Day 2 in Obaga, Kenya - Let's build a house!

What a day today!  It started off with us going to visit the site where we would be building a home.  It was about a half-mile walk through the “bush” of Kenya.  The men were already working on digging the holes for the wall posts.  The anticipation is that by the end of the evening, the family, Victor, Sarah and their 3 babies would be moving in and spending the night in their new home.  Yep, that means we would have built a home in 1 day.  How’s that for Extreme Makeover.

We came back to the work site after lunch and the workers had most of the walls up, as well as the roof trusses.  Now the walls are made from sapling trees and the roof trusses are made from trees a little bigger than that.  Then they nail long stick horizontal to the wall posts, on the inside and out.  Victor, his brother and friend started digging a mud pit on both sides and the back of the house.  This will be used for the walls.

Then it began.  The walls were done and the mud was ready.  There were about 20 widows from Obaga that were there to help with the house and we all jumped in and started rolling and packing mud into the walls of this house.  It took us about 2  ½ hours to mud the outside walls and the interior walls.  Once we were done, the contractors finished putting the metal roof on the house and we actually got to dedicate it, pray over the house and the family, share gifts with the family and eat a meal in their new home. 

It has to be one of the coolest things that I have even done in my life.  I know it will have a huge impact on this family.  It was really neat, because this was the home that our family, including my parents, funded and I was able to present to Victor and Sarah a family picture if us, which is hanging in their living room.  I am confident that if we return, it will still be there.  We also gave Victor and Sarah a new mattress, a new charcoal stove, a blanket, and a bible in their original language.