Burnt to a Crisp!

 On our way back from Santa Cruz one day, I noticed that there was a house burned to the ground and a bunch of people cleaning up the remaining coal and ashes.  I was pretty sure that this house must have burned down recently because I had already driven this route 2x this week and never noticed the damage.  What a great opportunity to do some community service!  We had been hoping to be able to spend some time serving while we were here and thought that this would be perfect.  After church, we stopped by to talk to them about their situation and see what we could do to help.  These are the times that my 37% Duo Lingo Spanish really comes shining through...and translates to .05% fluent in actual Spanish.  We basically found out that they had 11 people living in the house and now had 11 people sleeping in 2 beds under half of a tin roof.  It was decided that we would come the next day to help them start rebuilding a temporary structure.  We were so excited Monday to pile everyone in the van and head back to Santa Cruz to find some lumber and building materials.  This became quite the experience in its own right because we were trying to find a hardware store that we didn't know the name of and hadn't a clue where it was in the city.  After 30 minutes of driving around, we finally saw a lineman or city worker out in a field.  I jumped out and asked him over google translate if he knew which one of the hardware stores on my GPS would sell martillos (hammers).  He showed me which one and the gps took us straight there.  

There was a really nice worker who spoke some broken English that was able to help us get some Zinc (corrugated steel sheets), mardera (wood), martillos (hammers), serrucho (saw) and clavos (nails).  The boys helped me get everything loaded up on top of the van while Lisa roamed the nearby streets looking for souvenirs with girls.  We rendezvoused back at the corner where I found her sitting on the sidewalk, children all spellbound while she told them stories from her childhood. (Probably about jumping off the deck onto a trampoline, bouncing way high and lading on her bum on the bar!  That's the kids' favorite!)  We then headed to the ruins of the house.  (Ok here is a little side note to put this into perspective.  Their previous house was probably somewhere in the ballpark of 25' x 16'.  I mean, this thing was tiny!  Their current living space was just two tin walls around 8-10' long each and a roof about that same size.  As far as material goods, they lost EVERYTHING.  In talking with them, we found out that they'd like to build their next house out of brick and they didn't have the money to do that right now.  In the 2 days since the house burned down, it looked like people had dropped off, or they had gathered, a nice pile of old rusty steel sheets and a pile of  3/4" wood boards.) There were only couple teenage daughters there at this time tending their little sisters.  We showed them the load of supplies that we had purchases and tried to ask them if we could start adding some walls or something.  They declined the help but accepted the materials.  It was pretty deflating to go through all this trouble only to have a language barrier killing our communication.  I think the main issue was that there were no adults there and the girls had no idea what in the world we could do.  We left the materials and a some of our groceries with them and headed on our way.  

All in all, this was not the service experience we had dreamed about, but it was still wonderful to be able to help in some small way.  They kids were able to see a family in need and sacrifice some of their Christmas money from Great Grandma and Grandpa Stevens to help them out.  And lets be real, if service is easy and fun and just the way we would like it to be, it’s not really as much of a sacrifice.

Over the next couple weeks we were so happy to see the progress on their temporary (likely long term) structure.  They had finished the two partial walls and added two more.  The roof was also coming along.  Hopefully our little bit helped in some small way.

I forgot to mention the cherry on top.  Lisa wanted to wave to them and wish them a Merry Christmas as we drove away.  Instead, she gave them an enthusiastic wave and hollered, "Feliz Cumpleaños!" (Happy Birthday!) We have laughed about it many times since:).    

 

This is a shot as we drove by looking at the remains of their home.

The only remains of their house after all the clean up had been done.

 These are all the materials they had gathered in about a week's time.  In the middle left, you can see some chairs that they have been making.

 This and one other wall were all they had.

 This is their shower.  Corrugated metal and a pipe.

 This guy became our helpful friend at the hardware store the couple of times that we needed to go there.

 Brigham and Lincoln were big helpers getting all the materials loaded on the van.

Lisa is always good at killing time with her amazing stories of broken bottoms, burning boats and dancing divas.

The first bit of progress, another wall.

 This is the progress over a couple of weeks!  We were so excited to see that they had done so much and had created at least some sort of shelter for their family.