Click on the Pig below for more pics...
This put us a little behind and Dan was making jokes about pews being built backwards and paint being all over the building since we weren't there to supervise... Once we arrived, what we saw made Dan seem like a prophet! One of the well intentioned workers had proceeded to stain one of the inside rafters which we hadn't planned on doing and didn't have enough supplies to do. At 200 Kina per gallon the amount needed would be equivalent to another $100 US dollars. He also used a table they had built for the Pastor's home and dripped stain all over the top surface. Needless to say Dan was not happy since this project already has gone well over budget.
The next surprise was when we opened the white "paint" to apply on all the walls we had primed the day before and realized what they call paint here is actually white tinted water, sort of like washing out your American paint brush in a can and using the reclaimed water to actually apply on the walls. It would literally start separating on the wall as you applied it leaving speckled blank spots all over which had to be brushed out two or three times as the paint dried and became tacky. This became very time consuming and "dangerous" as our helpers attempted to roll and paint around freshly stained window sills, etc. Water tends to not be very viscous and drips were rampant! Just try cutting-in around a window sometime with a bucket of water, gravity ceases to be your friend. Thankfully Jake felt my pain and decided to chip-in, which was a huge blessing! What felt like 15 coats and three days later (in actuality it was about 3 full coats and 6 hours later) we had finished the majority of the church and only have a couple walls to hit once more today (Thursday) and we should be completely done. Definitely won't win any contractor awards but thank the Lord it looks pretty good overall.
Matt and his pew building team are getting read to go public... Watch for the IPO of the "PEW CREW COMPANY" on The Street soon! After reading a few books Tuesday night on "Lean Manufacturing" techniques and some "Six-Sigma" material he went from 1 pew every for hours (Monday) to cranking out 9 Tuesday and 14 yesterday hitting his quota of 24 by Wed! After they were sanded I was able to poly two of them before we closed up shop for the day. They look great and will now allow the old pews which were less stable and a bit smaller to be used for Sunday School classes held outside.
Dan came back around 4pm to pick us up and had the girls with him while Amy rested at home. On our way home we stopped in Goroka at the grocery store again and then went next door to get some Mandarin food. Not sure why, but it just seems odd to have cheap Christmas decorations, choppy Asian Christmas music and dozens of people staring at you while you shop for rice and toilet paper. While ordering the take-out, Dan gave me a hard time because I tried to order plain sweet and sour chicken (basically I just wanted Chicken nuggets) since I rarely branch out in America, starting in PNG didn't seem appropriate on the risk meter. Bottom line, the sweet and sour chicken and fried rice were really good even though the sauce was still on it but they left off the chunks of tomato and pineapple so we made it halfway! Five days here and I haven't eaten anything I didn't like, incredible! Hopefully we can keep pace the remaining 8 days:)!
Well, gotta get to work... Pray the family will get better!
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