Raising the Roof!

To all our beloved family and friends… Greetings from Africa!

I hope this post finds you in love with Life and prosperous in doing the will of the Lord. Though things are moving at warp speed here, we sure do miss all of you and hope to hear from you soon.

 This weekend will be our first Harambe (fund raiser) for chairs. We have been renting chairs and each Sunday we have more and more people coming. We simply don’t have enough chairs to accommodate them. Should you feel a desire to help us out… each chair cost about eight U.S. dollars apiece. If you can’t help financially, please pray this Sunday for a successful Harambe!

We have been very busy for the past 5 weeks working on our gathering place as we hope to show through the many pictures in this post. Our Father has been so faithful to supply just what we have needed and at exactly the time we needed to continue working each day.

So many things have been happening here in Nakuru, but we want the focus of this post to show the progress we’re making on our new meeting place. Every day there are people stopping by the job site to tell us how beautiful the compound looks. It is so encouraging and I think you will agree.

For those who would like a more detailed explanation and pictorial story of that progress and our humble beginnings… go to the pages above this post and follow the progression or check out the picture albums here.

First of all… thanks to the financial gifts of our brethren back home in the States and the hard work of our members here, we have been able to continue building for the last five weeks. We are almost finished with youth class room, caretaker’s room, and the roof of our forty by forty main building. We can retire our tent to use for evangelism later this year. More about that later! So here we go....

 

Here we are working on the youth classroom and just starting to put up the poles for the main sanctuary.

Remember… there are no electric or power tools being used of any kind on this project. Everything is done by hand. Here the brothers are punching holes in the iron straps to bind the poles together. All bent nails are straightened and used again.

After the poles are set in the ground, the top plate is attached so that the six 40 foot, three hundred pound trusses can support the iron sheet roof.

 

The most challenging part of the roof construction was structurally designing the first truss to support the weight of the iron sheet roof. Each truss weighed in access of three hundred pounds!

After completing all six trusses, we wrapped the joints with matted sisal rope, sanded and gave them a good coat of varnish.

Sometimes our boys came out and worked with us. This is Caleb and his father James behind him.

This is Lewis with his father Patrick beside him.

The next day while preparing to put up the trusses, I noticed a small puff of smoke behind the compound. I went to check it out and to my horror there was a full on brush fire blowing straight toward us.

We ran to the field and tried to put the fire out but it was moving too fast. We called out all the neighbors out and after forty minutes we finally got it under control. Thank you Lord!

Once the adrenaline dissipated from our fire fighting, we returned to the task of getting the three hundred pound trusses in place. The fifteen foot high gabled roof would serve three purposes. The first was to keep the heat from the sun on the iron roof up high enough to not be felt below. Second they only cost us about 15 American dollars each. Third … they look awesome!

That Sunday the church rejoiced at seeing the trusses up and the progress we had made that week.

Last week we began putting up the iron sheets thanks to some folks in California who lovingly gave enough for half the roof. California thank you so much.

That next Sunday we retired the tent and met for the first time under our new roof.

Yesterday we completely finished the roof… thanks to some folks in Tennessee who lovingly gave enough to cover the other half of our new roof. Tennessee thank you so much.

At the end of that day the first substantial rain came bringing in the much needed rainy season and answering our prayer to have the roof up before it rained. Lord Jesus… thank you so much.

May the Lord bless all of you who remember us in Kenya as we serve the church of our beloved Christ. Thank you for your prayers and offerings. Remember our chair Harambe (fundraiser) this Sunday. Much love and gratitude from us your sent ones to Kenya.

Dave and Cynthia