Koumra Adventure August 29

We awake early and load the vehicle with supplies and get some fuel. We
head out of town about 15km and arrive at the church site. The people
had built walls for a church before, but the wind had blown the walls
down. We see some corners of the old structure and a pile of twisted
rebar, cement crumbles, and brick heaps obscured by brush and weeds.

I ask, "Can I see your cement and sand and gravel please?" They seem
bewildered. "Didn't you get my SMS message about that?" one person
inquires. "Well, I didn't see any." "Must be the problem of bad signal,"
another concludes.

We are ready to turn around and go back home. Nobody is ready. No
materials are here. We only have foundation stakes with us. But we
decide to do the best we can with the circumstances we find ourselves
in. I say in no unclear terms, "If we do not get cement and gravel this
morning, and if we do not have a site ready, we cannot finish your church."

All of a sudden, the church members get moving pretty quickly. They cut
and clear and move bricks. They crush old cement and extract enough
gravel to use for our foundation holes. The ladies go with bowls and
collect sand from the road. A man comes back on a motorcycle with the
two sacks of cement.

We measure out the foundation, and by late afternoon, all the stakes are
perfectly set. We still have no materials to complete the church.

Throughout the day we were given gifts of raw peanuts in the shells, raw
eggplant (to eat like an apple), and boiled corn on the cob. These
filled some cracks in our stomachs.

Because there is not sufficient water at the place where we are staying,
we all bathed here. The "shower" was a combination toilet/bathing area
surrounded by a meek and feeble grass-and-sticks "fence" about waist
high. Indeed, we note the interesting challenges of living in the bush.

When we return to our sleeping house back in town, we are half happy and
half dismayed to find a heap of material for three churches scattered on
the ground. It is late. We are tired. But if we don't push, it won't get
done. So we sort all those pieces -- about 370 of them -- into piles of
church 1, church 2, and church 3.

After 10pm, we finally get to grab a few bites to eat. White bread from
the market with peanut butter and some nuts and dried fruit we brought
from home. We quickly fall asleep.