International Faith Missions: Youth Project

This is an epic event in my opinion.

The youth from the church were inspired to take on a building project for a family recently deported from the DR. A local family, Raymond Louis from our church, had taken them in to their own home when they had no place to go. Raymond has a wife and two children and this other family is a man and wife and I think three children or so. That's quite a crowd for Raymond's two room house.

The youth along with the deacons decided to raise money and material donations among themselves and other church members to build a house on a piece of property donated by Raymond Louis.

Again, I say this is epic. I am so excited to see them taking initiative to do something on their own and not sitting around expecting the mission to do it, or to pay them to do it. They now have a sense of accomplishment far beyond what there would have been if they were hired to do a job. They are beginning to see what they are able to do by themselves and that is a major step in development.

I should say that much of the inspiration and motivation came from a very energetic source, namely, Wismith Joseph who is one of the deacons at our church. And I should further say that the first project of this nature was to finish out the little "deacon's depot" at the church. The youth were tasked then, as with this house project, with calculating the budget for the project, gathering supplies, coordinating the volunteer laborers and assuring that construction was executed according to specs. An "engineer" was assigned as project manager.

Mike Martin assisted in an invaluable way with teaching construction methods and techniques; some of the guys do already have experience in masonry and building, but all were very enthused about the project.