Day 2 | Mickey Skeens

What an awesome day it was. My group went to the church site to help demo and put an addition on a growing church. The ride was 2 hours long in the bed of a dump truck. Several miles, several switch backs, and SEVERAL narrow trails (roads as they call them), but we made it in safely. Our first job at the church was to remove a concrete header that spanned the distance of the church. The only problem was that we only had a 2lb. hammer to work with, no pry bars no sledge hammers. This wore our arms out standing on a 6 foot ladder swinging this little hammer into a 16” wide by 8” thick slab of concrete. We also removed all of the front windows from the church that was only made of chicken wire. Once this was all completed we started forming up the windows with louvered concrete blocks that they call hurricane windows. To complete this phase it will take 130 of these blocks. On my first column of blocks that I laid the Haitian contractor looked at it and laughed and then gave me the thumbs up and said he gave me 7 out of 10. So I felt pretty good. The temperature for the day was good, we were blessed and cursed with a heavy rain storm that kept the temperatures down but also made the roads almost in passable. We finished up the day by preparing the footer for the expansion and also started forming up for the concrete header that will span the outside wall for the roof to set on. We then packed up and started our journey back to the Mission. From the first hill that we started down we knew this would be one ride that we would never forget. If you have ever seen the show “World’s Most Dangerous Roads “this one is a must to be on it and we have the video proof for it. We have only gone about ½ mile before we were spinning so bad that we all had to get out of the truck and start walking while the Haitian crew that was with us started working on the road to get the truck out. We walked what seemed to be several miles before we were able to get back in the truck. We thought we were home free, but were we ever wrong. We started up this next hill and began spinning and the truck began to slide back words as the tires were still spinning. The driver stopped and started backing up to get another run at it, but did not succeed, he attempted this 3 times before we were told to get out and start walking again. By this time I was ready to just lay down and die, imagine walking up the back side of Catholic hill in Gassaway 30 times and you are still not to the top and I would pick Catholic hill over this any day. The truck caught back up to us and we were able to get back in but for only a few hundred yards. This time I actually jumped from the moving truck, while we were sliding and spinning I noticed one of the Haitians jumps, so I figured if he didn’t like the situation, who was I to stay on it. By this time we were able to get cell service and called the camp to let them know what was going on, about an hour latter another truck and a side by side came to pick us up. The side by side took us 4 at a time to the top of the hill where they had another truck waiting for us. I never did get back in the truck; I finished the trip in the side by side. Tomorrow we will start this adventure all over again, the only difference this time is that we are taking the truck only half way and will shuttle the rest of us to the site on 2 side by sides. All in all I had a great day of fellowship and work with the ones I had on my job site and got to see several friends that I have made over the past 4 years coming here. Can’t wait to see what God has in store for us tomorrow.