March 13th, Women Cooking for Women's Convention, Deaf Church Design Review

As I was walking over to the little Lutheran Youth Fellowship Shop at the Cathedral I passed these women,e working hard. I think the pot had gotten too hot. They had just pulled the smoking log on the upper left out from under the pot. They were busy stirring this like this for several minutes. When I came back 15 minutes later they were packaging the pounded yams up into individual servings in plastic wrap. The portions will be stored in an insulated container and will stay hot for a long time. They will be served with the beef that was cooked yesterday and a soup. In the US we would call their soup a sauce. It can be a tomato base or greens based. I lot of times it is thickened with a little pot ash.

Deaf Church Design Review

Today has been mostly working on review of the design of the Deaf Church. I got the plans from Buluma last night. I had been told that new plans were coming last week so I assumed these were the new plans. They were not. It turns out these were the first draft. The committee had given the architect directions for changes and he has not yet provided the new plans. Tomorrow I will print up my comments and have Buluma review them and then give them to the committee to see if they want to pass them on to the architect.

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This top sketch is my interpretation of the architect's drawing. The pastor stand on the floor in front on then Altar. The Audience is on benches. There are two rows of benches on the floor and two rows on each of the three step going up to the back of the church. The second picture has the Altar reduced to two steps. I understand this was requested by the building committee when they reviewed the first draft.
The bottom sketch is my idea to change the first Altar step into a stage. The first step is widened and extended out towards the audience and acts as a stage. The light colored area is 1.5 meter (4' 11") deep stage. The set of lines shows the stage area extended out to 2 meters.

In the picture above there is a grey door. This leads back into Pastor Ruth's Office.

Late in the afternoon, Pastor Ruth said she would like to have the entrance from her office come in from behind the Altar. I spent the rest of the evening until power went out creating this sketch to show that it is possible. Her office and store room will be smaller and the WC would be moved to the center. This may add a thousand dollars to the construction.

 Currently, they have raised less than $10,000 for this project. This will allow them to start the foundation and walls. They are currently buying the materials for the foundation. They may have enough money to build the foundation here in Nigeria. When the money collected in Denmark is forwarded they will start the walls. When more money is collected and forwarded they will add the roof. This is typical construction here in Nigeria. I have seen smaller churches take three years to build.

Their current funds will not be enough to put a roof on it before the rainy season. They will need another $15,000 to $20,000 for the roof. The roof is one of the more complex and expensive parts of the building. The current cost estimate is for the completed building to cost between 6 and 6.5 Million Naira. At current exchange rates this is about $36,000 to $39,000.

There is a small group of people working on raising money in Denmark. The BOLD Church in Minneapolis, a small Deaf Church, has raised $500 and Citizens Into Action has designated $1,100 from its last two Fair Trade Fair donations to this project. I have committed to a 2014 goal to raise $10,000 from the US.

I am not a professional fund raiser. Anyone who wants to help or has some advice can comment to this blog or email me at jaycia@mchsi.com.  I need to get a 501 C 3 organization to start a fund to accept money in the United States. I will ask if out local synod if they will do this or one of our local churches.

My trip to the bush on Saturday to flush a new borehole that is giving cloudy water has been cancelled. There was no need for a team to go. Adams will accompany the driller.