Mandhla's House Part 3

His love endures forever.
His love endures forever.
His love endures forever.

We said that phrase 26 times this morning as I read Psalm 136 out loud. Every morning at Walk in the Light we start out with a devotion and songs and someone from the group shares a small message. I read the psalm out loud and asked everyone to repeat the phrase, "his love endures forever" that's at the end of every verse. Afterward, I spoke about the goodness of God's everlasting love and about the fact that our work in Haniville is part of a bigger picture.

It's our last week here. We can look back and see how God's love has endured in our lives and in our time here, we can look out today and see God's love throughout the township, and we can look ahead and have faith that God's love will remain in Haniville because greater things are yet to come in Haniville.

I know we had at least some impact on the community and they had a huge impact on us; that's something we can take back to the states with us.

After our devotion we set out to work. Today the task involved: finishing the wiring around the house, digging a place for the veranda outside Mandhla's door because he's always wanted one and we decided to make one for him, and filling in the walls with rocks. To make sure that the rocks didn't stretch out the wire, we nailed thin tree poles to the walls. The house is starting to look more like a house, but we're nervous about finishing it on time. It would be wonderful to finish it, but, even if we don't, I know God will be faithful in getting it done somehow.

The best part of today was what I called voluntary child labor. We needed to collect rocks to fill in all the walls. The walls are pretty big so we needed a lot of rocks. In a place like Haniville, you would expect it to be easy to find rocks and rubble everywhere, and it is, but it's a tedious task to pick them all up and carry them back. There's a group of kids that hang out around the house all day watching us work because they have a break from school and we sometimes take a break from manual labor and play with them. The kids are always willing to help us, which is both a blessing and a problem. It's a blessing because they're so adorable, but it's a problem when they get in the way and prevent us from getting work done right and fast. Today it was definitely a blessing because we had kids lined up behind us carrying rocks from all different places. God gave us a lot of helping hands.