The View From the Roof
from Laurie Maxwell Simmons
I spent Day 4 on a roof that will be a floor, and the view was grand!
Basically, after many logistical stops and starts, we had a bit of a system where a team mixed concrete, a team put it in wheelbarrows and ran/pulled them up a ramp, a team transferred that concrete to buckets, a team hoisted the buckets up some scaffolding to the roof, and finally a line of 7-ish people relayed it to the place on the roof that is becoming a floor. A different team made a ramp so that tomorrow there might be a different Concrete Delivery System. Meanwhile, another team was painting beams, moving beams, and moving beams back. Another team was cooking, another team was setting up VBS, and another team was making “ice creams” out of concrete and wire. If you have counted more teams than 20 people could possibly fill, that’s because all of our work is alongside the awesome folks of the church and ministry where we are serving. David, Elise, Grace, Cheppe, Roberto, Berta, Shirley . . . and so many more partners.
Here’s the thing. Ask any of us when we come back and we’ll tell you a story like this: My sweetest moment today was sitting for 10 minutes on the board in the corner of the roof in our OSHA-approved (joke) “break room.” Between Elizabeth’s 4 months of Spanish, my pantomime, and Sylvia’s few words of English, we pieced together that her favorite high school class is social studies. She explained that according to legend, the hawks(?) that we saw circling at a certain height meant it would rain (it did). I explained my mom always said when the tree’s leaves turn over with a breeze, it’s going to rain. We discussed limes, snakes, and poison ivy. We shared agua. It took a team of three to even tell those stories, which were even sweeter for the perseverance of just getting to that final moment of understanding (we cheered).
Speaking of celebrations, we also cheered for the breeze. We cheered for the clouds. We cheered for the wheelbarrows that made it up the ramp. We delighted in the beautiful meal the church women served us. We laughed with Alejandro and Andres and welcomed all the dogs. We applauded the snow Isabelle made at VBS. We celebrated when Zoe and Melina presented the entire creation story in Spanish, when David sang, and when sweet Deanne finally smiled.
So here’s my toast to Day 4: My clothes will never be the same, but my heart will never be the same. A little chaos, but a lot of teamwork and celebration. Praise God from whom all blessings flow.
