Dedication Day

Friday brought an emotional day of dedicating the buildings we had worked on. Each team joined together in song, laying hands on the walls we had built and praying blessing over the house, those who would live there, the local workers and each other. The local team of builders thanked us, reminding us that not only have we blessed the children who will live in this house, but we have blessed them by giving them work. Of course more tears were shed as we tried to say goodbye. Joseph was the local team forman dressed in blue (all team formen wear blue). Standing next to Rick is Isaac, quite a charming man who spoke Luganda with a British accent. He seemed to be in some sort of supervisory postion, but worked as hard or harder than anyone else. He explained to Rick that he picked up the accent while spending much time leading British treking crews, but we think that perhaps he has had some English schooling as well.

Here's the whole rowdy crew of us, the local team, Watoto staff and Visit Africa members that worked on Team AB. Still hard to believe that each one of us had laid a brick, spread mortar or in some other way had a hand in this house.

As we were building this week, the workers would always come around after us, cleaning up all of our messes, getting rid of excess mortar between the bricks, doing what needed to be done to make the walls smooth and beautiful. The Lord spoke to me through this, reminding me that in the same way, He comes along and cleans us up, making our broken lives into a thing of beauty, fit for His Kingdom.