Day Four - (Saturday) - By Jerry

I wrote a song for my first musical called “Day Five.” It was five days into an investigation, but Sherlock Holmes was lamenting about his recently deceased father and pondering life. It’s a bit melancholy. But this “Day Four” has been anything but melancholy. It’s been almost festive because we’ve come just an inch short of our goal of getting the water system in by the end of Saturday -- which is actually “Day Three” of being here.

The water tank is full, the initial filters are in place, the carbon filter is working and everything else is in place, ready to be tested. Tomorrow’s Sunday and we’re in such good shape we’re taking time off to do some sightseeing. Each day here, the women have spent a good part of the morning cooking/preparing a noon meal for us and the whole work crew. So each day at lunch we’ve broken bread with Brent, Jim, Tod, Shawn, Amy, Cheryl, and Donna, along with our interpreters Freddie and Delany, AND the members of the congregation who have been helping -- about 16 in all.

We had rain today, and it really came down for a half hour or so. It did manage to cool things down. Shawn and I thought it would be beneficial to have a thermometer to take video and photos of so people back home could see what we’re dealing with heat-wise, and it’s been quite an adventure finding one. We went to a number of hardware stores near Pencuyut and no one had one. We figured that they have no real need for one since it was always very hot and humid. But I had success tonight. After dinner, which was fabulous, Jim and I went to a larger hardware here in Oxkutzcab and by golly they had one! So maybe it’s actually better that we only have it now and won’t be able to check the temperature until our day off. If we knew it was over a hundred it might have affected our productivity.

But the down town was wondrous this evening. When we were leaving the restaurant there was a gorgeous, fiery sunset, and now we’ve descended on Amy and Shawn’s room to just chill and have some fun. We will sleep well tonight, knowing we’ve come a very long way since Thursday morning, and knowing that we’ll leave here very successfully.

Love to all!
jerry

(Author's note - This was written on Saturday evening, but we couldn't get online then, so we are posting it on Sunday evening. The Sunday evening write-up may or may not be coming soon!)