Papau New Guinea

My church is sponsoring a dozen or so of us to go to Port Morsby for a couple of weeks in August to help build a school. Its going to be a nice educational facility that does not look like your typical missionary school. I'm very curious to see how much of a dent we can put into this two story building in 6-7 days of work. They have been building metal (I think) piers for over a month now. Apparently, the termites are very bad down there and wood construction is a nono. Looking forward to helping, but not to the 80 hrs of travel back and forth over the Pacific. The plans are all in metric, which shouldn't bee a problem since they said its going to be like building a big Lego set. All the pieces are numbered or something to make it easy for us non-construction guys. Fortunately, everyone else on the team does this every day. I'll probably end up being the gopher, but that's ok too. I'll post pics when we get back.

Travel safe.

can you take matt and leave him there?

NJmike PE said:

can you take matt and leave him there?

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Yes, please do!!

Sounds fun!

My grandfather hung out there during WW2 waiting in the land invasion of Japan that thankfully was never needed. My dad wasnt born yet at the time so i always figured if the land invasion had happened there is a good chance i might not be here today....

sounds like good work!

Best of luck to you goodal! Any specific prayer requests for your team?

Good luck!

Thanks YMZ. Safety of course and that they will have the piers up and floor system started so we can make a major dent in the construction.

Forgot to post these last week. The first pic is what it looked like when we got there. The last is 8 days later. We had four welders going non stop for 6.5 of the 7 working days. I mostly put the walls and trusses together. We were told all we needed were a few screw guns to assemble the building. Turned out to be quite a bit more involved than that. We worked with the engineering firm for the first two days trying to get instruction on things that were not covered in drawings or didn't make sense. They weren't much help. The last conversation we had with them ended with the lady saying "I feel you are putting pressure on me." That's the last we talked to them. Incidentally, we received a revised set of drawings the day we left for home. It was a good experience and I would like to do it again, but not any time soon.

Cool! Looks like a great experience. Nice work, goodal.

I looked at the photos backwards, ha ha, I was like, gee, that doesn't look like much done... glad you accomlished so much for them and are home safe.

Yea, they posted backwards from how I thought they would.

Somebody give the welder long sleeves, please!

He did that one day. The rest of the week he wore long sleeves and a jacket. One of the natives welded (poorly) wearing sunglasses and sandals all week. I got my on share of burns just being in the vicinity.

Looks like a lot got accomplished. Nice job!

Well done!

Supe said:

Somebody give the welder long sleeves, please!

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And shoes!
Got pictures! I think I could make a safety moment from them...proper PPE.

Good job, btw!