what to say?

Wow, what to say about the last 24 hours? So0o0o0o much went on that my fingers hurt to just think about typing it all, but I will try. To start off, last night a group of about 7 of our guys jumped in a van looking for a man named Bren. We met Bren 2 years ago when we came down here. He was in the Teen Challenge program. This man is so intelligent. He takes scripture and analyze it and just really intelligent. He knows all the answers, knows all about the Bible, but he just will not submit him self to follow it. The past year he has been living on the streets, so we went to find him and pray for him to see what we can do for him. We found him and stood in the middle of the street and just talked and prayed. He was living under a bridge. This man could be the head of a company, but because of addictions he lowered himself to a lower level. He told us he would be at the Teen Challenge Center at 9:00. He never showed. We took him to KFC, but still he never showed up. One day he will realize and come to his senses and finally submit.

So on to today. We were planning to go to the orphanage up in the mountains about an hour drive from where we are staying. We were planning to leave around lunch time to head up there, but as we got to work it just poured down. The rain fell and it was not like buckets, but more like dump trucks. So we decided to go up in the mountains in the morning and hopefully it would clear off by after noon time. We went up and it was raining, but it was not too bad. The destruction from the fire was horrible I just wanted to cry. Just last year I walked across that building. All that is left now is the concrete walls. The pictures could never show just how bad it is. This reminded me of hurricane katrina. The vans couldn't make it up the hill we had to go up to get to the boys home, so on the feet we go. After all was said and done and we were walking back down this hill all the heavens poured out their water, or so we thought. Everyone was soaked, and we still had an hour and a half ride back to work. As we got to work we realized that nothing could be done. We couldn't use saws or drills for fear of getting shocked with all the water, so we came back to the villas to find a nightmare.

Our nightmare started out when we drove in and Mark Briley says there is water in the villas. As we walked in to our place of being dry after being so soaked we were a little disappointed to find that our dry place was withholding two to three inches of mud and water. So grab a broom and a bucket my friend and start sweeping. Everything was soaked. The marks the water left show that we had up to a foot of water in some of the villas. We found the easiest way to clean this stuff was with buckets of water and try to flush the mud out. so grab a trash can, pot, pan, whatever it is that can hold water. We were running to the pool and filling up and running back and dumping. Then we got the smart idea to start a bucket brigade. We had about 60 people handing bucket after bucket after bucket. The work was hard, but we had so much fun. We would get singing and clapping. Our group leader exclaimed, "If your are not holding a bucket you have gotta be clapping!" That just set us on fire we were singing and dancing and clapping. We had an awesome time. Still when we walk out onto the sidewalk we are in about 4 inches of water, but that is minor compared to what we were faced with earlier.

Right now everyone is finishing up their Thanksgiving dinner (Jamaican style). Well that is about all for now. Thanks!