Progress

This week Garry has been busy getting ready for the work team coming from BC. Since he'd like to finish the project before they leave, he has a list to finish before they arrive Tuesday evening so that can happen. 

Thursday they worked on fixing floors, Thursday evening we drove into Zaporosia for our missionary small group meeting. We have started not driving in with the Crawfords, they drive themselves there, but instead taking the van and dropping Nellie and a group of students at the mall.

They can buy groceries cheaper than in the village.  Either one or both members of the married couples, plus a few more students,  have come the three weeks we've done this, because they are being economical.  They are there three hours so they end up spending a little money at McDonald's for French fries and hamburgers but they enjoy that, too.

Of course we are doing most of our regular activities besides getting started on Yana's reno,  so this week we are fitting in two of our once a month activities, along with the weekly ones.  Wednesday night we were in Kamskaya for SEI follow up and Sunday afternoon we'll be visiting with Lena's English students in Dnepro.  Garry always adds a Bible story to whatever topic we choose for the month. Tomorrow it will be St Patrick's  day,  luck and Joseph.  It is the one Sunday a month that we go to church in Dnepro instead of the village church.  A couple of the students will go with us.

Garry has been teaching English conversation classes at school in Dnepro for a couple years now. They pay him but mostly he enjoys talking with people in English.  This year he's teaching on Friday afternoons before we do our SEI follow up group (book reading club this year) and Saturday mid-morning to 3:30 in the afternoon.  Today he got home around 6:30 because he had to get Victor to come jump the car battery because he'd left the lights on when he parked it at ten am. April first we won't need them on for highway driving. 

Garry had hoped to pour cement yesterday for the kitchen/bathroom floor at Yana's,  but we had to leave after lunch for his classes. He did get some metal profile up for the outer walls.

They had a lot of prep work to get done that morning for the water and sewer and it turned out they needed a little more water line than they had on hand for  the kitchen and bathroom area before pouring the cement. He had bought sewer pipes and connections in Zaporosia Thursday night.  Garry was thinking Max could work on it that afternoon, but he had to go to see his mother in hospital in Zaporosia  (nothing serious).

 I shop while Garry's teaching, yesterday I bought groceries and got Happy, the puppy,  a new collar, she lost or broke hers this week. Garry jokes that I spend more money than he gets paid, and it was true yesterday.

He finished at six, then we ate KFC in the car while he drove and waited in traffic jams as we made our way from downtown  to Patona  street for our 40 days of Purpose book group that starts at seven. Victor was already unlocking the door when we arrived at quarter to seven.

 Cookies, tea, chatting, reading and discussion on chapter 16 (I think its going to be a two year study) before hanging out with Tanya Yatsenko at the mall for a while... until they turned out the lights in the food court after ten!

This morning we talked to the girls about all three moving into the big bedroom before the team arrives.  Garry took off the teach, while I assisted with the move. We packed up all Vika's clothes to put in storage, so they'd have room to put their stuff away. Last week Vika left with former student Karina for a Christian rehab. They are both going to quit smoking and Karina drinking alcohol (she's had a bad year). We are hoping that she's able to turn her life around. 

At 9:30 I walked down to Yana's to see if I needed to make soup. Thursday and Friday I brought the soup and sandwiches to the worksite and there were some guys working,  so I said I'd bring lunch again.

 By the time I  got there with lunch

Max was working with them to pour the cement.  He'd picked up the remaining supplies Friday afternoon while  he was in Zaporosia.

Two of the guys were digging around the current water cistern to make a larger one for Yana. It was interesting to watch, they dig, break up the concrete walls then dig more.

Meanwhile Kolya was pulling water up from the cistern to make concrete for the floor with a bucket, Leila was carrying the pieces of broken cement out to a pile by the road. Other guys were filling buckets of gravel and carrying those into Max and the cement mixer, right where they were pouring the floor. The wheelbarrow was being filled by shoveling sand off the wagon, too.

I did not get down to take more photos,  but the kitchen floor should be dry on Monday morning so they should be able to build the rest of the metal profile walls, order cabinets and be ready to run electric wires and start drywall Wednesday morning after the guys arrive.