This blog post is from Enzo (Central Baptist Church-Oakville).

Today was my first day of physical work.

The past two days, I had been teaching ESL, painting and going on a community walk.

This morning, we had breakfast around 8am and we took a 20 minute bus ride to get to a brand new water purification facility…rather, soon to be. The whole morning, my group worked on laying down bricks to build up the walls of the facility.

The sun had been blazing hot the whole, and frankly that made it a bit harder to work. Even though we had moments of shade, I feel as though it was the team’s collectively will and passion for helping people that allowed us to persevere through the morning and bring the facility one step closer to being built. At one point, the line that was used to guide the bricks and make them straight ended up being caught on the rebar, making us remove three bricks and lay them back. In the end, we all ended up laughing about it and just took things as they came.

In the afternoon after lunch, we headed back to another worksite close by the water treatment facility where we were tasked with removing wooden stabilizers from walls of a basketball court that was being constructed. The job felt much easier than laying bricks, but what really picked up the experience later was when the kids who had just finished school came to watch us and ask about we were doing. A crowd of them got a hold of my phone to play a game and it was fun acting as a mediator making sure everyone got a turn. Everyone else in the group was connecting with the kids either by playing game or giving them piggy-back rides.

Despite having to work through very hot weather, the different parts of the day helped us find value in and connection with what we were doing: today was a productive and insightful day.