RECONNECT CHRISTMAS

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: