2015 – March/April/May Mission Trip – part 1 of 4

A new year, and much to get done at the Mission. We have planned for two trips this year, hopefully to plant a full time missionary or couple at the mission. This is our primary goal, and if we are not successful in finding that party it may very well be ourselves for a year or so to get all things in order and started. We have much invested here to see this project be successful and staffing is now a primary goal. We are most interested in working with whatever mission sending groups we can. Our goal is to pretty much see this investment be utilized at a maximum capacity forever and in the name of Jesus Christ for the benefit and enjoyment and spiritual growth of El Carmen, Invacion, San Pedro, Los Olivos and the surrounding villages and crossroads of northern San Juan Bautista District in Ica, Peru. We are most open to working with any and all agencies to this goal. Our heart is with these people and we welcome any partners that will share in this dedication.

With that as a primary goal, we still have a lot to do to finish the Mission construction. We have a functioning building on the first floor, with housing (bedroom/bath) for a missionary couple available, functioning main room for church and other facilities to utilize, working relations with a great Ica partner church that has a weekly service as well as weekly youth group meeting. This first floor has other rooms for sleeping, storage, office use, as well as a common full bathroom and kitchen. We still need to equip the kitchen more (more permanent stove, counters, cabinet, sink) but we have it functional. (Thanks to the Branch Church of San Diego for a new refrigerator donation last year!!)

We are right now working on the completion of the second and third floor. Our 2014 efforts finished our building upward, and this trip we need to add a parapet (brick half wall) around much of the third floor which is designed mainly as an open use area. We have a full apartment up there as well that needs completion which will be of use for additional classroom, guest lodging, bar-b-q kitchen, multi-function use, etc. With this trip we need to add electric, plumbing, low voltage to both the 2nd and 3rd floors, as well do a complete tarrajear (stucco) application of walls and ceilings. With that complete, we will be acquiring and installing windows and doors, adding lighting and electrical fixtures, plumbing fixtures, and eventually painting.

How much of this gets done on this trip is up in the air. There is still a lot of funding needed but as last year, we are moving forth on faith.

Dictionary break – A major process that we will be doing on this trip, and to two complete floors of the building, is something called ‘Tarrajear’, pronounced ‘Terra-hey-are’ in English. Well that’s the ‘verb’, actually the process of what is done. The finished product, the noun, is called ‘Terrajeo‘ (Terra-Hey-Oh).

In pursueing definitions online, I found “In Peru, put a layer of cement to walls, roofs or facades of buildings.” (I even found a short video [link] showing this process in good detail if you are interested). I would compare it to doing stucco in the United States, however the material used is simply cement and sand mix, without the gravel. (And until I ‘personally’ get this down better, let’s allow for my misplacing a noun or verb now and then, OK?).

March 11, Wednesday – Having left California and traveled all day Tuesday (5 hour layover in Dallas) we arrived after midnight Wednesday morning but didn’t get to sleep until 4am. With the above construction plans at the mission as our goal, we also need to do some finalization on our Lima property which we are putting forth for a hostel stop over for visiting missionary small groups. We need to finish some plans around bed acquisiions, new window installations and refrigerator. It is currently ready to sleep 6 but we hope to push that up to 10 on the outside. Sleeping in a bit on Wednesday, with a late 1pm breakfast, after getting some minor groceries accross the street. We then went to buy a new refrigerator for the Lima ‘hostel’ property we have established for the traveling missionaries. On the right is the ‘nearly complete newly renovated’ kitchen for this unit. Couple more items to finish. We then worked on establishing internet, and that was not finalized operationally until 9pm. (One thing we discovered on this trip, is that the exchange rate is at an all time high for the value of the US Dollar to the Peruvian Sole. It is 3.1 Soles/Dollar, roughly 33 cents = 1 Sole. That may be helpful for the reader as my references to purchases will usually always be in the local currency.)

March 12, Thursday – We established our bus tickets for our Monday trip to the mission. Rest was personal time.

March 13, Friday – More shopping, phone contacts with contractors both here and at the Mission. Working with Samsung factory repair for minor problems here. Placed a brick template for donation wall for current new donors. Will need to pick up donor brick templates before going to Mission.

We had to wait for Refrigerator delivery on this day so we had just a personal day, did some walking and had lunch. Just unwind a bit.

March 14, Saturday – Visit from Samsung repair, as well as our local Lima construction contractor at the same time. Apparently our new TV, only 5 months old, had a blown LED in it’s display so two guys came out and replaced that part of the unit on the spot .. good service! Our contractor took measurements for getting us all new windows, for both bedrooms, living room and kitchen nook. A bit of modernization and privacy. We need to run downtown to pick up donation templates before end of day.

March 15, Sunday – We got to visit our good friends, Lazaro & Janet Perez and family, who run a small family church near to us in Lima. We live in Miraflores and it’s a short cab ride to Surco, a neighboring community that they serve. Picture at left here shows Lazaro and Janet doing a baby dedication at services today (they are holding the baby in the photo). Lazaro and I share being Peruvian by marriage. He has a headstart on me though with the language being raised in South Florida by his Cuban parents.

We hope to get them to the Mission sometime on this trip. Always looking for some parallel paths we can work on together. If one is ever in south Lima and have an opportunity to visit their small church family which is very young and vibrant, please check them out. This link for their church (Ignesia Casa de Luz) will give you more information.

March 16, Monday – We had an early bus (6:30am) that we caught to Ica, arriving about 11am and met by Leche, our driver. We had a short 30 minute ride out to the Mission and were surprised to see the progress on the road. Usually the 15 kilometers is 50/50 asphalt and dirt, but now it’s more like 75/25. Excellent! Maybe, by the end of this visit it will be all asphalted! We appreciate it very much.

Anyway, got out here and word quickly got around that we were here so we had some visitors. It was especially pleasant to have a visit from our prayer partner that had a very bad accident on our last trip, where she fell off a burro and got very badly bruised. She brought us a bag of mangos and spent a little time visiting with us, with her daughter and granddaugter, just making us feel very welcome.

March 17, Tuesday – After identifying yesterday what we needed for supplies and cementing a construction plan with Abel, our contractor (who we also had a great mini-reunion with him and his crew), we headed off to Ica for our first major supply purchase. I do hope this is the last buy we make for brick and rebar, which makes up a significant expense for the materials.

We also got 50 bags of cement but I suspect that will not be our last purchase of that item. Many plumbing and electrical tubing and elbows were bought as well as many other smaller items.

Had to wait for our regular delivery driver, Pedro, who was there when we arrived but had a commitment to get out of the way. Lily and I did all the purchase and preparation for loading when she left me on my own to coordinate with our driver and get it all to the Mission. Needless to say, I guess I goofed up my first gringo assignment a bit. Some other driver convinced me that he was working with Pedro and that he would be our driver and then blurted some spanish real quick to me which made me think the delivery charge was 80 soles, instead of the normal 100 … I’m thinking great, I got a deal on the deliver without asking and will get back to the Mission faster than usual. Three quarters of the way through the loading, Pedro shows up and we have a broken english/spanish dialogue where I indicate that his partner has it all loaded (in retrospect, I am thinking now that he was probably trying to tell me that wasn’t his partner but just a competitive delivery guy). On the way out to El Carmen, the driver gets lost indicating to me that he’s never been there before so something’s amiss. I get him back to a road I know since he was apparently very lost and we get to El Carmen eventually but not on a very direct route.

We get everything mostly unloaded when Lily arrives. It is apparent that this driver is somewhat not participating in the unloading effort, sitting in the cab the whole time. At time for payment I give Lily the 100 soles she gave me so that she can be surprised at the 20 soles I saved her. She comes in and says that he negotiated a price with me of 120 soles!! Anyway, we sent him on his way with the 100 soles and will remember him (to not use in the future) but just another lesson for gringos …. they see us coming a mile away! But other than one broken bag of concrete (by the unloading crew) we got everything we need for the impending major construction effort now getting underway. It will be so nice to have a 2nd floor functioning with smooth walls, running water and electricity.

End of day had the crew return from their current working job and finish bringing in to the Mission the final purchased items. The rebar was laying on the street, but needed to be moved to the roof. First thing tomorrow is to fabricate the remaining columns for the third floor, then brick in the parapet up there before actually pouring the connecting columns.

Internet is now functioning at the Mission, fantastic. Can get this blog uploaded and current as well as catch up on home communication.

March 18, Wednesday – Work gets underway late morning but is short of an entire crew until next week as they are working on 4-5 housing projects in the village at the moment. Abel, our contractor, is rounding up an entirely new crew for this project (far bigger than his average ‘casita’ job) and will be in full force on Monday. In the interim, he is doing some preparation work today, tools, equipment gathering, etc.

We went into Ica late in the day to meet with Pastor Martin, our local ‘partner’ in this ministry effort to discuss current challenges, going forward, planning, etc. Prior to leaving for Ica, my local amigo Mario came running down the street for a big hug (pictures above). For two guys that don’t share a common language, we have a certain bond!

March 19, Thursday – A crew of two today, including Abel, initiate building the columns out of rebar. Still gathering a full crew for the larger job of brick, tarrajear (stucco), form work, concrete, etc. Crew grew to three by noon and they succeeded in assembling and installing six (6) of the eight (8) needed column frames.

While the crew was working on the third floor, Lily was in Ica for a few hours meeting with a fellow pastor / musician friend and looking to continue some sort of relationship utilizing the Mission. While she was away, a local farmer friend, Ramone, stopped by with his bike and a basket of fruit.

Seeing that he was willing to wait for Lily, I made him a cup of coffee and we did some chit chat as well as I could and he felt quite at ease with a new Spanish bible I gave him to read. Ramone has a bible study that we have attended in the next village north, Los Olivos. He seemed happy to get off his bike and rest a bit and wait for Lily. When she arrived, Ramone and her dumped out his fruit bag that he brought as a welcoming gift. There were a good number of her favorite ‘sucking Mangos’ which she grew up with. Made her day! We had a few after Ramone left. It’s the little things in life that make it all worth living! (Personally I had my eyes on the Plantano’s and Banana’s!!

March 20, Friday – A good deal more progress on the third floor. Six columns assembled and most of the longest parapet wall is assembled and in place. Even with a small crew, progress can be made. More brick work will be done tomorrow, possibly finishing up parapet wall work, but it will be a short day since it’s Saturday. Major work will get underway Monday with hopefully an even larger crew. I do believe that is when the real messy work of ‘tarrajear’ begins, which is the spanish term for ‘stucco with cement’. This is the process that you usually complete all floors on before you attempt to paint or live in one below. We will be doing I imagine a lot of cleanup during this process as the messy concrete water drips down below. Lord help us stay on top of it with plastic sheets and more.

Had planned for a movie night being Friday, and wanting to have our first real reunion with some more of the local children. Decided to play Monster University and got the popcorn and cheecha drink ready.

While preparing for it at 6 pm, some of the local children stopped by early (by a few hours) to mess up our scheduling. Anyway, it was good to good around with them. We felt sorely missed and we are actually down here a month later than previous years due to a diversion trip we needed to do for family to Florida early this month. But we are here and enjoying our local children and look forward to continue to build up ministries around them.

Anyway, movie night came and rather than being early, we almost gave up due to only one child arriving on time. But willing to show the movie just for him, starting 30 minutes late, we then somehow had a flock appear .. I wonder if we just conflicted with dinner by having it scheduled at 6pm or is this just the norm and why theatres show so many advertisements before the movie starts! Anyway, finally underway, we waited till well past the middle of the movie before making and serving the popcorn and chicha punch. Snuck a picture in, sorry for the flash kids!

After the movie was over, Lily didn’t let them just escape during the rolling credits. She started out with some good questions on their faith, who can recite John 3:16? What is the importance of the Bible? Who can remember the 10 commandments? OK, how about 5 of them? Some good dialogue at the end. Monsters University movie with a ‘we love Jesus’ closing message … why not? Kids interacted well with it. Here’s a short video of her doing this.

Tomorrow, we should have our regular Youth Bible study group hopefully at about 10am. Hopefully it and the construction will blend OK. One day at a time.

March 21, Saturday – We had a pretty full day today, even with the contractors leaving around 3pm. They did a great job completing the column fabrications, and almost finishing the parapet on the 3rd floor, and initiation of the building of the water tank building on the roof (4th floor). Great crew. We did have as many as six guys today, so I assume that will be the working size going into next week for all the tarrajear work we will be starting. Lots of ceilings and floors to smooth over and make nice … centimeter by centimeter.

By end of day we had a great adult bible service got underway. It was good to see Caesar and his wife, who run this service. We did bring with us, from the USA, some additional loaner bibles. There are always people that show up with no bible.
Problem with the service this time though was that there were a few local children attracted as well, and a few parents brought their children. Guess we have to start thinking about a child care offering during the service!

No problem, I got a small group of them distracted using a white board with some colored markers, but Lily took the cake when she went into full nanny mode and took a dozen of them with her accross the street to the plaza and played games with them. What a trooper. This allowed the service for adults to continue fully with no distraction. A nice problem to have I guess.

We had a lot of requests for ‘Cine!’ at the end (I think that was part of the reason for half the kids showing up) so we started a Netflix viewing of Narnia (kids here always request it .. think we have played it 3 times now). We got about halfway through it when the internet quit so had to send them home with promise to continue it another night. Life at the Mission!

March 22, Sunday – Day of rest for construction. We did manage to get into Ica to enjoy our partner church services at El Shaddai. Excellent message on loving thy neighbor, the danger of the tongue, gossip, and more. Of course not being a spanish speaker, my appreciation of the actual message was through the translation provided by my wife. The worship is always beautifully spiritual at this church as well. After a wonderful worship and message from the Word of God, on this very hot day, Pastor Martin closed out with the music group on the exit song. Caught a short few minutes on video of it (click here). One active spirit filled preacher who we truly enjoy knowing.

March 23, Monday – Big crew showed up today and much got done. Not sure what happened to most of the crew after a few hours but they expanded again in the afternoon. A lot of progress was made on the water tank structure base on the highest roof. Also finished all the parapet brick laying and then managed to put in place wooden forms for four of the columns (or was it five?). Had important discussion on running electrical tubing through the columns for purpose of the overhead lighting that will be installed later. Also ran a low voltage tube for future camera access. By end of day we did the pouring of concrete for the columns was done. A lot of bucket runs to do this, since the cement mixer is on the first floor and they need to run the concrete to the third.

Stopped to take a series of pictures from the outside as to the current profile. Since the parapet is now pretty much complete, thought it would be important to get the new layout of the building from the four sides. Of course this will change a great deal once the tarrajear is complete as much of the brick exterior will be gone and smoothed over. It will still look pretty plain, being all gray, until we return in August after it cures a bit and then apply a paint job to it. Funny how many odd colors people have used on their structures around here. I think we will stick to basic white. In the mean time, the outline has changed a bit with the parapet.

March 24, Tuesday – Another day, and they got here early. Took all the framing off yesterdays column pours, and started to assemble it on the remaining columns. Some additional rebar work in the front, with plans for a strong concrete covered rebar beam to stretch across the front of the property on top of the parapet. This was formed as well on Tuesday and with two more columns.Still have two more columns to pour, the completion of the water tower house on the roof, and then the digging and creation of a cistern to hold approximately 8 cubic meters of water (2x3x1.8 cubic meters). When all that’s done I assume we will get underway with the tarrajear work. More likely the cistern and tarrajear work will go on simultaneously with two distinct crews.

March 25, Wednesday – Constructed the framing for the last two columns, and accomplished a pour by end of day. While also making significant progress on the water tower, by pouring a foundation for it which was intentionally raised a meter above the ceiling for additional water pressure on the 3rd floor.

March 26, Thursday – More work on the top portion of the water tank building, only to see that we will be running out of brick. With all the tarrajear work ahead of us, and the building of the cistern, Lily makes a run to Maestro (market) to buy 250 more brick, 100 bags of concrete and additional 30 sticks of rebar (as well as many more elect rical tubes and elbows). This is our second supply run on this trip and I do hope that this is the last for those three items (but I think I said that on the earlier trip as well).

Truck arrived early afternoon and we unloaded sending all the brick to the second floor, and 70 of the cement bags (at 95 pounds each) as well. Most of the concrete will be used for tarrajear work (cement stucco) and that is all going to be done on the upper floors. 30 bags of cement stayed downstairs, along with all the rebar, as they will be used for the cistern construction. Eventually, all the brick ended up on the fourth floor for completion of this water tank structure.

Quite a bit more got completed on the water tank structure, in the morning prior to the supply delivery. It should be completed tomorrow. We also broke ground on the cistern dig.

It was decided to move it away from the building itself since digging that deep (2.3 meters) directly against the building was not thought to be a good idea structurally A We will still need to purchase an electrical pump for the cistern once it is built. But break ground we did. Now for tomorrow, a lot of earth will need to be moved and at least two dump trucks will be needed to take it away … good dirt too! Oh well, another day comes to a close.Speaking of dump trucks, we did get 6 cubic meters of gravel dumped at our front door yesterday primarily for use for constructing the cistern.

The guys put a lot of time in today to clear it from the front door. What was great was that the truck driver took away an entire dumptruck load of debris that we had all over the 2nd and 3rd floors in concrete bags everywhere, and did it for just S/.20 (about $7 US!!). What a deal. And we got to pitch those concrete bags full of debris down to the truck from the 2nd and 3rd floors, making it even easier. The place was a lot tidier afterwards. Now we can accumulate another 50 bags of debris for the next truck!!
The picture on the right was just an interesting angle photo from the fourth floor where we are building the water tank tower, looking down past the 3rd and 2nd floor via the open stairway, to the first floor. A skylight will cover this opening in the future, that resides on the 3rd floor but thought it was an interesting picture. Especially since I remember two years ago when this was just an empty field that we were just breaking ground on. So many bags of concrete, so many bricks, so many rebar … hoping to get this done mostly this year … say Hallelueah!!!

March 27, Friday – A busy day for construction, visiting and having bible class. Initially the big job of working on the roof house for our water tanks nears completion with the last brick put in place. Still will need to complete the columns with frame work and a concrete pour, and then fashion a roof, but near completion.

At the same time the excavation for the cistern continues, making a very deep hole. Many times, in looking at it I had to ask why not just keep digging and make a pool? It sure is the right climate and would make the mission all that more popular with the kids! Oh well, our next project. Lots of work being done and a lot of earth to move. It appears that we need to contract for more than a few truck loads to remove it all. The dirt will be towed to the front of the property and hopefully we will get our trucker back from the other day and get it hauled away.A third thing we did before the day was out, and before the children showed up for the evening, was to visit our neighbor who has a small distillery in the village.

We give up our small allotment of grapes we produce at the mission every year to him in exchange for his distilling them down to the local product which is very popular with the tourist, and that’s Pisco. This ‘beverage’ takes it’s name from the seaport town of Pisco, where our founder Lily was born, about an hour north of us. [It’s still in Ica Region, but the Province up there is also called Pisco. It is the seaport for the Region and apparently, news to us on this trip, an international airport is under construction there as well.] Anyway, Peru is quite proud of it’s Pisco product as an export. Chile has been trying to horn in on the action claiming it as a national drink for their country and also pretending they invented it. Some Latino rivalry that you can read about online via Google.

Anyway, we got our entire production for 2014 distilled down to two bottles of Pisco that we will take back to the US for gifts for our donors. We hope that our 2015 production was at least as good. Obviously we don’t make a lot of grapes here at the Mission but we are proud of the few we have and love to give the final product away to our fantastic supporters stateside.

We got back to the mission just in time to start setting up for the children for movie night but for some reason we had techical difficulties again. This time it wasn’t the internet since we were using a DVD, but we had projector / computer interface problems. Will have to work on that before tomorrow night for adults. So, instead of calling it a bust, since we had 16 children and one mother sitting and waiting for the movie, we made it into a popcorn and chicha night with some bible discussion.

We were surprised to have a very small lad, Jose, tell Lily that he wanted to give his heart to Jesus. So, we did that. Lily made the mistake of giving him a small gift afterwards, so ‘poof’ another volunteer for conversion and then the whole room. We have to watch the gift giving since we have watched the kids AND adults basically do whatever you tell them for whatever they are going to get for doing so. This is the struggle that occasional missionaries find themselves in when they come. Our purpose of building the Mission is to hopefully nurture a longer term relationship with these people, helping their walk through prayer, instruction, bible study and worship. It was a great site though to see all sixteen kids give their hearts to Jesus (will have to put the video together later).

We have to watch the gift giving since we have watched the kids AND adults basically do whatever you tell them for whatever they are going to get for doing so. This is the struggle that occasional missionaries find themselves in when they come. Our purpose of building the Mission is to hopefully nurture a longer term relationship with these people, helping their walk through prayer, instruction, bible study and worship. It was a great site though to see all sixteen kids give their hearts to Jesus (will have to put the video together later).

March 28, Saturday – Another day, and work was primarily focused on the same two items: completing the water tower and movement on the cistern. We did get two truckloads of dirt removed from the property, one wheelbarrow at a time to the front of the property and then shoveled out by hand into the truck. The cisterna dig project was not a small one, being 2x2x3 cubic meters totally. By noon, two truckloads of dirt was gone, the hole was complete, and we had a concrete layer on the base to build from.

Going on the same time was the work on the two columns for the water tower. Saturday is always a shorter day than the rest of the week but enough got done today for sure. The crew disappeared after lunch to work on a few other jobs, but did get the two columns poured on the roof for the water tower. That together with the earth movement and getting a base of concrete poured in the cistern, I guess we will call that a day.

We did have some visitors in the afternoon, and then about 4:30 (being fashionably late) we had children show up for our first English training class. Although I am getting certified in doing this, I was short any teaching material at this time, so Lily (being bilingual) took the first round. We had nine students and we went over some basics about introductions, salutations, vowels, alphabets, etc. They took a lot of notes!!

They were really enthusiastic about getting more English exposure and I think this will be a big hit if we do this once or twice a week. Need to get some specific lesson plans down.
Later in the evening, our adult leadership showed up and brought the movie “God is not Dead”. So, together we watched it. They also brought some great Chicha pudding to munch on through the movie! My technical difficulties on my computer still remain with it recognizing the projector so I used Lily’s and although I was not happy with the screen display (stuff above and below picture) it at least worked. Need to continue work to resolve my interface problem. Think the last batch of Windows updates broke it. Hate it when that happens!!
Tomorrow we will have no construction. Will most likely go into town for church and perhaps hear a visiting preacher from the USA at El Shaddai. Next week we will hopefully get underway with all the tarrajear. We have a new Internet provider we are hooking up tomorrow hopefully.

We have had such a flaky existence with our current one, it can only get better. In a week we plan on running to Lima for a few nights, I believe April 7 & 8. Lily went and got the bus tickets already.

March 29, Sunday – Not much planned today other than going into Ica for Sunday service. Pastor Wayne Anderson, from the United States, will be a guest preacher and that will be different since he is English with a translator. Had a quick shower than discovered that was the last thing we did with electricity in that it went off before we even left the mission. I went out front thinking it was a breaker or that we didn’t pay the bill but apparently it was area wide. This happens probably too often down here where the municipality schedules an all day outage on Sundays to do some needed maintenance. When we got into town for church services, yes, it was off throughout Ica as they had the church running on a generator with two more generators on standby. Life in Peru. Anyway, it was a great service. Enjoyed hearing Wayne Anderson and his life story about marrying his 8th grade girlfriend, his children and grand children and the importance of being a faithful family man and example for all our children. Excellent service.

Pastor Martin introduced us to Wayne Anderson before the service, but we had met him once before as he comes down here annually with a traveling entourage. This trip he apparently took in Iquitos (in the north jungle), Lima and Ica. He had a healing service Thursday through today in the evenings but don’t think we will make it back for that. Great sermon though and, as usual, fantastic worship music.

Afterwards we spent a little bit of time with both of the couples that do services at the Mission, having a lunch with Augusto and Nancy who run the children’s service. We missed them this week since they did not make it out to the mission due to schedule conflicts and we had to do the class on our own. We hope to work through some scheduling and transportation issues with the two of them as we complete the 2nd floor there is no reason why they can’t come up together and have their gatherings at the same time, on different floors, complementing each other. One thing at a time. Returned to the Mission after a short stop at a couple of markets.

Monday, March 30 – The hole is dug and now it’s time to fabricate all the rebar ribs for this underground swimming pool that we will never swim in. It will be 2x2x3 meters in dimension, or roughly 6 feet deep, 5 feet wide and nine feet long. What a perfect ‘tread water’ pool dimension if only we built it without a lid on it and not underground. Oh well, our next one!! It’s hot enough to really look forward to a dip in a pool like this! Anyway, construction is a slow process but well underway.

Interesting that they cut the rebar the right length on the ground floor and then hoist it to the 3rd floor to put the right bends into it, and stockpile it. After they have all their shapes made, they will most likely do the assembly in the hole itself, after lowering each piece of shaped rebar down from the roof.
While the cistern is one project underway, completing the roof top water tower is another.

Looks like by the end of the day, we will hopefully have more than one framework in place for pouring a lot of concrete, both tank tower and cistern.

Finally got all the way up on the top of the water tower to assess the rebar work being done. A last minute request was made to the guys framing the roof on the tower, was to leave up one or two rebars to build an antenna on to, about a meter high. Minor inputs here and there, are always being made. And what a view from up here. Feeling like the tower of babbel a bit!Will remember to strap a lawn chair up here with an umbrella and a good book though when it’s done … nice private place! assuming you don’t have a fear of heights!

Tuesday, March 31 – Lily and I ran up to Pisco today for meeting. It’s only an hour ride north by bus (after taking 30 minutes south to catch the bus) so we fully intend tc be back before the crew finishes for the day. We expect them to finalize a bit upstairs and get the cistern assembled.Lily is from Pisco, so it is nice to get back there every once in awhile. Best seafood going as well. We recently found out that there is a new international airport being built there.

With the port, the new airport, and the fishing industry, Pisco may in a few decades rival Ica as a larger city in this region. Anyway, while we were up there, as we are always fascinated in business’s that make this country operate, we checked out a scallop farm. Aquaculture was a fascinating topic that I wrote a college paper on and the economics of it are always attractive to me. Caught a quick pick of Lily going out to check out a 5 hectare Scallop farm .. not like there was a lot to see out on the water,but it was a nice day, the water was cool, the company pleasant (went with a local pastor and two other followers) and the stories fascinating. We got a great ceviche lunch afterwards!!!