chicken coop church looks more churchy

The chicken coop church is now being used. I haven't gotten a picture of an actual service being held, but I do have a few pictures of what the interior looks like, now that it has been painted and moved in to. Note that the church recently bought a drumset, which they are very excited to use!

Also check out the curtains-- Maribel sewed them using the sewing machines that we use for our class. Finding that frilly tassely stuff to sew on the bottom was a long process, because no store in Jarabacoa even had twenty yards of any color, but it was worth it to make the church look Dominican.

Final Lorena stove pics

The Lorena stove is finally totally finished! It was finished a couple weeks ago, but I'm just getting around to putting up the pictures now. Once the blog of clay/sand mix on top of the base was dry, a machete (shown above) was used to dig out hole where firewood is entered and where pots sit.

Then some students that were visiting helped make the chimney using a piece of flat tin (shown here).

And now the chimney has been installed and the stove is being used (as can be seen by the soot in the picture above)! It seems to be working pretty well. Some smoke does enter into the house through the mouth of the stove when the fire is first started, but once the fire is going, the smoke mostly goes out the chimney. In the future, we're hoping to find a cheap way to make a more permanent chimney, since the tin will eventually rust.