We often talk about Bible teaching, discipleship, and translation, but missionaries also serve their communities by doing community development projects to show love to the people they have come to serve by helping them improve in some physical or economic way.
Last summer the children attending Westwood Baptist Church’s “Summer Hummer” decided to generously donate funds towards a community development project for the Southern Isnag children.
The Westwood children wanted to do something to help the Isnag children, so we suggested that they help build a covered play area at the school so that the children would have a place to play outside during rainy season.
The Westwood Summer Hummer children and their parents gave generously and an Australian contractor drew up plans for the project.
I was a bit intimidated when I saw the plans. After all, the building site is an eight hour walk from town and the plan called for tons of iron and cement along with 15 cubic meters of sand and gravel. It was certainly something I couldn’t do without God’s help and lots other individuals pitching in.
On January 28th, Heidi and I along with our partner Vicky flew to the village and broke ground on the project. We had no idea of how much progress we could make in three weeks. I was hoping that we would at least be able to get cement pads made for the posts to sit on. The helicopter had delivered 2 posts, but the other 8 were still out in town along with most of the trusses and roofing.
The first thing we discovered was that the building site was not nearly as level as it looked. A lot of dirt had to be moved.
Then forms for the post pads needed to be carefully placed. That much was fairly easy when you have 9 shovels and many strong Isnag men. But I was wondering about all the other logistics? Who would feed the workers so they would have the energy to do the work? How will we pour a 30’ by 40’ cement pad 4 inches thick when there isn’t a cement truck within a hundred miles? And what about the iron parts of the structure that are miles away; how will they get to the building site?
By God’s grace we saw all these questions answered in the three weeks we were in the village and accomplished much more than we expected. If you would like to see how our prayers were answered you can view our three newest blogs at:
http://jonathanheidibamford.blogspot.com/
They are A. People and Snacks, B. Cement, Sand, and gravel, and C. Iron.
I hope you will enjoy them.
Thanks for your prayers,
God bless,