For the past week I was in Villavicencio working at the school in the mornings and at the camp in the afternoons. I was staying at the camp, since that made overseeing the work there more convenient. I traveled up to Bogotá yesterday to teach my class at the Bible College but hope to travel back down as soon as possible. The foundations for the first cabin are nearing completion and the next step will be to pour the slab that holds all of that together. It is great so see something sticking above ground after weeks of seeing only digging ditches and trenches in the soil. Now is a good time to consider the project we have laid out for ourselves in the next couple of years.
At our current stage we have been limited to about sixty people for a week of camp. The facilities simply cannot hold any more. Remember, our church camp is only one acre! Yet because of the number of churches and the size of the work here, we often have well over one hundred people who would like to attend. This has meant we have had to rent facilities for many of our weeks of camp. The deaf church wanted to hold their camp in Villavicencio but they had over one hundred and twenty people register, so they had to look elsewhere. This expansion on the camp will allow us to comfortable receive one hundred and fifty people for an event.
In the additional acre of ground we are purchasing (we still owe about $1,200 on the land) we hope to build five cabins. Each cabin will hold two married couples or up to twelve youth. Each cabin will cost about $20,000 to build and will have a small kitchen and two bathrooms with showers. That means a total cost of $100,000 for the cabins. On top of that we need to drill a well in order to have sufficient water. Our current well is hand dug and sometimes goes empty in our dry season. That makes the camp unusable during that period. The well is estimated to cost $17,000 with the casing and pump. It will take about $6,000 for the electrical installation for the new property and all of the cabins we plan on putting there.
Now that the building has started, the best thing would be to continue working, whether that be at a slow or rapid pace, until we are finished. We do hope to use many work crews for “spurts” of construction progress. In fact, we have crews planned for the first of August this year and early February next year. If you are interested in coming down and helping with this project, please write to our forwarding agent for more information. And everyone can be a part of this important new project for the work here in Colombia by sending in a special designated offering in order to keep the construction moving. We look forward to sharing much good news about this special project on a regular basis. As God blesses this work, we trust that everyone who participates or uses the facilities will be blessed and strengthened in their own walk with God. That is our vision and dream as we move forward with this major project for the glory of God’s kingdom here in Colombia.