Moving along.

Well things are really moving along. This week we were able to prepare the forms to pour the concrete footer for the retaining wall. On Friday, we rented a large, diesel powered concrete mixer and poured the footer. We had a great turnout then, with 15 total people present so everything went smoothly like a well-oiled machine. The neatest thing was that all of us are Brethren in Christ Church members, so working alongside so many brothers within the church halfway across the world is such a huge encouragement.

We will start this week laying the brick to build the retaining wall. The BIC Malawi General Conference is coming up in a couple of weeks, so it would be great to have the wall built before then, along with having the entire work site completely leveled and compacted. Thanks all for your support. Please continue to pray for the BIC Church of Malawi - for the people and for their project. There is so much potential for this project and for the general church in so many ways.

So what's going on?

Well the past few months have been pretty crazy (in a good way). Lots of traveling was occurring; and of course, when you have travel (aka time away from the work) the time on site becomes very busy and valuable. When looking at the work site, one may think that there has not been much accomplished. But things unseen have also been accomplished. Relationships have been built, and some skills have been passed on. The journey may be slow, but they are baby steps towards the Malawians' own BICC country headquarter building. It is something else looking at what's been done; it doesn't look like much, but then sometimes it's forgotten that everything is dug by hand. Once you're actually digging, it becomes a little more clear on why and how things are moving along slowly, especially because volunteer labor is being used (because of the lack of financial resources to pay local tradesmen). In reality, the work has been moving along with the influx of money for the project. So far, a little over $4000 has been spent, with not much left in the account (for a budgeted $100,000 building). Take a gander at the pictures, hopefully some more will be coming up soon.

If you would like to give, there is a link on the right hand side at "View and Donate to the Project"