Thank Heaven for Air . . .

Friday, January 23, 2015

Thank goodness for air conditioning and a new room.  Today it was “cold” according to the trainees…which started a conversation about weather.  They want to know how we survive in winter weather.  I’m guessing they’ve never seen snow, a parka, boots etc.  It seems strange to me that we live such different lives in different continents, but also have so much in common because of the gospel of Jesus Christ…the common denominator that unites all.

While Oliver (the temple engineer from Nigeria) has been insisting that I NEED to come to Nigeria to direct them while they do these finishes on their temple, today I discovered that they will do just fine.  I think Oliver feels a lot of weight about them getting it done right.  But today I have worked with three Nigerian men who just “get it.”  They work perfectly and see perfectly.  Ennuson keeps teasing me because I said to him, “I can teach you technique, but I can’t teach you to see.”  As we work the walls I’m asking them to tell me what they see in a section and be able to recognize the areas that need more or less plaster so they can get better each time.  Michael, Sunday and Stanley will do just fine with the waterfall finish.  I told Oliver that by the time we do another week of this finish they will be experts.  I’m not sure if he is reassured or not.  Meanwhile Hanna is doing great with her “trainees” in the other sealing room and the rest of the crew (about 17 including my own) tackle the entry, including the highest walls in the temple (38 feet high).

Temple Workers:  This is most but not all of us working on the job.

We started in the hallways where the walls were low to give everyone practice.  Since those are now complete, we split up the workers to start some learning the waterfall finish while the rest did more of the first one.  Poor Patti had her hands full of overseeing many hands since we needed at least one of my crew with their three locals on every scaffold level to work these gigantic walls, thus leaving Patti and Marci on the ground level with those on the lower walls.  This also means that all those volunteering to climb were most of the better skilled ones.  While everyone tries very hard to get it right, most of the volunteers are not skilled painters or artists and struggle with some of the techniques.  I told Vicky today that our 3 layer finish has now turned into a 5 layer finish and our 2 layer finish now takes 3 layers.  She looked confused and I replied.  “First layer, fix first layer, second layer, fix second layer, third layer…etc.”  The good news is that we can “fix” what was not done right and even it all out before we move on.  And the even better news is that we are training the men to see the problems and fix it themselves (well at least some of them).

You should see these men climb.  Alex, a painter by trade from Ghana climbs the scaffold 32 feet in the air to reach the ceiling at 38 feet in bare feet protected by socks…what aren’t they slippery, I ask?  He says he prefers to work without shoes. I still can’t figure that one out.  I need the sturdy shoes with the treds.  At least the scaffold in the entry is solid and not the little Baker’s scaffold we had in the veil hall (27 foot ceilings) because we had very little options on the ground because of wall designs to set up anything wider.  Day one we were told they planned to use the same scaffold in the entry and we quickly put an end to that thought…definitely NOT safe! Camron and Mark were put in charge of getting us some solid equipment.  They did great and even better than that, they didn’t have to set it up or take it down.

After they finished the first wall and before the scaffold started to come down, I climbed to make sure nothing was missed.  On the very top there was some off-white paint (not from us but obviously from the painters before us) on the brown columns that was pretty awful looking.  It wasn’t huge, it was 38 feet in the air against the ceiling but I didn’t feel good about leaving these 1” x 3” areas of messed up sloppy paint on these columns when we had scaffold right there and could fix it.  Only problem is that we needed the brown paint but everyone had gone to lunch so there was no one to ask if they still had any.  My crew on the ground was insisting that is wasn’t that noticeable from so far away, but I had noticed something wasn’t right from the ground, and close up it was pretty bad.  That’s when I had a thought.

Before leaving home, I had the thought to take some stain colors so if we had any touch up on the wood moldings in the halls and entry, I would have something to touch up with.  Although these columns were painted and not wood, I had Vicky send up my stains and some wall paint and by mixing the two together, it was a super close match.  When I say “send up”, we learned a new trick…genius, really and too bad we didn’t think of it this summer when we were doing that book mural in Provo.  Oscar and Alex had a super long cord that they tied to the top of the scaffold and then to one of my empty water buckets so they could put tools and product into the bucket and pull it up by the cord and then let them down the same way.  Sometimes simple systems are the best!

Before the product was up, Alex and Enuson had climbed to see what I was doing.  I was surprised how this “mixing” of colors was a new innovation for them in color matching the original paint.  I showed them how to do this, test the color…too light, add a little more dark…too dark, add more white.  I showed them how to “feather out” the color into the original color instead of ending in a stripe or solid line.  Then they wanted to do the other one.  They are so eager to learn every little trick I know, even though I don’t think of them as much.  Even the simple tools such as a 3M green scubbie sponge and a simple sanding block are the “magic tools” as they call them.  I’m glad I can impart such “great knowledge” to them. Haha.

For lunch today the Americans left the temple site, hopped into three cabs and went to Benice’s shop.  Kim and Marci have been talking to her all week and wanted to see her shop.  Benice serves as a missionary helper (not exactly sure what she does but she was wearing a missionary name tag on day one) at times on the temple site and arranged for our cook. She has a shop where they make bags, aprons, clothes, etc out of beautiful bright African prints.  In some ways it’s a pieced together quilt in a bag.  As a group, we bought a lot.  Benice and her husband and children are members and she talked about how the gospel changed their lives.  She works five days a week in her shop and then goes home on Friday evenings and cooks all evening with another worker so she can sell food Saturday mornings from 9-12.  I think I work hard, but the more I learn about some of these people, I wonder if I might have it easy? We shopped and then went to lunch at a restaurant around the corner.  She is a delightful woman and as we talked, we found that she has many friends in the states from all the missionary couples who have served here, including a couple from Marci Olsen’s home ward.  It really is a small world in the church.

The progress we have made this week is really quite remarkable.  The temple people are so happy and keep asking if we can do “this area too?” Before we leave, since it looks like we have enough product, we will most likely do every plain painted wall in the building.  At this point I’m glad they didn’t get all the wallpaper down yet, or they may want to keep us indefinitely.  Because of the progress and being ahead of schedule, we are taking the weekend off to see the beautiful country of Ghana.

Alicyn