RECONNECT CHRISTMAS
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Wednesday, October 20th, 2010
Two years ago we decided we were pretty tired of Christmas.
Christmas is supposed to be a time to celebrate the birth of our Savior and Lord, the dawning of redemption, the good news of great joy to the entire world! But what do we experience?
- the overload of stress
- the anxiety of buying the right gifts for one another when most of us already have so much stuff we aren’t sure where to store it all
- more consumer debt that will take us months to pay off
- the gnawing sense that we’re not so much giving and receiving gifts as we are giving in to the pressure of “Christ-mess”
Worst of all is that somehow in the midst of the celebration we feel like we may have missed the whole point.
Tanzania
Then we heard a story from some of our mission partners in Kigoma, Tanzania. The children didn’t have any place to go. They wanted to build a community center for the kids and for other purposes in the town. It would cost, they said, about $80,000. We thought that would be the kind of Christmas gift that would make Jesus smile: a community center for the children and youth in Kigoma. But who would write a check for $80,000? We would, by God’s grace.
We did not ask anybody to “dig deeper”. (Are you kidding? A recession was gathering steam and a lot of us weren’t feeling fiscally fit).
We simply asked one another to focus on compassion instead of consumption at Christmas and to re-direct 25-50% of what they would normally spend on Christmas gifts to a special offering for a community center in Tanzania.
So on that December Sunday morning we brought our special gifts. …and our mission partners in Kigoma kept track over the internet. And the gifts rolled in. They overflowed. We received $148,000 toward our goal of $80,000.
Now the Community Center is nearly complete (it takes a long time to build in a place where the cement is carried in a basket on your head!). And we are overjoyed. And we believe Jesus is still smiling.
3 Photos
India
So, what do you do after building a community center in Tanzania?
Whatever it was that happened through reconnect Christmas, we wanted more of that in our Christmas celebration from then on! So in 2009 we prayed. And we sent a small team of four WSC members to India to meet up with mission partners there. We went to see. To pray. To listen. To discern.
And here’s what we found:
Children – LOTS of children – in rural villages that are sold into bonded labor and, due to the high interest rates of the “lease” of a child, most often the children cannot be bought back by their parents. A lifetime of bonded labor and no way out.
Other children are left behind in the rural villages to fend for themselves while parents go to the burgeoning metropolitan areas looking for work. And many of these children end up in gangs as vandals and anti-government activists.
Still other children are taken by their parents or by someone who has bought them to beg in the streets of the city. Some of the children are purposely wounded since a wounded child’s begging is often more profitable.
Our hearts were broken. God’s heart, too.
“What is the way to break this cycle?,” we asked our partners who work in the villages with the children and their families. n“Education,” they said. b“Knowing how to read and write and preparing to take entrance exams for higher education…that is the way for a different future.” “Okay, but do you know anything about doing that? “, we wondered. “Yes. We’re doing that already and have been for years. We provide education for street children through our Alpha Schools. Some are already in what you call junior college or a regular college; a few are beyond that in medical training or engineering school.”
“So what do you want to do here?”, we asked.
“We want to build a school for the children in this district where they can learn, can be safe, and can experience God’s love for them personally.”
So when we returned to Wheatland Salem we presented what we saw and heard to the Missions Leadership Team and the Church Board and we all decided to ask the congregation, during another year of a deepening recession, to re-direct 25-50% of what we spend on Christmas gifts for the purpose of building a school in Mahbubnagar district for the children. We prayed for a special Reconnect Christmas offering of $100,000. We received $111,000. We rejoiced. We think Jesus smiled.
Then the hard work began.
We tried to purchase land – it was unimaginably expensive
We attempted to enlist other churches here as partners – but they had other priorities
And then a secessionist movement gathered steam in Andhra Pradesh that put all land deals, political boundaries, and local authorities “on hold”. And when things are “on hold” in India, it can be a very, very long time.
It looked like our plan was in deep trouble.
But God’s plan was not. Our partners in the mission were not focused on land, but on the children. The strategy remained the same, but the delivery method changed. They opened an Alpha school in leased space in Shamshabad (Mahbubnagar district) and then five more Alpha schools in another district far to the north where the situation for children is, if you can imagine it, even more tragic.
So now, less than one year later, there are nearly 600 children in school – in areas where there was no school available to them at all just twelve months ago.
Here’s something else: our mission partners launched this without a dime from us. And then they asked if our special Christmas gift of 2009 could be used for these schools. And since we were pretty clear that the gift was for the benefit of the children rather than building a building with our name on it, we said, without hesitation: “YES!”
So here’s the way it’s working out: our special gift will secures the leases on these facilities and pays the teachers for about two years for about 600 children.
But what then?
A new partner has emerged: Bright Point for Children (brightpointforchildren.org). Our new friends at Bright Point, an experienced ministry that has been developing Christ-centered sponsor relationships in several countries including India, have committed to finding sponsors for all of the children in the schools over the next two years so that the ongoing costs for leases, materials, and teachers will be provided after our seed money is used up.
Jesus has got to be grinning from ear to ear!
We’ve been sent together under the influence of the Holy Spirit for the healing of the world in Jesus’ name.
What’s next for Reconnect Christmas?
This has been too exciting so far.
Some of our families have adopted a new Christmas tradition of re-directing 25-50% of what they would have spent on themselves for the purpose of a special Christmas gift on behalf of the least and the last in other parts of the world.
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An Update On Kigoma, April 2010
Wednesday, April 14th, 2010
Here is an update on the community center.
We have spent some time designing and constructing the stairs to the radio/recording studio. This is a Lowell Wertz design. We built the pillar of Hercules, 20 inch square, rebar reinforced column, then a metal platform landing for outside the second story door, then a metal beam made from angle iron and flat stock to support the stairs, and finally the stairs. They aren’t done yet, but you can get the idea.
The floor in the BIG room has been poured. It took some weeks as it is a lot of concrete to mix by hand. All concrete for floors has been poured except for the toilets and kitchen. We still have some plumbing work to do in those rooms, first. We are still considering the floor finish, if it should be tile or what.
We are going to finish up the library first. The walls have been plastered and the electrical system is in. Won’t be long now.
Outside, we are creating an entrance way — porch area, so when it is raining the crowds can come and go without problems. The poured pillars and beams will eventually hold a roof. Those two doors will be the main entrance.
Lots of other jobs have gotten done. The walls have been build up to roofing. The metal conducts are in for the microphone wiring from the recording studio to the stage area.
22 Photos
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Kigoma Construction Update
Wednesday, October 7th, 2009
We are back in Tanzania now. We had a good trip out. Just wanted to send you a few action photos of the construction of the community center. The walls are done, now. The shots below are the pouring of the second “ring beam”. It is a steel rebar reinforced concrete beam that circles the entire building. Also notice the vertical concrete columns.
Next week we will try to get the concrete ceiling poured over the recording studio. We are using concrete to make the ceiling for sound proofing.
In two weeks the Kingwood UMC construction team arrives to put the roof on the building. Remember them in your prayers as they plan and prepare.
Blessings,
Lowell
Tags: construction, Kigoma Community Center 2008, Kigoma Tanzania, updates
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A Video Tour
Friday, June 26th, 2009
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These walls are strong!
Wednesday, June 3rd, 2009
The walls are going up on the community center. The walls for the ground floor are done. Next week we hope to begin installing the second floor joists for the rooms at the end of the building. And we hope to begin pouring the concrete floors for the second story rooms next week. After that, we will continue building the walls of the second floor level.
This doorway will someday lead to the new library. We have thousands of volumes of good Christian books we are excited to get catalogued and made available to the pastors and Christian workers in our area. Above this room, on the second floor, will be the radio studio.
Notice the reinforced concrete pillars and reinforced concrete ring beam. We are doing everything we can to make the building earthquake proof. We have had a 6.7 quake here. None of our buildings failed. We make them strong.
Above is the construction of the new water tank — which is the end room of the new utility building. A college student, Ryan, from KY is out helping and for the first time is trying his hand at laying brick. Our new water well is producing 14 gallons per minutes of pure water and will give us a clean source of water for the community center and visitors’ guest houses. No more boiling our water! This new tank will hold thousands of gallons of water. This picture was taken earlier in the week. The tank walls are now four feet high.
Well, our scaffolding might not be OSHA approved. All work is done by hand under the blazing tropical sun. Notice the burglar bars on the new windows.
This week we received another 15,000 bricks. We decided to make the building’s walls three bricks thick, so we needed additional bricks. The rolls of wire mess are for the concrete floor, when it comes time to pour it.
-Lowell & Claudia
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