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This past week we have been in a East and North-East India where construction is beginning on a new church. KK plans to move his base of operations here as it is centrally located within a major citry and has easy access to neighboring states. KK plans to construct an orphanage, school, and medical clinic this property. The area feels pretty dark, KK informed us that there are no Christians in the area and there is a large Hindu temple nearby. But the property is nice, it is outside of the city a bit surrounded by fields of rice, mustard, and other vegetables. Unlike the city, the air is good there. We arrived in East and North-East India on Monday afternoon after spending 6 hours in a very bumpy jeep ride, I don’t think that KK’s jeep has any shocks. KK had to be there to coordinate the beginning of the construction project, purchase raw materials, and oversee the beginning of the foundation work.

Construction projects here are significantly different that at home. The holes for the column foundations are dug by hand using a tool that is more like a hoe than a shovel. The dirt is loaded into baskets and tossed out of 4-foot deep hole. A group of ladies have been hauling this dirt to construct an access ramp for the site. By hauling I mean that they load the dirt into baskets and carry it across the site to the ramp location and dump it. The rebar for the foundations is all cut, bent, and bound together with wire by hand. The concrete is mixed by hand on a brick platform. I was asked on multiple occasions if this is how we do ti in the States and could only smile and answer “kind of.”

So on Thursday, they had sufficiently completed the prep work to being the foundation. They have a ceremony for the beginning of a building construction. Village people came out of nowhere, snacks were brought out, we sang a hymn, read Psalm 121, and prayed over the building and the land. The three primary laborers were honored with a small gift and shook everyone’s hands. And everyone was given something to eat, a pastry filled with curry, a Bengali sweet (dough soaked in a cane syrup) and another sweet sugary thing. It was a good little ceremony and was definitely the highlight of our week in East and North-East India. It is pretty cool though to be part of building a church in a place where there are no churches, a place that desperately needs light and hope.

On Friday night we returned back, that drive is not fun, but we were all very excited to come back and see the kids.

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 24th, 2009 at 1:42 pm and is filed under India - Winter Team 09, Sam Stafford . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.