Different sort of view

How about a quick recap of today's pertinent activities:

Valerie finally had to surrender and stop seeing patients. If she stops seeing patients, you know she is hurting. The leg, the stress, everything just combined to the point where her body finally said "no más." Of course, she did not get home until almost noon even after deciding that (for a while she was down on one of Reina's exam tables trying to calm down) and will take off at least tomorrow, probably Friday as well. We pray this time will refresh her spiritually, emotionally, and physically what with her continued leg problems.

Elizabeth was drafted into helping Oscar with the new cistern....she is not sitting up there because she is being punished (and yes, she got up there with the ladder you will see in the next picture that Oscar needed to get water out of the old cistern...keep reading.)

Work has stopped to let the concrete cure (the forms holding up the floor will be needed to hold up the top when it gets poured...so another week until that starts) but it needs to be wet for that....so Elizabeth sat on the side while Oscar passed her buckets of water to pour into the cistern. Fifty gallons or so later....and should be enough water to keep it curing nicely for several days.

Here is a shot of the top of the new clinic from the bottom of the cistern...I was probably six feet lower than Elizabeth, just to give you a different perspective of the clinic...and to show that with the height of the cistern, hopefully it will be enough gravity to not need a pump to get the water in the pipes. The different colors of the roof are where we painted it with asphalt to seal it for leaks. Surely that does not help the heat issue inside the building, but it was certainly necessary. Once the new cistern is being used, the black plastic one will not have to sit on top of the building either. We are thinking about getting sponsorship and using it to go over Niagra falls.

In between, during, and after all that involved making a meal list for the group (so Dora can work out the quantities) going over the wall construction funds with brother Jorge, trying to figure out the security cameras in the clinic (still not working) and going to the grocery store for the first time for milk for the milk project all week. After following Valerie home to make sure she could drive ok, I went to the bank, the grocery store...again, and while there talked to a guy in the parking lot who was very interested in buying the Defender. Hopefully he calls back to get a test drive in a week or so when he gets back from the Mosquito coast. A botanist who travels all over the country to places like the Mosquito coast? Yeah...a Defender would be perfect.