Soccer Camp, Church Porch, and Cash-for-Work

Soccer Camp:
This week we are so excited to have Mr. Xhevat Krasniqi with us! Xhevat is doing a soccer camp with about 30 boys every afternoon. These boys are usually busy in the afternoons going for water and taking care of their livestock and therefore wouldn't be able to come. So, Xhevat and his wife, Krista, raised funds to pay for enough water trucks for the kids to be able to get water here every day! I didn't get any pictures of the soccer yesterday as I was translating, but here are some on the first water distribution. Some of the boys had not heard about the water so today we will probably have a lot more buckets.





Church Porch:
Progress has been made on the Church porch...

Building up the foundation and footers

The school kids helping to fill in the foundation with rocks and gravel

The porch as it is now

Cash-for-Work:
Back in December many people gave toward the food baskets and the food-for-work program. With all that has been going on we had not yet started the work programs. This week though we have had over 30 people working to collect gravel and rocks to fill in the school foundation. When we have food donated it is easiest to do food-for-work. But, when we have cash, it actually goes farther when we just pay in cash instead of buying food and then paying with that.

This is Sylvain.
Sylvain is from another area about 30-45 minutes away. He has been coming to church now for about three years. Sylvain has some mental and physical handicaps that cause him to often be left out of things. In all the piles of rocks I saw today, though, his was the biggest. This is probably the first time in his life Sylvain has been able to work a real "job" and get paid for his work.

Sylvain and his rocks.

Most of the others who are collecting rocks and gravel are women and children. Each pile belongs to someone. They will be paid by the size of their pile and how many days they worked.

Gravel is collected in buckets and then carried to their pile.

Also part of the cash-for-work program, these men are digging a hole for burning and collecting trash.