Forever House #13: We Have Floors!

...our journey to rent free living, all the entertainment minus the headaches.

We hope to move-in sometime within the next month, so there will probably be a couple forever house posts here close to together. We are finishing 2/3s of our house and then we will save the other 1/3rd to do a little bit at a time over the next year. It will just be nice not to have to drive back and forth anymore since our church and the pastors' institute are in that town. 

We have this awesome friend Amy who on top of writing all kinds of drama scripts for us and coming down on missions trips to head up different outreaches, works for a plumbing company! Jimmy really wanted PEX tubing for our house, but we were going to have to pay to have it all shipped down here. Well Amy found a distributer for us here in Guatemala! Jimmy even went to Guatemala city with our plumber to take a class on how to install it. 

Here is the manifold that Jimmy installed: 

The white box is our hot water heater. It is going to be so crazy having HOT water in our shower and not a luke warm trickle from a widow maker. I really figured I'd be using a widow maker for the rest of my life. This is just a special blessing. The shower will be the best part of this house!

Beyond that, I will have HOT water in my laundry room... we are talking crazy talk now! I am just so excited! 

{Laundry Room}

There is even a drain in the floor in there!

{Master Bath}

Jimmy also put hot water at our bathroom vanity. He is looking forward to having hot water to shave by. We are going to be so spoiled now. 

We are going for rustic, but even with rustic you have to be precise about certain things. We like the look of concrete floors. Polished gray concrete is kind of classic. It won't go out of style and it's a neutral that will go with anything.

To help stabilize the floors, above the rock layer is a layer of steel mesh. Jimmy has done a lot to prevent moisture from coming up through our floors, one of them being that underneath all the floors below the mesh are tarps. They hadn't done it in this photo, so they had to lift all the metal up and put them down. I think we are the only ones here that do it this way because our mason was pretty reluctant to do it.  

Then the floors are poured on top of that. They use strings as a guide to keep it level. 

 Our masons poured our back patio first. They used a hand trowel to smooth it out. I like to see the trowel marks, but they did them in straight lines... awk! That makes it looks like something you didn't do right rather than quaint rustic. I haven't taken a photo yet, but you can kind of see the lines in the photo below:

They poured a couple more little rooms, like our master bath and closet before they got the technique down just how I wanted. Random... as in random trowel marks are hard to do apparently! The trowel marks are nice though because when the floor is wet there is still enough traction to keep you from falling. That is a big problem we have had with kids living on tile. 

The hard room to pour was going to be our great room. Again, it is our living room, kitchen, and dining room all in one. There was no way that our masons would be able mix enough concrete by hand to pour the whole room in one day, which meant there were going to be lots of large seams. Plus the ratio of each batch is a little different, so there would be lots of variation over the room. 

We have two friends who were a big help with this problem. Arlen has been letting us use his cement mixer for a while and then our other friend Stephen offered to lest us borrow his cement mixer and power trowel along with the chance to hire his experienced group of masons for the day. Stephen and one of his boys came with his guys bright and early one morning to pour our great room floor. 

Here are the two concrete mixers going at once!

{Stephen is in the white hat}

They had the entire room poured before noon!

It takes a lot of work!

Here is the power trowel:

Lico stayed till midnight. That is the amount of drying time needed before you can use this machine. It vibrates the floor to get out all the uneven parts and makes it incredible smooth! 

We are so thankful for Stephen coming that day. With his experience, men and machines we ended up with a pretty spectacular floor!

The rest of the floors in the part that we are moving into have been poured as well.  My shower has a nice little step down to keep all the water in, but even more importantly... the drain is the LOWEST part of the shower floor. We tested it... several times... we just like watching all the water actually go down the drain. That is unheard of here. No more puddles and slimy shower floors... woot woot!

 There is sand all over the poured floor because that is how they keep it from getting scratched while they are still working in there. The walls still needed a smooth coat. We went back and forth at which to do first, the floors or the walls. Is it easier to get walls off of floors? or floors off of walls?, because concrete gets slung everywhere. After doing one room walls then floors we decided it is better reversed. 

Jimmy had them put down a tarp so there is as little clean up afterwards as possible. Still you have to go around all the walls and clean the stucco off our pretty floors, but with some paint thinner it comes off just fine.

The stucco on the outside of our house we will finish over time as well. It has a texture to it. It took several attempts at getting it just right too. I don't think any of the masons here in Petén have done work like this before. It took some patience on all of our parts. Here is what it looks like:

Don't look at my windows yet... that is for the next post! The stucco where the windows go had to be completed before they could be installed though because we do not want concrete chunks all in our screens and on our pretty metal windows. 

There was another issue. 99% of the outlets in Guatemala look like this:

The hole is too big for the outlet... drives me nuts! Well this is the first and last time it happened in our house.

Here is one finished right:

It is the finishing of things that will kill you. Detail and presicion isn't of much concern here in Petén. Maybe because everything is made of concrete... I don't know. But Jimmy fought for anything in our house that was finished precisely... fought hard. Jimmy chose his battles. You win some and you lose some. We won't mind when this whole construction process is over. But who enjoys building a house anywhere in the world?!? It will make you nuts. 

One last thing, here is our cistern, water softener, water purifier, and pump that Jimmy installed. 

It is working very nicely! Clean water right out of the tap... yay!

A Beautiful Day!

We got up about 5:30 in order to make it to the other side of Petén in time for an inaugural service. I came into the kitchen about 6:00 kind of stressed saying to Jimmy that I was really sorry, but I thought I was going to be the last one ready. On really early mornings like this Jimmy usually makes breakfast - blueberry muffins in the shape of a train - in order to give me time to pack all the kids' stuff (like food, extra clothes, etc.) 

The boys love picking their train cars, it's a special treat. Well... Silas sensed that I was stressed when I came into the kitchen and he said, "You pretty Mommy, luv you." That kind of turned my day around!

The village of Tesuluclan 2 was having an inaugural service for their new church building along with their first baptismal service. This village was reached with the Gospel for the first time back in May. Domingo was the first person to visit this village after they called into the radio asking for someone to come tell them more about God. In August the Daytona team held another outreach there. They also gave money for the boards for the walls to build a church building... 2,000 feet of wood. Here is that building:

The guys painting the sign were laughing because they were embarrassed I was taking their picture! They did a great job painting the sign. I thought the church members did a great job painting the whole building too. They seems to take a lot of pride in their church!

The name of the church is The Miracles of Christ Baptist Mission. A church is referred to as a mission until it can support it's own pastor. This church currently has a mother church in another town who helps it out. 

Eden is still at the age where she doesn't mind getting past around if she can still see her mommy.

I heard the words "bow" and "baby doll" of lot that day. That is what everyone calls Eden here with her chubby cheeks and blue eyes - "baby doll" (pura muñeca!) In Kekchi they just say "muñec". Everyone is so sweet to my babies.

The church members had planned a big supper for everyone. This was their kitchen. 

They prepared "Poch" or tamalitos instead of trying to make 100's of tortillas to feed that many people. It would have been impossible to keep that many tortillas warm and nobody likes a cold corn tortilla! Tamalitos are steamed wrapped banana leaves filled with corn meal. Here they are cooking on the fire:

The tamalitos were a side to go with the beef... very fresh beef!

We arrived right after they slaughtered the bull. If I had seen him wag his tail, I wouldn't have been able to take these photos, but since we never met, I'm cool with it. 

They chopped the rib cage up among other things. I got to watch as they carried it off, piece by piece. 

They were so kind to us when we arrived with Domingo and his family. They treated us like special guests. They prepared us lunch. It was eggs and beans with dark corn tortillas. 

Purple tortillas are my favorite. They don't taste anything at all like the traditional corn tortillas here. The dark corn seed is hard to find or Jimmy would have planted some this last season at the institute. I want to find somewhere to by the dried corn so that I can make my own cornmeal... it isn't very common. I think this would make excellent corn bread. The regular corn meal sold here has a flavor I don't particularly care for... I know it's horrible. I feel bad for not liking something so attached to the country's identity. 

{Silas excited about lunch!}

The eggs and beans were so good. They had some type of seasoning on them that made them absolutely delicious! My boys liked them too! 

Right before it was time to walk down to the river it started to rain. 

The rain turned all the steep walking paths into sticky, slippery mud. I was holding E, and usually had one of the boys' hands as I very ungracefully made my way to the river. 

It was like a slip-n-slide made of mud and horse apples. I almost hit the ground several times. I could only imagine what the wet gringa looked like ankle deep is goop with her arms flailing in the air trying not to fall, which got me laughing... which made it even harder to balance.

Then I tried to take pictures while balancing, holding E and holding both the boys' hands to keep them from falling into the river! 

They had asked Jimmy to do the baptismal service. He was honored. 

It is really a beautiful scene. They sing hymns and choruses while people are being baptized. 

Everyone comes to the river to watch. It really is telling everyone in the village that you have put your faith in Christ and are starting a new life. 

16 believers were baptized that day!

Here is the line of people waiting to be baptized:

Jimmy prayed with each one in the water.

We were so thankful to get to be a part of such a special celebration!

Afterwards we met for prayer in the church building.

These girls came to sit next to Silas! He didn't appreciate it much.

We didn't stay for the evening service. It was several hours from our house and the service wouldn't have ended until after 10 for sure. Plus poor Domingo was very sick that day and he had traveled with us.

Before we left, they shared some of that bull with us! This tasted exactly like Jack Link's Teriyaki beef jerky. 

 The house where we ate was where the church use to meet before they had the building. 

They had beautiful visuals on the walls!

Please pray for the village of Tesuluclan Dos. Maybe one of our institute graduates will become the pastor of this church one day!

Instagram

I added Instagram to our blog now that I have a phone with a decent camera. Jimmy was sweet to fix my phone situation before his own. It was a surprise and I appreciated it! So if you are interested you can follow us from the little Instagram icon at the top or here or just see our photo feed on our sidebar when you open our blog. Now you will know what our crazy days look like in real time. I don't even blog the half of it. 

Like yesterday, it was our water day. I just optimistically did 3 loads of laundry without checking our cistern only to find out that they never turned on our water... oops! Daddy brought home water from our forever house to fix my mistake! Here is Silas helping Daddy move the water from one cistern to another:

Or you might see this Sweetness from breakfast this morning:

Or a couple of bull ribs getting hacked in two with an ax:

 You might even see some CRAZY ITEMS OF THE DAY that would never make it past my editor... how in the world did they convince that man to walk around with that cardboard cutout? Glad my kids aren't old enough to even ask what this whole parade was about. 

I have a feeling our Instagram will be more of a Grandmas' thing... don't want to give anyone a Jim and Shelley overdose! 

Have a Happy Thursday! We are on our way to our midweek service and we have 2 visitors, Domingo and Nick. We are all going to a white field together tomorrow morning. Please pray!

BIG chickens!

Jonah and Silas love going with Daddy to feed the chickens. On the mornings he has time to drop them back by the house before he leaves, he takes one boy with him to help. They keep good track of whose turn it is!

Silas is great at hauling around gallon jugs of feed and water... not bad for a 3 year old!

These photos are of the second coup. It is made out of 2x2's instead of 2x4's which makes it a little easier to move. Jimmy has plans to try a 3rd coup out of pvc pipe. He wants to make more adjustments on the wood coups as well. Now that the chickens are bigger some can jump out the top when you open it to feed them. The food distracts them enough not to be a big problem, but he still wants to try a couple more designs. These are made out of exactly eight 12' pieces, so no wood is wasted.

This is about the size they started off at. Yesterday Silas came home and told me they weren't baby chickens anymore they were "BIG chickens!"

{Taken yesterday}

 They should be ready to sell just in time for Christmas! There are two types of chickens here according to the salesmen- fattening up chickens and patio chickens. We have 40 fattening up chickens (the white ones) and 40 patio chickens, of which there are around 5 different looking ones. We are hoping a chicken expert can help us out with breed identification. After 8 weeks we will know which are the better ones to have at the Institute and which ones aren't ideal for this project. 

{If you missed our earlier post these are trial chicken tractors that will be one of institute's projects used to help pastors provide for their families while ministering in rural villages.}

Goodies from Guate

This past week Jimmy made one more trip to Guatemala City before we move into our house. He got a couple of errands taken care of. 

Lucha needed to go to the vet (we have a great vet here, but cattle is his specialty, not as much dogs). I was concerned about her eyes. They have white clouds in them. I thought she might have some type of infection and if we could do anything simple to save her eyesight I wanted to do it. I thought she had already lost vision in one eye because of a fight with Atzi, so I didn't want her to be completely blind.  We got all good news from the vet, the clouds are just sun damage that won't get worse if she stays in the shade and the blood from the fight had already reabsorbed so she will be able to see out of both eyes. 

{Atzi at her new home}

I never posted this, but we moved Atzi to the KBI land to be a guard dog because she kept attacking Lucha. She never became part of the pack for some reason. She wanted to be alpha and was willing to fight Lucha to the death for it. This last time she almost did, so Atzi had to go. This whole ordeal ended up being a great lesson for the boys. We have been memorizing the verse in Proverbs about pride leading to conflict and they saw it in a way they could understand.

 She is very happy living there and walks around with the guard looking very mean (even though she isn't except to other Boxers). She likes her new life better and Fije and Lucha are happier without her AND she never learned to not chew up the boys' toys, so I'm kind of happier too! Lucha and Fije are so much more civilized than her. 

Since Lucha went, the boys and I couldn't go. We are all so spoiled because we get to do so many things together. This was a time that reminded us of that. Since we weren't there though, Daddy came home with all kinds of surprises!

He brought home a new larger, fuller Christmas tree. More importantly, one that wasn't pre-decorated with rat droppings!

 You can't find normal snack foods in Petén, which is good because it forces us to eat healthier snacks like fresh fruit, cheese, nuts I roast myself, etc. But unhealthy snacks from Guate are still fun!

 They usually have popsicles here, but they have been out for months. Thankfully Jimmy found some in Guate or my boys might not have survived the next couple months! I usually can get Eden down for her first nap in the time it takes my boys to consume 1/2 a popsicle each. Our world is clearly dependent on them.

Jimmy found sealer for our concrete floors! I like the look of concrete better than tile, so the floors in our entire house will be shiny gray concrete. This saves us a lot of time and money. 

In Guatemala around Christmas time, it is common for larger stores to give away toy coupons with your receipts. Since he bought so much sealer they gave him 200Q worth of toy coupons. He used it for a free Cookie Monster play-dough set. My boys have played with this thing for hours already. They love feeding cookie monster the food they make!

We are taking all of our appliances with us when we move accept our oven, for 2 reasons: 1 - it isn't insulated, so my boys regularly touch the oven door and burn their hands... I mean bad burns... us too. It is ridiculously dangerous. 2 - I wanted a stove top mounted into my concrete counters so that no food could fall down around it to attract rats. We bought a stove top months ago in Guate. We didn't like the store because they were kind of uppity and didn't really know anything about their products, but it was the cheapest. Well, they didn't ship it with the right name to the right place... we weren't surprised! Well Jimmy went back and hunted down our stove top, yay! It took him forever, but he did it. Not one "we're sorry" out of that lovely company either. Stores like that think customer service means fancy clothes, lots of perfume/cologne and hair gel. I like Petén so much more than Guate!

Jimmy also found a pipe threader! My entire kitchen is an island and will have a bar off the back of it with stools to sit on and chat with mommy while she cooks! I wanted pipes to hold up the concrete counter overhang... you know, where you sit. Jimmy found all the fittings and a threader to build it for me! The little fittings are for the shelving in our closets. I was really excited about this find!

Jimmy left for Guate about 3:30am. (He hates even going to Guate, so he didn't want to waste 2 whole days on this trip.) That morning the boys and I were in the kitchen eating breakfast when I looked out the window and saw 3 horses walk by! We don't own horses! 

I walked outside to see what was going on and found a sleeping labrador. Great job Fije! She couldn't have cared less about the 3 large intruders in our yard. 

Evidently Jimmy and the two dogs missed the 3 horses that walked into our yard after he opened the gate and before he left in the darkness! They had been locked in our yard for several hours. They ate lots of weeds growing along the fence. I left the gate opened and they quietly left. Jimmy doesn't believe me that there were horses in our yard, but they left evidence EVERYWHERE!

{You can see the gray horse blob behind the palm... that's a horse I promise. There is also a pile of evidence in this photo as well.}

Well That Works Better

Up until now we have just been having 2 services on Sunday. The evening service has been going really well. We have been growing pretty steadily with new people coming from NH and SP. It is the 3 month school break here too, so it's kind of like our "summer break" here and we haven't been hit too hard by it. This was this past Sunday night service:

Only about 5% of our people have been coming on Sunday mornings though, so we decided it would be better to change that service to a midweek one. Over the years we have never had much success with Sunday morning services. Women are always cooking and I have no idea what the men are doing, but where we have been no one comes until dark, no matter what! So... we can adapt!

Thursday evening was our first midweek service. We decided this Sunday morning and then did not clarify it very well Sunday night, but we still had a pretty good group come:

It's just like the States, all the teenagers sit in the back! Please pray for this church plant, that it will continue to grow and that we will continue to adapt! The majority of our people would not describe themselves as "believers" yet, but they are still faithfully searching...