The Cercadillo Project

Two faculty and eight nursing students/recent nursing grads from Hannibal-LaGrange University in Hannibal, MO have arrived to work in Cercadillo this week.  Today’s lessons with children focused on the importance of washing hands.

With a song, coloring pages and “hands-on” 🙂 learning opportunities, the HLGU students did a great job of teaching our children.

By the end of the week we hope to have several women in the village trained in taking basic vital signs.  Today’s lesson for the “Ayudantes de Salud” (Health Helpers) focused on taking temperatures, reading a chart to know when the temperature is low, normal, high or very high and what appropriate actions are for each level.

The village women took turns taking each other’s temperatures.   The hardest part of the lesson for several of our women was not taking the temperature, reading the chart or cleaning the thermometer.  The hardest part was not laughing and thus, not being able to keep their mouths closed long enough for a good reading.  🙂

I would imagine that the majority of you who read this have a thermometer in your home.  I would imagine that the majority of you have at one time or another taken the temperature of a sick child, or your own temperature.  For my women this was an exciting and empowering experience.  Equipped with some thermometers that will be shared by the Ayudantes de Salud, wiser decisions can be made concerning when additional medical help should be sought and when a cold bath might be sufficient.

A women’s health workshop was offered after the Ayudantes de Salud training.  It was very well received with much lively discussion.   The Cercadillo women expressed great enthusiasm  to be learning such practical skills and gaining information concerning how they can be pro-active in the health of themselves and their families.

And this was just the first day!

If you were to see these professional, office-type guys in their normal daily environments in the Washington, DC area, you would never envision them this dirty and sweaty.  And they would probably add that they could never envision themselves this sore and tired.

The guys finished preparing all the panels and trusses in the first two very-full days of work.  For this accomplishment we “rewarded” them with the “opportunity” to do preparatory work for the cement floor that will probably be completed within the next few weeks.   They were digging through coral, which made the work extremely difficult.

And then it was Tuesday . . . the day TIME Ministries participants look forward to . . . the day to connect all the pieces.

By late afternoon, the last screw was put in place and Building # 3 was completed.

Just as the construction was finishing a huge thunderstorm arrived.  We had to scream to hear each other above the noise of the rain on the tin roof.  David, one of our Cercadillo friends who helped with the construction said, “Rain means God is showing His pleasure.  A storm likes this must mean that He is very pleased with what we have done today and will continue pouring out His blessings on this community.”

 May it be so.

I can’t begin to appropriately express my thanks to the six men who have worked so hard these days and to all those who supported them in making this new building a reality for us.  They did much more than construct a building.  They built relationships.

Gateway Church, they represented you well.