Second Day

Well, we're finished with day no. 2 and much has been accomplished. Today was the big day for the bridge renevation team. The main problem with the bridge was that the cables on the upstream side of the bridge had been stretched out due to being clipped by a tree that had floated downriver. This caused the bridge tilt down on one side. However, the team encountered a problem with retensioning the cables. The turnbuckles had already been turned as far as they could go last year, when the bridge was built. To fix the problem, we first had to transfer the load of the bridge from one of the turnbuckles to another cheater turnbuckle/cable. Then the old turnbuckle was taken out and replaced by a shorter turnbuckle that would allow more room to adjust the tension in the cables. We then transferred the weight to the new turnbuckle. This process was done for each of the turnbuckles on the far bank from the village. Before and after each of these transitions the team prayed to ask/thank God for safety and to keep the bridge out of the river. The final step was to recut the end piece of the decking to make it fit into the smaller space. We received several visitors throughout day, including several people who wanted to pass across the bridge. Some of these we had to turn away, but others we helped to get across. Several kids also kept us company and played games with Amy and Rebekah and the rest of the team as we could find time. For some of us, one of the best parts of the day was when Dr. Gilliam brought back a sack of fresh bread and muffins from Juana, the local baker. It was amazing. The other teams are continuing to make progress with their projects. The water team is ready for their big day tomorrow and the bridge construction team is continuing to prep the bridge site and put together materials for construction. At the end of the day, we all came back, cleaned up, ate dinner, and sang songs together for a while. One of the Guatemalan preachers led us in some of the Spanish praise songs. Finally when we are ready to go to bed, sunburned, with sore muscles, and tired minds, we look back at the work of the day and see how much good is being done for the people and for the glory of God. It is a wonderful site to see how thankful the people are for what they have and how willing they are to help. Thank God for helping the renevation team with their project and continue to pray for the other teams, that their projects will go as well as the renevation.

Paul Wright