Finishing Strong

This morning Nick gave a great devotional about finishing strong. Nick's words were something like; "okay here comes the cliché devo on finishing strong" He read for us; 2 Timothy 4:6-8 "For I am already being poured out like a drink offering, and the time for my departure is near. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day—and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing."  Nicholas was referring to finishing strong on the project set before us. Even though we may be tired and all of this now feels like routine, we should pray for the ability to work diligently and complete the task at hand. "You may pray for added strength, and 10 seconds later you can't believe how frustrated you are." Nick explained, and that this is how he felt several times on his World Race mission experience. It was a well timed message, as it was a long day with much work to be done. 

We managed to finish up the areas that we set out to complete, minus one of the verticals columns. In the end we used over 600 cinder blocks, 63.5 bags of cement, 22 cages worth of rebar, 3/4 truckload of sand (which much of was sifted through a screen the size of a dinner plate), 2 rolls of wire and 1/4 truckload of gravel. We felt good about the work done, but you could tell everyone was tired, however Christ enabled us to perceiver. At the end of the day we ended up having a bit too much concrete mixed up, so we offered some to our one neighbour to make up for the trouble we caused yesterday. With the rest we made a small pad at the side door and etched "High River Canada" into the block, which they had asked us to do. I wanted to put our hand prints into it but was told that would be childish, Dan's a poo poo head.  We talked about heading back for construction again part of Monday to clean up a bit more, pull forms off and fix a couple other small issues. We'll see what works out, we will be there for sure tomorrow for church. Very excited about that, but like everyone else on the team, very tired right now. Very thankful to have a safe and dry place to rest tonight, as it has been raining off and on tonight.