We are moving along with construction of our new office building, but we continue to function as a school at the same time. On Friday after lunch we have our weekly (over an hour) worship service which is mostly lead by the students which is longer than our daily morning devotions and praise which last about 40 minutes and are broken into a couple of age groups. After the worship service the students get about 40 minutes of free time to play games, soccer and just be kids. Normally on Friday the assistant headmaster, Enifa, leads some of our preschool kids in various games. This last Friday she had them race to fill water bottles by carrying water from a bucket to the bottle using a cup. The baby class may have pushed the definition of the word race as they required help to remember which way to run. As we moved up in age groups they got the race part down, but normally did not understand the one to get all the water from the cup into the water bottle would likely make less trips to fill the water bottle and therefore win the race. In the middle class race most of the water was in puddles around the water bottle. I posted the following video online but it got very few views because the next day I posted that horrible caricature that Chatgpt did and it got a lot of reactions.

We have also grieved with Minaeli (Standard 7 student) as her father passed away this last week but we also celebrated the birth of a new child for our day guard Masana. So we keep going despite the heat right now, Yes I know you are all complaining because the rodent saw his shadow and you get six more weeks of winter after a beautiful snow you all enjoyed. We still have temperatures in the mid 90s all day and night.

The office construction is going well. We are finished with wall and column footings, the main floor has been poured but due to a contractor mistake they are going to have to pour a topping. We have sloped land and when the contractor checked the floor layout to get it level, he based everything off the lower side. So when he set the correct thickness for the floor on the lower side, the higher side was not the correct thickness. A floor topper is common in most underdeveloped countries because they don’t like to do the work to properly finish a floor using the main concrete mix. The like to do it with a sand and cement mix only with no gravel because it does most of the work for you. Unfortunately it will lead to the top part breaking loose from the bottom part. But because there is such a difference between what the floor should be and the thinner end of the floor we will get a thick topper (4 centimeters instead of the noral 1-2 centimeters). The walls are also going up and we are near the point they leave openings in walls for windows.

One interesting note is that most Tanzanians have some scary myths about bathrooms and what can be transmitted to people by a bathroom just inside the same building. Most bathrooms are outside the home here. So when I put bathrooms inside the office building that caused a lot of problems. They were afraid of them opening into the building because of various disease that would be transmitted because of that. It was easier to put the doors facing outside than to explain the reality of a bathroom diseases.

We are still raising funds for the office construction, furnishings and the upcoming computer classroom. If you would like to contribute please go to https://steveandbarnabas.com/support/ for the PayPal link and when it gives you chance to leave a message or memo state it is for the office building. You can always mail a check to Blessed2BlessU Ministries, Inc. at PO Box 2016, Fremont, NC 27830. Blessed2BlessU Ministries is a 501c3 non-profit organization.