The Beautiful Beginning…

We waited four years and went through umpteen challenges to become totally above-board legitimate owners of this land, and now the work has begun with a vengeance!

It’s hard for you to understand the joy in this 30second clip. PTI (Partners Trust International) took the inspired decision not to use big time-efficient diggers to excavate the hillside in a day or two, and instead hire about 250 desperately poor and hungry unemployed folk from the local community to earn just under $2/day to prepare the land for construction in due course. $2/day may seem ridiculously little to a Western mind, but that’s $2 more than they would have got, and is above average for a wage in Burundi as a whole.

The locals were fully aware that machines could do the job more easily and quickly, and this gesture has given them total love, affinity and a sense of shared ownership and goodwill towards us moving forward. They expressed how our decision, which gives them several weeks of employment, will trickle down blessing to others (for example, hired nannies maybe earning 30cents/day to free up the mother to work for us), and thereby benefit many more than the 250 on site.

Beautiful!

Keep praying for this venture, for continued good relations with the authorities and the community, and for funding to pour in for the building and equipping of the clinic which in due course will (God-willing) grow into a fully-fledged hospital.

Bring it on!

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7 comments

  • Not difficult to see or hear the joy in that clip – love the thinking to chose people and investment over machines – wonderful

  • This brings me so much joy. I recall standing on that site in October and praying about the vision the Lord has for that site. This was very encouraging to see.

  • What joy thank you for sharing praise God xxx

  • Just wonderful – and another example of the upside down kingdom of God – slower, ‘less-efficient’, but more bountiful, more blessing, more love, more community – more Kingdom!

    Bless you all in all your endeavours!

  • Wonderful, Simon.
    Thank you for this Africanly joyful report.
    Roger and Sheila. To

  • Reminds me of standing praying on a weedy, muddy, prickly (ie the parts where 2 small kids and I picked blackberries!) patch of new housing estate in far-away Peterborough, England, in the mid 1980’s.
    We had hopes, faith – no, certainty! – that God would do something great!

    He’s still doing it even though the kids are well grown and the blackberries long gone!
    How great is our God!

  • Thanks Simon for sharing this beautifully inspiring clip! I pray that the energy, enthusiasm, and restless joy of the locals would provide something of a motor driving you and your family on through this turbulent time of elections, and give you hope for what God has prepared for this project!

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