I am getting a little ahead of myself in the timeline with this post, but haven't gotten my photo's from last week up just yet...
Today I arrived in the factory and was getting the guys all set up for the day when Diana came stumbling in completely out of breath to inform me that they could not wake up MJ(Marvaline Johnson). A little history... MJ has a number of health problems, the most serious being Lupus. I dropped everything and hammered up the hill to the apt. building and ran into her room. In the short ride up Diana explained that they had tried to shake her awake and had even tried a glass of water. I felt for a pulse and it was so faint it took a few seconds to be sure. About that time Pastor Damian came running in and between the two of us we carried her out to his van. He took off with her, Geneva and Diana for the Hospital and I took his kids and dropped them off at school. As soon as I dropped them off I headed for the ER arriving not too long after they did(everyone says I drive like a Jamaican taxi:) After helping to interpret for the doctor and nurses the information Geneva and Diana had, Damian took them back to JDV and I stayed to wait for results from blood tests and everything. After about 1.5 hours on IV's MJ came to. We then proceeded to wait until after 5pm before we got results from one of the tests... They discharged her then and told us to come back tomorrow for the results of the other test.
Jamaica Hospital ER was a first for me... or as Granpy would have said, 'I went there twice in one day... My first and last time!' or at least I hope so!!!

Steve making short work of digging out the footings

Tieing steel for the footings

Mixing cement for the footings

I will post more pictures from last week's team in Kingston... Didn't have my normal internet access while at the Kingston school to get pictures posted last week. They are all up on facebook, but for some reason it takes a long time to load them onto this blog so be patient with me on that.

Sunday morning church in Kingston. After Sunday School the kids did a couple of dramas and then when one of the teacher's asked the older students who was preaching, they said Warren. Not sure who was more surprised... the teacher that didn't know who the sign name 'W' on the shoulder, or me since that was the first I knew I would be preaching!






The kids getting ready for school to start.

The group from Freemont, MI. L to R: Steve, Lew, Rich, Greg, Judy, Brian, Lisa and Keven. Fantastic group to work with... Willing hearts, hard working and a lot of fun!

It has been an interesting week since my last post... I will get pictures up as soon as I can.

This past week was very busy... I have been preparing to be gone for a little over a week so getting all the work set up, supplies purchase, etc. has kept me hopping. We(Chad, Damian and I) had met and discussed an employee issue that has been an ongoing problem and needed to be addressed. Last night we met with Calva to fire him. If you remember from previous posts, Calva is the one who carved all of the bed heads. It was a hard meeting and he is extremely upset, but we know it was the right thing to do. Please pray for Pastor Damian, Chad, Calva and myself as we all work through this situation.
Today Chad brought me to the CCCD Kingston campus. I will be here for the next 9 days hosting a mission team. Today I have been looking around to see just what work needs to be done and took a detour over to the merry go round to push the kids. Gandpy's saying of 'Once is a habit with kids!' is ringing in my ears... I lost count of how many times I've pushed that crazy thing, but the kids are loving it and so am I!
I will have limited email access these next few days, so if you email and don't get a quick response... now you know why.

Last Friday I interviewed and hired a new man, Kenroy to work in the Factory. Kenroy has done woodworking for Northern Caribbean University in the past and I hired him to work on a per job payment basis. He started on Monday and so far things are going well. I gave him a print of a dresser and turned him loose. The dresser he is building is the first project to use the Kreg Drill system that Grace Church so graciously provided for us! His ability and using the Kreg jig is helping with the production time. Having Kenroy here has also begun to accomplish another goal of mine... you see Kenroy is hearing. There is a lot of competition with the deaf here, especially Nigel, to prove they can do better than a hearing person. Nigel has started showing improvement in his efficiency and I am hoping that continues.

It is 8:30pm and I am still in my work clothes... been a long day and wasn't feeling like anything got accomplished. Calva came down wanting to talk and we had a good discussion. I need to back up a second and let you know that Friday I got all new screens put in at my apt! So, we are sitting talking and he sees a rat on top of my cabinet. I got my machete, and tried to kill my unwanted guest... but he got away out of a hole in my brand new screen! So, I set a trap between the screen and the now closed window. We continued talking and pretty soon... Bam! I ran over and opened the curtain to see it only had him by the tail. We quickly ran outside and blocked the hole in the screen so now he was trapped. It was a good thing, cause about that time he got free of the rat trap. So I went inside and opened the louvered glass window just enough to get my machete through and got him!!!!! I will spare you the pictures and just tell you he was 81/2" without his tail. Did I mention that I ABSOLUTELY HATE RATS!!!!