garage which was surprising. So we towed the diesel mixer down to the work site behind the truck. But after fueling it up and topping off the oil, the mixer would not start. Eventually we gave up on that mixer as well and Faruke, Lucas and some seminary students set out to mix several big batches of concrete on the ground. We then wheel barrowed the concrete to the final sections of ring beam to be poured. By mid afternoon the ring beam was poured. Then we spent the rest of the day moving and leveling dirt to prepare for pouring the concrete slab tomorrow.

Late in the day the mechanic who takes care of the equipment on campus came in from his work and fixed the diesel mixer. So it is now running and should be very helpful for pouring as much of the floor as we can before our time working here comes to an end tomorrow afternoon. It is my understanding that the Bauza’s, Faruke and Lucas will continue to work with the seminary students to finish the floor after we leave. Eventually the roof will be put over the court and rooms will probably be added on to the end of the building. There are a couple of similar structures at other schools in the neighborhood so we can see about what the finished project will look like even if we never get to see this building completed.

  

The manual labor and the heat are wearing us down but the food, fellowship and your prayers have kept us going. Just one more day to labor and we pray that it we will have the strength to make it a productive one.

Ring Beam is Poured

Vivian and Eva working on lunch

Don cleaning the mixer spark plug....again

Carlos, Sabrina and Gabby carrying rebar

Juan laying the last block

Traffic jam at the concrete mixer

Pouring the ring beam

Ring beam is poured

Break time under the coconut tree

Matthias and Mike (in blue shirts) from Mercy Air after supper.

Another beautiful day in Maputo today. It was sunny, warm and the breeze picked up as the day got hotter. The focus for the morning was laying the final blocks on the north wall. In the afternoon we installed the rebar frames we built last week. These frames sit on top of the foundation blocks and tie into the columns. Once the wooden forms were in place the mixer was fired up and the new piles of gravel and sand and cement where feed into the beast to make concrete. By the end of the afternoon and with the help of the seminary students all the column bases and most of the ring beam was poured. Tomorrow morning should see the end of the ring beam pour.

We saw a helicopter fly low over the campus this morning and then again this afternoon. As it turns out that was a Mercy Air Helicopter making medicine deliveries to remote locations in Mozambique and they intentionally flew low over us to say hello twice . The pilot Matthias and the medic Mike, both from Switzerland landed at the airport and joined us for supper and to stay overnight in the campus apartments along with us tonight. They provide a very necessary mission aviation service. Today they made two medicine air drops in remote areas of Mozambique. They told us in the north of Mozambique there are still people so remote that they have rarely if ever seen white people. Matthias told us that there are still no roads in that area and it takes three days to reach by canoe. But this remote area is only 20 minutes away by helicopter.

People who come to Maputo for missions purposes know they can rent rooms from the seminary if they need a place to stay. With campus just a few miles from the airport it is very convenient for people traveling by plane or helicopter in this case.

Connie and Nancy went into the city with David in the afternoon to buy more groceries and to start to exchange money from Mozambique currency to South African currency for the final part of our journey that begins Friday morning at 5AM.

Building Rising Out of the Ground

Faruke mixing "mud"

Juan laying block on the south wall

Mike tending Lucas on the south wall

Nancy resting between buckets of "mud"

Pouring the footer for the north wall

Sylvia Bauza laying block on the south wall

Bob on the mixer throttle

Tim tending Lucas and Don on the east wall

Today we went back to work on the gymnasium project. The sky was clear and the temperature topped out about 88 degrees. Fortunately a steady breeze has blown in from the ocean all day to give us relief.

Over the weekend Carlos and his local workers and seminary students poured more of the footer and laid more block. So today we had a running start on getting the foundation block laid. By lunch time the foundation block had risen up out of the ground on 3 sides of the structure.

After lunch we fired up the big gasoline mixer to see if it would make our work a little easier. We still needed to pour the footer down the north long side of the building. Juan was able to start the mixer right away, but it quickly sputtered to a halt. After some tinkering I had the magic pull that started it up a second time. We went straight to loading it with sand and cement, only to have it die again. No matter what I tried it would not restart. We were thinking we might be mixing the concrete by hand for the rest of the week. But when Carlos got back from lunch with his tool box, Don pulled the spark plug and found that the brand new plug was fouled. Between the oil the mixer is burning and the varnish on the bottom of the gas tank when we took it out of moth balls, there was plenty of crud to foul the spark plug. Don put the cleaned plug back in and the mixer started right up and lasted for about one round of mixing before it died again. Don cleaned the plug again and the mixer fired back up. It looks like it may be reliable for the week if we can just keep the plug clean.

It soon became apparent the choke on the mixer will vibrate itself closed and just about kill the motor, so Bob McMillan was put on throttle duty to keep the engine running as the concrete was mixed. By the end of the day the final stretch of the footer was poured. Tomorrow the final blocks can be laid on the north side as the forms are built to hold the ring beam concrete on the other three walls. With the mixer working it will make the concrete work much less labor intensive.

Once again today the seminary students came to work after classes about 3:30PM. Carlos is talking with the administrators about the possibility of having students work with us all day a couple of days this week. If that is approved it would allow us to move this project a lot farther along before we wrap up our time on the project Thursday. The students seem very excited about having at least the basketball court completed soon and are concerned about when it will get finished if it isn't done this week before we leave.

Everyone is doing well. We are just tired from the honest hard work and the hot sun. As I type this most of the crew is enjoying the company of the Bauza family and the Restricks in the W&W house after yet another excellent dinner. Don and Mike are teaching the Bauza girls how to play Rook. From what I hear Sabrina and Gabby won the game last night so apparently they are quick learners or Don and Mike are good teachers or maybe it's a little but of both.

Sunday in Maputo

Getting ready to enter Central Church of the Nazarene

Maputo Central Church of the Nazarene

Reception in pastor's office. She was not there but many other pastors were.

Tim addressing the congregation.

Some of the 2000 people who worshiped at Central church today.

Exhibit at the Museum of Natural History

Connie risking life and limb...at least limb with a big crocodile.

Lunch in an open air restaurant downtown Maputo.

Today was a wonderful Lord’s day. This morning we attended Maputo Central Church of the Nazarene. About 2000 people attend the church every Sunday between the three services. The have a large children’s church and an under 30 targeted Portuguese service at 8 AM every Sunday plus the Shangaan service at 10AM. We attended the service conducted in Shangaan. This is a tribal language denominate in this area and the primary language for the older generations. Most younger people in the city today speak Portuguese so the Portuguese population is growing and the Shangaan is shrinking.

The congregation and pastor made us feel very welcome. The lady pastoring the church has been here 26 years and they will not let her retire yet. We could not understand the language but Dr. Restrick and the seminary director Margarida Alanga sat amongst us and translated key information so we could follow along in the Shangaan hymn books Rhoda Restrick brought with us to church. The pastor had Tim Sharrock come up and bring greetings from the group as Margarida interpreted from English to Shangaan. After church the pastor provided a reception for us in the pastor’s office attended by our group and a number of retired pastors from the congregation.

After church we went on down town to the National Natural History Museum. It is open to the public for free on Sunday afternoons. We looked at sculptures of wildlife of all kinds from across this region of Africa and in the Indian Ocean.

We then went to a downtown corner restaurant called Mimmo’s for a late lunch. The restaurant is open air so we had a very nice breeze and could experience the sights and sounds of downtown Maputo as we dined. Mimmo’s served many American style foods like Pizza, roasted chicken, spare ribs, as well as seafood and pasta dishes. After eating way too much we made the return trip home by way of the coastline road.

This evening was movie night. The Restrick's brought their projector over to the W&W house and we all ate popcorn as we watched “The Gods Must Be Crazy”, a perfect movie to watch when in Africa.

They day was a little warmer than usual and though the clouds threatened rain this afternoon, it never did arrive, so the humidity is still pretty high tonight. Tomorrow we will head back out to the work site and help finish the foundation block laying and move on to the next stage of getting the basketball court paved.