Ecuador: Elsa's House

This is our team with Rob (far left), Wilson (in blue on left), Elsa (front and center), and David (in blue on right). During the week, we worked on building a house for Elsa. She was born in the jungle, and her father was one of the men that retrieved the missionaries' bodies after the spearing. Elsa became a teacher in the jungle with Compassion International, then began working in the office at MAF. She had started giving people money a few times in the past after they said they would build her a house, only to have them run off with her money, leaving her with no house. We raised funds to build a house on land that she had.

Wilson is an Ecuadorian pastor and has been the foreman for this project. He worked with us everyday, and the last day, his brother, David, joined us. It was neat to learn from Wilson and to work on this project despite the language barrier.

When we arrived, the floor and roof were already complete. Wilson and others had been working on the house up to this point. We worked on the walls while we were there!

This is the layout for the house. Elsa is currently taking cooking lessons and enjoys baking. We gave her a KitchenAid mixer as a house-warming gift - she wants to sell baked goods for extra income. She also desires to offer her house as a place for guests to stay.

We mixed the cement for the walls. To start, we needed to sift the sand to get rid of larger stones. Above, Carol and I are rocking this screen back and forth to get fine sand. That was then added to the cement mixer with water, cement, and lime. This process got tiring after a while!

We all helped to lay the blocks in cement. One day, the walls were about waist high, and we had a good system with Wilson. A few of us would lay cement, he would lay the blocks, and we would fill in with cement and continue the process for more layers.

On day we had to chisel 50 blocks so they would fit nicely over the re-bar. We chiseled with our trowels and a hammer and kept working for most of the morning. My hands were raw for several days after this!

This was how we left the house at the end of the week - 4 outside walls and some inside walls complete. Wilson and others will continue to work on the house, preparing it for Elsa.