Another wonderful day at YES!!  Today's activities included the daily devotion and worship time. Kathi and Jane discussed the story of Esther. The primary message was that God has a purpose and a plan for each one of us, and it does not matter what position you are in. God can do anything. Esther went from an orphan to the queen, she was then in the position to save the Jewish people.

Judy and Kathi lead a project for each of the girls to build growth charts to hang on their wall at home and mark the growth of their children. Each girl was able to decorate their chart with felt shapes and markers.

Caroline, Kaitlyn, and Suzie lead a project including both coloring and playing board games. The girls enjoyed learning new games.

At the end of the day, the girls demonstrated their recorder skills. We had some girls play recorders and some sing so that we had a mini concert with the song "Father, I adore you."  It was great fun!!

Towards the end of the day, we had a surprise visit from a long-time friend. Ms. Vinny, who had been a teacher at YES for many years, came to say "Hi." It was great to connect with her!

As for the construction project, we completed the final wall!!! God be praised! The best part of all...the girls were excited to join us in the construction. They each participated in nailing some of the siding. They took ownership of the work. Several of the girls had previously nailed boards and were much better than we are.

Here is a picture of the front of the building, we did not change this wall. This wall was built by the team in 2010! Today we are working on the back wall...if you look in the door, you can see daylight on the other side as we have removed the wall by this time (9:30 am). It takes much less time to demolish than to build.

Here is the picture of the back wall. We have removed the old plywood siding and the studs in the frame.

Notice the bathroom in the back. We replaced the wall between the bathroom and the rest of the building. This made for some tricky areas.

 Here is a view from inside the building....

 Next the team built the new frame for the wall....

After the frame was up, we started with the siding (about 2 pm)...AND the GIRLS helped out!

Here is Anika putting up a board..

Suzie and Reneisha celebrate a nail completely in the wall with a high five!  The boards are hard and the nails are sometimes too soft. It can take a lot of effort to get the 2 1/2 inch nail into the wall.

Jorleny was a pro!  She was great at nailing...

Jonathan helps Michelli with her portion...

Shandaley was also a pro!

Here is Mike working on one of the last boards!  Mike was terrific. He was tireless and determined!  Although everyone on the team helped with the construction, much of our success for the construction project is due to Mike, Jill, Kathi, Samuel, Johnathan, and Chepito!

We had to finish the work after sunset...so we do not have a great completed picture...however, here is a picture of the back wall nearly complete and a great picture of the night work...

Adding the finishing corner pieces in the dark with a flashlight ...

Tomorrow we are taking the YES students and staff on a field trip to Banana Bank!  Since we finished our project, we can all go on the field trip!

Please pray for continued relationship building and fellowship with the YES team.