The Building Site

Digging foundations

Store room

Silvere giving direction

The church property was a hive of activity this morning at 7.30. Eight
young men were hard at it. The steps to the second level are near
completion and the Store room is built. Foundations are being dug and
the first pillars being constructed from concrete and reinforced steel.
Many thanks again to our partnering church friends for the great
fundraising work. We will keep you updated on further progress.

End wall of church building

The next major stage in our Building Project will be to extend the
main building by 3 meters (10 feet). It will require building a
retaining wall about 10 meters wide and about 5 meters long on each
side. This will be a huge task but as you can see from the bamboo walls
which need maintaining after every heavy rain, we need something more
weather proof. Initially we used flour bags filled with soil as an
affordable retaining wall but again the weather has taken its toll and
this could never support a brick wall and concrete floor. Again many
thanks for every donation, big and small, that is helping to put a
place of worship and community development in this Rwandan village. We
are excited to see the work progress and to keep you in the loop as you
help to make it all possible.

First retaining wall at the Muyange Vineyard Church

The first retaining wall to allow access for trucks to the main
building is now complete. It required 4 truckloads of rocks as well as
sand and cement. Six of our people worked for one week to complete the
wall. The next job will be to put stone steps in to safely get from the
main level to the Community room below where 15 women from the 'Joy
Sewing Co-op' work every afternoon. This room is also used three
evenings per week for English lessons and on Friday evenings for the
men's meeting. This is also where the Children's church meets on Sunday
mornings. The next major step in the building project will be to build
the 'great' retaining wall for the church building and to lay all the
foundations for the walls. We are so grateful for all the support from
our partnering churches to make this dream of our local community a
reality. Bless you all.

Folks from the Muyange Vineyard receiving their goats

This afternoon we had a little ceremony at the Muyange Vineyard to
pass out the goats that were donated as Christmas presents last year.
It was a long process to purchase the animals and choose the
recipients. Some folks were not able to make it today and will get
their goats next week. It was difficult to choose who should get a
goat so we asked six of our small groups to choose two families who
were most needy and best able to look after a goat. For many of these
families, owning a goat or two can make the difference between a child
being able to go to school, or have footwear, or not. Many thanks to
all of you who gave each other goats as Christmas presents, you may
feel very pleased with the results.