In the first half of January, Luke and I (Seth) spent about a week in Konomala for our first build trip. Together with a group from the Siar church, our goal was to build a small truck shed that would eventually be used for our two offices and as a place to keep our truck.
In the mean time, the shed could serve as a place to live in during later build trips. And it would serve as a storage shed for when our other building materials arrive on site.
For the last 3 years, God has so clearly been leading us to Konomala. We feel so confident that this is right where He wants us, and He has blown us away in big things and small things alike.
Storytime!
We got to Konomala a couple days before we planned to start working. On the day that we got there, it started raining. It rained on and off through the night, through the next day, and continued through until the morning that we were planning to start working.
As we sat there with our friends from Siar, we were each looking at the sky and asking the Lord to stop the rain so that we could get posts set in the ground and begin building. The rain was not slowing down, so we all decided to just start working and do what we could.
Literally, the very moment that we all stood up and started to gather tools, the rain stopped! We all made happy noises and thanked God. Then we looked at the sky, saw the dark clouds, and asked Him to keep it from raining again.
Well, that was Monday morning, and we planned to work through Thursday. It didn’t rain at all while we worked!
Then the exact moment that the last tool was put away on Thursday and we sat down to rest, the sky opened up and it started dumping rain. We all started laughing and talking about how awesome God is. We just watched the rain, washed our nasty feet off, and told the story to each other of how God stopped the rain on Monday and how He started it back up on Thursday. We were at the end of our water supply on Thursday too, and God filled the tank in one perfect rain storm.
So awesome!
Top: the piece of ground where our house will be built
Left: a Konomala guy (Ken) helping to clear the trees
Right: burning the piles of branches etc.
The first thing that had to happen was clearing the ground where our truck shed and houses would be built. There had been a lot of work done before we even got there. A few Konomala guys had already cleared most of the trees.
Luke and I were amazed by the guys that came to help. There was a number of guys that came from the Siar church to help. One guy from the Patpatar church came too. David from Siar and Paul from Patpatar both had a lot of carpentry experience, so they completely took the lead on building the shed.
They did awesome! Luke and I were just the helpers for the most part, and they got the shed built way faster than we expected.
Top: the guys had rafters up by the end of the first day
Left: our little spot to cover the generator and batteries
Right: we were the grunt work while the ‘real’ carpenters built the shed
Top: the guys putting siding on
Left: the office will be on the left side and the truck ‘garage’ on the right
Right: taking a break in our future offices
Our house will be on the left, and Hodgdon’s house will be on the right.
The finished product was not fancy by any means … but it was a huge success.
We also got to go see where the Konomala guys were milling our lumber. They had to cut down huge trees, section each one according length, then set up the sawmill to cut the different dimensioned timber. To say the least, Luke and I were impressed. It’s back-breaking work.
So, in total, we were gone 9 days. We got back to our families in Hoskins then had a little over a week until our second build trip.
KONOMALA 