Clearing the land in Pachacamac

This week we have a team here from London, Ontario from a company called Forest City Fire Protection. The team has done some painting, grouted the floors in the second house, built a fence and cut and burned all of the vegetation on the proprty getting ready to plant our garden. Above is a before picture of the weeds and brush that we had to clear.

This is the after picture. We managed to get dirtier doing this job than any other job I have ever done with a team. Even though these guys are from a fire protection company, it turns out they are pretty good at starting fires as well because we got the brush burned up just as fast as we could cut it.

This is the start of our new waste water treatment project that we are putting in. This facility will allow us to treat the waste water from all of the buildings on our property, use it to raise fish and reuse it to water our gardens and grass. We are very excited about this project and cannot wait to see it completed and up and running.

Mitchell Swaback Foundation Service Team #4

This week we have the Swaback Foundation with us for their fourth year. This group of guys are very skilled and can always be counted on to get lots of quality work done in a short period of time. The team is working in Pachacamac, putting in shelving under sinks and in hall closets as well as tiling the second house.

In Manchay they are tiling our new office and studding and drywalling the office partitions. They are also building some custom desks for the offices and hanging all of the doors. Thank you very much guys for you ongoing support of the ministry here and for your hard work each day.

A Saturday Trip to Pachacamac

Today Brenda and the girls and I along with Eduardo made a trip to the worksite. Even though it is Saturday we had to get the showers put in so that the tile workers could keep advancing.

Here is a glimpse of what they have started in one of the bedrooms. They had all 4 bedrooms in house 1 to this stage.

Even Luz the sheep came in to inspect things. She must have liked what she saw because she didn't stick around to tell us what needed to be changed.

While we were inside working, the girls were outside finding something fun to do amongst all the construction materials. After a while, the girls came inside and helped by sweeping the floors for the tile workers.

For those of you who are wondering if things are on hold in Manchay at the Oasis, it is quite the opposite. Things are really moving along there as well. Eduardo and two others are working there everyday doing bricklaying and getting the floors ready for tile. I have been busy doing the layout for the new office and boardroom. I will take some pictures on Monday and post them.

Kings Collegiate Service Team

This past week we have been priviledged to have a service team here from Kings Collegiate School in Oakville, Ontario. Their school sends many missions teams all over the world and this year for the first time they chose to come to Peru with Kids Alive. They were a very fun group of young people who managed to have a lot of laughs and still got lots of hard work done. With them we painted the inside of both houses and took out some trees. We levelled the backyards of both houses and laid down some sod.

This is a picture of the sheep that we have running around on the property. The kids some how managed to name her Louse and trained her to eat mint cookies, corn chips and cheesies and to drink Gatorade. Louse loved the fact that we planted grass because in the days prior she had been seen chewing on cement bags and plastic coated wire. Louse was a very dedicated friend to one girl on the team named Steph Collins and I know Louse along with everyone else here in Peru is going to miss the Kings crew very much Thank you guys.

Decorating the first house

This week has been very busy with trying to get the first house into move in condition. We started with the windows. In the above picture you can see the sliding glass door that will lead out to a patio. All of the windows will be able to slide open and will be fitted with screens to stop mosquitoes from entering.

The next installation was the electrical panel and all of the lights and switches and outlets. While we still fail to have electricity from the municipality as of yet, we will have the house ready for when we can get approval.

Next many hours were spent in the tile stores trying to match paint samples to tiles. But with much perserverance, Leo and myself decided on some nuetral, earthy tones that will be very durable and easy to wash while still looking very nice in the house. Today I was out at the jobsite, and the contactor came to begin laying the tiles. Once they are down the house will really take on a finished look.

Our next item for having the house be ready was to take down some scrubby trees on the property and to lay some sod. We had a service team here from Canada who worked very hard in the January sun to get this job done.

Also today we had two men come from a local school for deaf students, who are going to be making all of our armoirs, kitchen cupboards and doors for the house. They took all the measurements that they needed and were going to buy their materials.

As you can see the house is really coming together but still has a ways to go. Now that I am back and at the jobsite everyday, I will keep you posted on the progress.

It's Good to be Home Again

As many of you know, or could tell by my lack of blog posts, my family and I spent the last 4 months in Canada. Our time was very much enjoyed and we did many fun activities with friends and family. Now we are back in Peru and the work has begun. When I was here in September our contractor started construction on the first two houses in Pachacamac. Well now construction on them is done and the finish work is being done in order for our older boys to be able to move in. While we finish the inside of these houses, construction on the next two is advancing.
We very much missed all of our friends here in Peru and it is great to be back here with them.

We are going home!

Well the Foss family is set to return to Peru on January 7. We have really enjoyed our time here in Canada, spending Christmas with family and enjoying many winter activities together. We have managed to stay in contact with many of our friends in Peru and are really looking forward to reuniting with them and spending some time getting to know them better.
While we have been away, the ministry has been moving on, so we will need to get caught up and prepare for the start of the 2009 service team season. Also while we have been away, our team has been joined by a new family. The Chadwicks have come to Peru to look after team hosting and child sponsorship. This will be a real blessing to our team as we have been understaffed for much of last year.
Please pray for our return to Peru, for our preparing for the teams and also for our getting to know the Chadwicks. Please continue to pray for the ministry as a whole in Peru, for the new children's home site in Pachacamac and for finances for the ministry.