^{Monday February 11, 2013}

Work Day #4

Today we returned to Quiryat Shemona to work on 3 more bomb shelters.  Our crew of creative painters, Terry, Pam, Julie and Manna headed down the road to a small shelter that had been painted on the outside by another group earlier, and we were tasked with painting the inside.  Now imagine the circumstance of people being inside this shelter.  Quiryat Shemona is just right over the mountain ridge from the Lebanon border.  So the sirens have gone off and you are rushing to your shelter where depending upon the intensity of the attack could last a short time, or maybe weeks.  So we wanted to paint something that would lift their spirits, not some gloomy or institutional look.  With the advice of Bobby Stark with Zechariah’s Hope we painted a pastoral scene with grass, blue sky, flowers and butterflies.

While our creative girls were painting inside shelter #2, the rest of us divided into teams.  The brushing and scrubbing team, Glen and Dan headed off to bomb shelter #3.  The exterior painting team, Sharon, Chris and Sarah did a little touch up to shelter #1 before heading up to shelter #3.  The landscape team, Trevor with the help of Glen and Dan also went up to shelter #3 to cleanup the area around the shelter.  And last but certainly not the least, Randy and Ramona tackled the job of cleaning bathrooms first in shelter #2 then shelter #3. (Are you confused yet??) These shelters were relatively close together as they are in the middle of apartment complexes and have at least one between each complex. None of these shelters have been used since 2006 but with the junk going on in Lebanon and Syria right now you never know.

It started sprinkling a little about an hour into the project, so we stopped for lunch hoping to wait out the rain.  However it is hard to complain about the rain when Israel always needs rain. After lunch we changed our plans up a little.  Instead of moving to shelter #4 a second group of painters, Sharon, Dan, Manna, Pam and Terry set to work painting the interior of Shelter #1. City employees and the Zechariah’s Hope guys worked late into the night to get the water pumped out so we could finish Shelter #1.

Trevor, Glen, Randy, Ramona moved to Shelter #4 and raked and cleaned the area around this shelter.  It was right in front of an apartment building.  Several residents stopped by and thanked us for our work.  One gentleman spent a while talking to this group, explaining that during the 2006 Lebanon conflict he had spent 4 days in that shelter.

Bobby, Chris and Trevor went around to Shelters #1, 2 & 3 and using a template started painting flowers on the outside of these shelters. Across the street from shelter #1 a lady had been watching us since yesterday and on one of my many trips up and down the walkway by her house she told me “thank you and it looked nice”! That makes my stair master workout today all worth it!

By quitting time, we had finished all of our projects.  As we prepared to leave we gathered at the shelter #1 thanking God for the opportunity to Serve His People, but also praying that they never had to see the work that we had done!