The children who attended Westwood Baptist Church’s Summer Hummer Children’s program last summer worked hard to raise funds so that the Isnag children in our village could have a place to play and have PE on rainy days.
In January, we had a plan, but were still looking at an empty lot behind the school.
The covered play area was a “Some Assembly Required” project. It was pre-fabricated in a city many miles away from our village. One major obstacle was getting the ton of steel from the end of the road to the village. This is usually an 8 hour walk. It probably would take longer if you were carrying one of the posts which were more than 270 pounds each. (126 kilos).
When it came to hiking with a post there were not any takers, but the boat guys downstream from our village got busy and hauled almost everything. It took them two days of pushing their boats up the river to reach the village and they made several trips.
In February, 50 of our Isnag neighbors got to work and leveled the lot, hauled gravel, and poured concrete.
By March we were looking at a concrete slab and almost all the parts of the building. I say almost, because one truss section was missing and 9 pieces of roofing had not yet arrived. Getting everything there was one obstacle, the other was assembling the building. I really needed some expert help.
In April, God graciously provided an international team of experts. The Philippines provided Robert, Lito, and Marshal. The USA provided Jim and Liz. Australia provided Bob, Kaleb, and David. Also pictured are Raman and Arsely who helped a lot on during the February phase.
The team went right to work drilling and bolting the structure together.
The entire team was needed to stand each section up and bolt it to the cement slab. A section was two posts and four truss pieces.
After two days a lot of progress had been made, but we still were missing a section of truss and some roofing. Without the missing truss the last section could not be assembled. There was a rumor that someone had offered to hike it upstream but had gotten tired of carrying it and had dropped it three hours down stream.
That night I went out and talked to a guy that has a small boat. I asked him to go downstream and search for the missing truss. I also asked the pilot if he would be able to get roofing into the village in the helicopter. The next day, just as the men got to the place where they could go no further without the truss, it arrived. The pilot was also successful at bringing in roofing. He had to take the doors off to do it, but he got it there.
After lunch the guys bolted the last truss together, stood it up and started screwing on roofing. To say it was hot on the roof would be an understatement. Bob (in white) designed the structure and generously came over from Australia with Kaleb, tools, and materials to put it together.
As we flew out of the village, we looked down and were very thankful for the generosity of those who sacrificed their time and money to help complete this project. We also thank God that no one was hurt during the construction process. School starts the first week of June and we are looking forward to introducing the students to their new play area.