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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.

Kigoma April Update
Kigoma April Update

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.

Cement For Recording Studio Floor

Second Floor Construction

Scaffolding

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

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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.

First Floor Walls Are Up

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.

Reinforced Walls

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.

New Water Tank

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.

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.

Bricks and Wire

-Lowell & Claudia

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Updates!

Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009

Greetings from Kigoma,

I wanted to share some pictures with you of the progress on the Community Center building.

We had to stop construction for two weeks as a medical team was out from Texas to run a free clinic for the poor. We converted the computer school into a clinic and over 1,500 people were treated. As you can imagine, it was all consuming.

Many were seriously ill. We lost some few patients but hundreds have experienced healing in both body and spirit. We had over 40 people working in the clinic — including a team of four pastors who visited with and prayed for patients. Kigoma has never seen anything like this before, and so many have been blessed and deeply touched by the Christian love shown to them. This was one of those great experiences in life that I will never forget.

So many exciting things are going on right now. A missionary from Texas has volunteered to put in two water wells for our ministry. Since we have been without city water for 5 months, this was really exciting. We had 12 women carrying the water for the construction of the ministry center in 5 gallon buckets on their heads from Lake Tanganyika to the site. They could hardly keep up the with need for water to make cement and mortar. After weeks of drilling we got the well down 214 feet. We hit lots of good clean water. With the new pump installed, we now have water for construction and hopefully, for years ahead for the entire ministry site. The well at the community center is finished and he moved his drilling rig to our house — about a block away. Today he hit water again at our house and we now have water for our residence, too. The value of each well, if we had paid to have them drilled, would be $25,000 each – with no guarantee of water.

The Community Center is now back under construction. The two attached pictures are as follows:

Women's Restroom

Women's Restroom

The drain plumbing has been installed in the building. This picture is of the women’s restroom. The Millers, a mechanical engineer and his wife, came out and worked for six weeks to help with this work and Terry Miller did design modifications and drawings and then installed the plumbing.
Library View

View From The Kitchen

This picture is taken from inside the kitchen overlooking the main room (toward the library and radio studio). We had to fill the building in with dirt and we are watering the dirt everyday to help it pack down tight before we pour the floor. The metal, tower-like structures are the rebar for concrete reinforced pillars.

New Utility Building

New Utility Building

This picture is of the new utility building that is also being built (right next to the community center building) in support of the community center and the whole ministry site. In the foreground is the new well. The next square where the fellow is putting down stones will be the water tank. Additional rooms include showers (if we use the community center to sleep a work team), generator room, store rooms, and laundry. The tower in the background is one section of our home-made radio tower (made from water pipe).
New Community Center

New Community Center

Here is another shot of the community center building. We are starting to install the windows and door frames. The bricks are piled up so we can continue putting the wall up as soon as the doors and windows are set. Once we reach the top of the doors, a reinforced concrete “ring beam” will be poured all the way around the building. It will be the first of three such ring beams used in this building.

All work is being done by hand and there is no heavy equipment being used. It takes time but the result will be great.

Thanks again to all our brothers and sisters in the Lord Jesus at Wheatland Salem for the sacrifice made at Christmas to make this all happen. We guarantee the construction work on this building for 100 years!

Blessings to all,
Lowell

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An Update On Kigoma, April 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 [...]

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