In the muck and a sky of fire

 Life continues to press on here, as I am sure it does everywhere else. The crew has completed digging and prepping almost half the hospital footings, and we have begin pouring the concrete one level at a time. We have completed the entire west perimeter wall footings and hope to pour the stem walls over a portion of these this coming week.

 The process is intense and requires many hands on deck. They are able to pour about 16 cubic yard of concrete per day into the prepared footings if all the raw materials are ready and waiting. Ever step takes time, and there are always details that require tweaking from the time before and rethinking from what we have expected.


All in all, the progress has been good, and has shown us all just exactly what we have gotten 
 ourselves into.

The progress we have made so far has given us a better idea of what to expect, and we are able to estimate the timeline for the next year. We have had interest from churches and individuals to come down and pitch in, and we are excited by this, because it is confirmation for us that we have not been asked to bear this burden alone.

We were able to move over to the 'new' house last Sunday, and have completely vacated our previous residence. We started the move in the morning, and Ryan sealed our fate, with deciding to move all the beds first. I cant say I look forward to relocating again any time soon, but this move was much shorter and with no sad goodbyes. We are all enjoying the new house, in its almost kind-of done stage.

I am enjoying a fence around the house, for the first time in motherhood.  The gates remain latched, but without locks at this time. We only have a few escapees a day, and we are working on that.


The dust has been brutal on our house cleaning schedule. I have never been one to keep an immaculate home, but sweeping twice a day, and needing a scoop shovel (ok, not really) to take out the dirt, seems a little crazy!  

 We spent a little time yesterday on our day off, and cleaned out the horse through for a makeshift swimming hole for the kids.
There were a myriad of little swimming critters and not so nice smelling goop at the bottom. Of course, we found the drain after the fact.

Tomorrow, we will be hosting, as a ministry, an Open House/Groundbreaking/Dedication ceremony for the Hospital. We hope to have a large turnout of municipal officials as well as local and Nation supports of the project. We will cater and feed all who attend with the hope of spreading the word as to the intentions of the hospital as well as the purpose for the project as a whole. 

I hope to have some good pictures from the ceremony tomorrow. And what it looks like from here as we continue to traverse the gap between our native culture, and the native culture with Jesus and Love at the center.