Hello people!
Here we are at the beginning of a new month here in Sierra Leone. We are Sure it is feeling very festive at home as the days draw into Christmas and we see all the trees and decorations go up, but here at 30° it is not feeling quite the same.
Sarah and I are well and have been really enjoying the people and the places. The team of workers on site grew to about 25 men, 3 skilled, 17 labour and 5 volunteers. You can see them all in the line receiving their bonuses for hitting the target of 10 000 bricks in the first month. (Well done Men)!!!
We have been very blessed to have a very hard working foreman in the person of Mr James, he gets up at 5 every morning and travels 2 hours on public transport to make sure he is on site for 8 am then comes back to his family late at night. He has a car that he needs to learn to drive but the cost of fuel is so high it is too much at the moment to run. His wife picked us up for church in it a couple of weeks ago and i have never ever seen anyone sit so close to the steering wheel, her nose was basically touching the front windscreen of this Subaru. (new woman driver position extreme).
Anyhow He has really made the work on site progress well and we are so grateful that God has bought us people who want to learn, grow and give a good day’s work for the vision of Home Leone and a pay day at the end of the month.
We have been doing health and safety training also in the mornings, which they all enjoy a lot as they know we care about them and are investing in their safety. It’s a bit weird as most of them work with flip flops on, no steel toe capped flip flops here! We have a load of boots in the container coming over which will be good for when we start the stone work.
The man at the front of the queue for the bonus has been working with one hand for the last 3 weeks. His name is Musa, he lives locally and digs the land for a little food. Before coming to us he was digging with some local hoe and it broke and the sharp end dug right into his hand, up in between his fingers. I did not take a picture but believe me it was nasty and looked mega sore (not the Jurassic type). James and I decided we could get him on the sieve, preparing the soil for brick making with one hand as he had no way of making any money, we thought we could try some Sudo cream on the bad hand. Well this did not work at all and just slid of the affected area. So we prayed and got the local nurse in and she gave him a jab of something a few times. After about 2 weeks it slowly started to get better and now is almost fixed. It is great to see people healed up inside and out while they work.
We have been doing some training in the morning for a 20 to 30 min slot about How God loves us and wants the best for our lives, that he has given us all unique qualities and gifts that can grow to be a blessing to the people around us and enrich our lives. I am sure that Home Leone will be inspiring people to be lifelong learners and raise their hopes of what a life can amount to. Even if there is not an abundance of wealth, they can come to understand that they have real worth as a person. This is our hope as we build houses, that we build people. ?
As ever we are grateful for all you message’s, prayers and support. If you would like to support and don’t know how, Just go to www.homeleone.organd there is a guide there.
We will be spending Christmas here and the country really shuts down and has a good festive time here. We are hoping to do some food boxes for the people in the local slum on Christmas eve or something of that sort anyway.
We miss you all and pray that you are well.
All our Love
Joe and Sarah xx
