Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Mary's Child (Tuesday)


Tuesday morning (12:57am) power was out...the rains beat down hard on the tin roof...Nisha running to the bathroom with a flashlight...Kevin sitting in the dark waiting for the power to come on...Nisha, points the light at Kevin and walks back into the room wondering who that was...5:30am Nisha, Julie, Kevin, Michael, and Andrew (Early Morning Breakfast Club) wake up and enjoy a cup of instant Jamaican coffee watching the skies turn bright as the day begins...6:45am Eucharist at the chapel at Sophie's Place...8am Off to Mary's Child to continue our work...Michael creating groups to complete work (i.e. mortar and cement mixers, path layers, adoration room masons, and grotto builders)...Carla teaches the kids...Bridget rubbing mortar onto the inside walls of the grotto...two religious brothers (Victor and Brian) laying stones on the outside of the grotto while Abby and Nisha patted mortar between rocks...Suzanne, Meghan, Teri, and Gary from Mustard Seed, sawed the cement even and laid broken white tiles to decorate the path...Cesco, Christina, and our job foreman, Roy James, laid blocks, filling spaces in the walls with mortar, sawed steel tubes...Christina teaching Religious Studies to the Little Angels...Gretchen, Kasey, Jordan, Julie 1, Karen, and Lauren measuring, cutting, and hammering the wooden fencing for the garbage area...Andrew, Kevin, Jenna, Julie 2, and Lauren mixing mortar to pave the path, lay stones for the grotto, and for blocks in the adoration room...Roy James overlooking our handy work...Some members go to Matthew 25:40 to play with the little boys and some play with the little babies at Mary's Child...12:00pm Midday prayers and lunch of pork, rice and peas, and sugar water...Leroy, our guide, gave us an orientation for the sake of the rookies, Lauren, Meghan, and Abby...About 1:00pm back to work...Sun beating down but a quick rain shower cooling off the day slightly...3:30pm the work was done...Team Hoboken Cares 2010 enjoys an end of day hose "shower" at the work site...Rushed home to get ready to go for dinner at King's Jacket...A night of Red Stripe, Jamaican food, Jamaican national anthem, and group interaction under the night sky was what we needed after a long day.

All I can say is that as we continue on our mission and we get closer to Thanksgiving, it really felt like a good reason to be thankful...family, friends, work, fun, jokes, sharing, emotions, and love. In the famous words of Roy James - One heart, one God, one love. Jamaica the land we love.

--Nisha (2nd year)

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