Sunday, August 8, 2010

WORKING IN THE MOUNTAINS
































Top: the Borne church
Bottom: At the Bon Repose church

This week I had another chance to visit some of the COG conference churches that sustained earthquake damage with CCM director Pastor Don Dennison. I revisited the Bon Repose church near Port au Prince on Tuesday to see how we can speed up rebuilding there. Right now we await word from the Haitian government on what guidelines they have on construction there. Since it was the school that was leveled and the church had never been finished and didn't sustain damage we hope to avoid restrictions by putting a metal roof instead of concrete on the church. We will have an engineer look at it to give us a good assessment.

On Wednesday we also drove into the mountains as far as possible then walked 1.5 hours to one of our more remote churches at Borne. This village is located high in the mountains above the Mountrouis river. This church was founded by one of our early missionary pioneers Lois Habecker back in the 1980's. Possibly because of the remoteness and difficulty of getting materials there inferior construction was used to build the church. Thus even though it was located a good 60 miles from the earthquake it sustained some damage to the end walls. The best way to repair the church is to tear down the end walls leaving the roof and sidewalls this way we can enlarge the church by another 24 feet . We hope to recruit a team with at least 1-2 masons and some carpenters to spend several days at Borne and rebuild yet this year or early next. Anyone who might be interested can contact Kara Norris in Findlay, Ohio CCM headquarters or myself. In God's love , steve

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