Doing the Lord's Work

Writen by Jackson May (age 13)

Today we had the opportunity to paint Eufy's house. It was a breathtaking experience for all of us. In case you don't know who Eufy is, she is the woman who cooks all of our magnificent meals (yes, breakfast, lunch, and dinner!). Eufy and her family (two sons and one daughter) live in the other house on Art and Lisa's property. They have worked really hard to clear out the trees and plant flowers around their house. Lisa told me that Eufy loves her flowers and is really proud of them. 

Eufy is really nice, and she is even learning to understand and speak some English. I asked her if she needed some help pouring a full 20-gallon water jug into a pan, she then replied, "Yeah." We are learning to communicate! Without her, we wouldn't have received the full Guatemalan experience... the meals have been great!

Around eight this morning we had our devotion and then started off to her house. My dad (Phil), Conner, Morgan, and I were at Eufy's house painting it a bright "amarillo"(yellow). The rest of the crew were back at Art and Lisa's painting the window sills. When we first got there, Josue was already almost done with the front side of the house (not sure whether to call it the front or back, because the front, that is facing the road, doesn't have a door). We started on one of the sides. That took us about two hours just to do that side, because we have never painted that kind of surface before.

Their home was almost like adobe, but really fragile and had many, many texture spots that took very tedious work to fill in. After that first side, we realized that Felipe had done the bottom two feet of the rest of the house. That was really helpful, because that was the hardest part. Let me clarify. It wasn't really hard work, but it was just awkward to hold the paint can, hold back Eufy's precious plants and paint, without letting the paint drip everywhere. We tried our best to respect her plants and do the best job possible.

Once we started, we kind of got the hang of it. On the first side, I was doing the bottom, my dad was on the ladder doing the top, and Morgan and Conner were using the rollers to do the sides. The next side though, we were able to switch it up and me and Morgan did the rollers, while Conner followed and got the cracks that we couldn't get with a flat roller. Good thing Felipe (Eufy's husband) did the bottoms of the other two walls, because we were called inside for lunch, just as I had finished touching up the last wall. As could be expected from experienced painters like ourselves, the house looked AMAZING when we were done.

Eufy's house hadn't been painted in fifteen years, so it was nice to help her out. It felt good to know that they were proud of their new paint. I would like to help do some additions to her house next time, because some of the walls aren't even high enough to reach up to the tin roof. It probably gets really cold in the winter. Seeing her home made me thankful for my warm house back in Tennessee. Overall, it was a great day of work and it felt good to help!