June Update

First of all I would like to start this June 2009 update with an apology. I had to go into the hospital for emergency surgery and got out of the routine of updating my blog. I am much better now and so am sorry for not keeping you all up to date but hopefully after this I can be more diligent. June saw the graduation of our first year moms program and we here at Kids Alive Peru construction would like to take this oportunity to congratulate each one of the moms from the program and wish all of you the best of luck in the future.

June also saw the finishing and installation of all the custom closets and kitchen cupboards in house 1 at Pachacamac. The workshop that we used to make them told us that this was the biggest job they had ever done, thus taking so long, but the cupboards sure are beautiful. Our watewater treatment system was having trouble during this month but we now think we have figured out the problem and are working to get it back online.

Construction of house number 4 was also finished just the other day. Our goal now for the rest of the year is to finish the insides of houses 3 and 4 having them ready for early 2010.

Pachacamac April Update

The past month has seen the waste water treatment system near completion and today we are finishing installing a fence around the whole project and next week we can try it out.

This past week the footings for house 4 were poured, all the conduit for plumbing and elctrical were installed and the floor was poured. This week the coulmns will be formed and poured and the house will begin to take shape.

Finally our kitchen cupboards and bedroom closets arrived this week for house 1. The work took way longer than we expected but it is very beautiful. We contracted the work out to a home for deaf children here in Lima. They have a woodworking shop where the kids learn skills and they have a side business making doors, cupboards or anything made of wood. Windows and screens have been completed on house 2 and some lovely granite countertops were installed in the kitchen.

It has been a while since we have taken a photo of the Kids Alive Peru Construction team so this week Brenda came out to the worksite to surprise us with a request. Although we don't have on our Sunday best as far as clothes, here is an updated photo of Eduardo and I.

We want to send out a special thanks to all of the service teams that come down to Peru to work with us. Without you and your help, the work here would not advance at the rate it does and we would not be able to provide the lovely homes that we have for our family here.

Calvary Baptist/LAM Team 2

The past 2 weeks we have had the second team of the year here from Calvary Baptist Church Oshawa and Latin American Missions. This team is very skilled and very experienced and they go on several missions trips each year. The team completely wired and installed the electrical pannel in house 3 as well as completely painting the house.

The team also installed 12 doors and door jams in house 2. At times it was a little hectic with a guy there working on window screens and 2 other guys installing countertops.

Amongst all of this teams knowledge is a great understanding of water systems and how they can be optimised to make them more efficient. Here is a tank that was previously installed but the team need to raise to make their system work. With this sytem all 6 of our houses will be able to run off of 1 automatic level switch. Near the end of week the electricians were running out of work so I went looking for something for them to do. They agreed to go to Manchay to our "Oasis" site to wire and hook up electrical in our new office building.

Thanks very much to all of the people who came on the 2 Calvary/LAM teams and did all of the great work and were so fun to work with. Also a very special thanks to everyone who supported Calvary Baptist Church Oshawa in their CD sales fundraiser.

Pachacamac Update

Things are progressing at a good pace in Pachacamac. Construction is finished on houses 1 and 2 and finish work on house 1 is 95% done with only the kitchen cupboards and closets to go. Finish work on house 2 is about 60% with doors, cupboards, windows and tiles to finish. Construction on house 3 is 95% done with only the floor to pour and the next work team is set to paint, install electrical and lay tiles. House number 4 is getting started as you can see below.

Above is the footing for house 4 with some of the rebar for the columns in place.

Above is our internal waste water treatment project. This system takes all of the waste water from the property and seperates the liquids from the solids. It then treats the liquids in a sealed tank from where they pass into a water garden. In the water garden they filter down through 4 different stages of particulate and also feed aquatic plants with their nutrients. After being filtered through the garden the water passes into the above pictured pool where we are able to raise a fish called Talapia which our families can eat. The excess water from the fish pond gets pumped out into our irrigation system for our gardens. This system will be finished and functional within the next 2 weeks.

Calvary Baptist/LAM Team

This past week we had a team here from Oshawa, Ontario. This team had a good mixture of men and women and of Spanish speakers and non Spanish speakers as well. The team mainly worked in Pachacamac completely painting house number 2, installing electricity in house 2 as well as installing an electrical panel at the street and running conduit and lines for future buildings, they installed a water tank on house 2 and did a lot of clean up and prep work on house 3. Besides all this they managed to pour 2 more sections of driveway in Manchay and in the photo above you can see a special side project that they did. This is a retaining wall at a womans house in Manchay. Last year when the municipality came by to put sewers in they knocked down her old wall. They never came back to fix it so with some money that had been donated this team went and built her a nice, new wall. Thank you very much Calvary Team for all your hard work and we look forward to your next visit to Peru.

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.