A House for Gabriella's Family

At 1:00 the posts, the back wall, one side wall, which cannot be seen and most of the middle wall was done. Hopefully, the rest should go pretty fast.

Yesterday a group from Atlanta arrived. They came planning to build four houses. And they wanted to get started today.

As Marc has worked with Gabriella's family to get the surgeries done and necessary things to help take care of this young lady's needs, he has learned more about the family. Gabriella has a younger sister that was also on the same motorcycle as Gabriella. Her leg was also broken, but could be casted. The family lives on the Choluteca highway just a few miles from here. The mother sells fruits and other things along the highway to travelers that are going between Choluteca and Tegucigalpa. It is a hard way to make a living.

The mom has not been working as much as she usually does since her daughters' accident. She has been going back and forth to the hospital. Not only is she not working, she is paying bus fare. The amount of bus fare may not sound like much to us, but to someone that has very little money to start with, and then has even less, it is a huge amount.

There are several children in the family and they were living in a very small, crowded house. They own land and presented their papers. Marc and the Atlanta group are building Gabriella's family a house today. They are building what we call a double wide. It uses the lumber of two houses and is quite a bit larger than a normal house. It is a lot of work to build one of these double wides. The engineering is a bit different. By building this house, it is our hope Gabriella and her sister will have some room to recuperate as they need to, without sharing a bed with any other person.

This morning I went to the airport to get two more of the team members that were arriving. They were ready to get to the job site and help with this house. It is very hot today. When I got to the job site, the house was progressing nicely. Tons of gatorade and water have already been drunk. I am sure many more bottles will be needed. Everyone was hot and some were quite pink already. But there was no complaining and lots of smiles.

There is something about building a house in Honduras that brings a lot of smiles from everyone involved, both the builders and the recipients.

Thanks Atlanta for taking care of this need.

Terri