Ten volunteers from Sugar Land Baptist Church (SLBC); four volunteers from International Hope Builders (IHB)( Ed, Bill, Ray, and Jon) out of the Denver, Colorado area along with Dr. Hugo and Chava from Chihuahua expanded the caretakers home at the Cienega Prieta Complex (in the sierra). The IHB guys came in with a great spirit and sense of humor, they were ready to work and quickly adapted to GAP’s philosophy to be friendly, faithful, focused, and flexible. Our project was to enlarge the caretakers house by adding on a kitchen, dining room, bedroom and bathroom. Monday morning working with Phil, our lead builder the IHB guys quickly identified areas that could best use their expertise and started to work. It helped that they were about 10 years younger than the rest of us, so they didn’t mind doing putting up the rafters and roofing. It was quite obvious they knew what needed to be done and set about it with determination. Ed and Ray, built cabinets for the new kitchen and you should see the smile on Maria's face when she saw them. Each day we worked 9-10 hours and enjoyed an evening meal together. It was exciting to hear of their experiences of working in other places and we appreciate their flexibility to work with us. Together we shared our faith and commitment to missions. We would not have been able to complete this project without their help and are looking forward to working with IHB again. When the week was up, we had framed, roofed, insulated, wired, plumbed, sheet rocked, installed the windows/doors, and outside siding.
One end of the agricultural building was converted in to a workshop/garage with double doors for a pickup truck and a single door for side entry. Multiple gates were rebuilt making it easy for Luis and Maria to tend to the lambs and chickens.
Dr. Hugo and others from Chihuahua will complete the expansion in April so that Luis, Maria and their four daughters can move in and enjoy their new space.
