News for October 10, 2008

Onward Christian soldiers

Dear brothers and sisters,

Greetings to all of you in the name of Our Lord JESUS.

Sorry for not being able to send any word in the last couple of days. There were other activities which left me with little energy to write. My apology.

As I mentioned earlier, the challenges for this week were: (1) Salvaging concrete blocks from the damaged perimeter wall; (2) Clean the porch of the school building; (3) Clean the storage rooms and (4) clean school materials.

The reason we want to salvage some of the blocks from the flood damaged wall of the new Church property is both an economical issue and a stewardship matter. I think that after Hurricanes Hanna and Ike, and with the upcoming rebuilding efforts, the price of blocks will greatly increase. By salvaging some blocks we will spend less on block for the building and rebuilding process. So far we have been able to salvage over 2000 blocks. The salvage team includes boys of the Church and the school, adults of the Church and people of the community who want to help. Some have salvaged as many as 250 and others as few as three. We tell them that we count every block they salvage as a gift to Living Water and to the community. Some people work as a subteam of the team where two or more work together to transport blocks. One team of two people have carried 60 blocks every day from the Church campus to the school campus. Another young boy carries 40 every day by himself which is an amazing accomplishment when you consider the distance. The salvaging effort continues.

The removal of mud from the school porch was a challenging task. It was the most difficult job so far, but they completed it. I cannot count how many arms were using shovels and how many hands and legs were pushing wheelbarrows, but there were a lot of people involved. Thanks to everyone who helped.

The cleaning of the storage room was not as easy as I had anticpated. First they had to remove computers that were burried under mud. There were also tarps, school supplies and even some sharp things in the mud. After that they proceeded to remove the mud. One section of the storage room was used for sound and music equipment. They had tackled it before but were not able to complete the job. This morning, a couple weeks after the first attempt, they came back to it.

Today and tomorrow one group will continue to work on salvaging blocks. A second group will work on cleaning the school materials, such as benches and tables. A third group has already started to work on removing the mud from the music and sound stuff in the storage room.

We still have 15 families living in the school building. We are doing our best to feed all of our workers along with others who show up for food. We are also feeding a good number of those who took refuge in our campus.

We are pleased to see that these people are fighting with all their strength to win the war with the mud. The war is not a small one. We have won several battles already. We are able to win them because of the supplies provided by other soldiers in the States. We are very grateful for the contributions.

We have many more battles ahead. We dare not faint. We dare not surrender. Onward Christian soldiers. Victory is ours.

Enjoy the pictures and have a great day in Christ,

Salonique

“Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, says the Lord Almighty.” … “The hands of Zerubbabel have laid the fundation of this temple, his hands will also complete it.” (Zech 4:6, 9)

website : www.livingwaterchristianmission.org

Phone : 001 – 509 – 3767 – 5951