The Wise Man Built His House Upon A Rock

The wise man built his house upon a rock... So the song goes that we learned in Sunday School so many years ago. I don't think the wise man, if he was very wise built his own house on the rock. He may have had someone else build his house on the rock. Today we built a house on a rock. Solid rock. And besides being on solid rock there was a rock wall around the lot. In the front of the lot, the wall was five feet high. Since it was on a slope it was not that tall all the way around. We could only build a 13 x 16 house. To set the corner posts and center posts we had to chip through the rock to a depth of about 14 inches. Yes, I did my share of chipping. We built this house for a young couple Raquel and Rafael. Raquel is 16 and Rafael is 23. A cute little couple. They worked hard with us all day long, as did his father. Raquel's mother abandoned her when she was very young. Raquel, Sharon and I hauled most of the wood down and placed in front of the rock wall. I am not sure, but I think that was better than chipping rock. We quickly found it was much easier to feed the wood up to somone standing on the wall rather than carry it up the sloped rock. Raquel and I fed the wood up most of the day. Several times throughout the day, she would say bonita, bonita which means pretty. She was all smiles. I asked her if they were going to sleep in their new house tonight and she said si, si. The rock in front of the lot was slippery from both water and moss. We were handing a piece of lumber up and I slipped and fell and landed right on my butt in some water. I was ok and jumped right up. I wasn't worried about my clothes, but Raquel was and went to get a towel and dried my bottom as dry as she possibly could, smiling all the while. She began to say gracias about every few minutes about 30 minutes before we finished. As we were finishing, her big brown eyes were dancing with excitement. We had a prayer with Raquel and Rafael. She hugged me and said gracias again. She hugged me again and said gracias. Again tonight, I am just dead tired, but how satisfying to know that Raquel and Rafael are sleeping in a brand new house on a great big rock.

Terri