Training Center Day Two

Today was a good day.  After breakfast we met up with one of my favorite people in the world, Alfayo Bodi.  Alfayo runs our facilities at Ndhiwa and Tom Manning and acts as a member of our Kenyan leadership team.  He came to be with us as we met the contractors who will build our new training center. We got to hang out in the back of the van on the way to Dirubi.

Alfayo, Francis, Paul, Thomas, Simon, Simon the Principal and I arrived at the Dirubi orphanage and we sat down to go over the revised plan that I worked on late into the night.  I had to accommodate a stream running through the middle of the site and a change of plans on the septic system in order to get a workable building plan.  The guys were all on board with what I had done so we called in the mason (who acts as the general contractor), the electrician and the plumber to join us.  These will be the principal players in the construction phase. But first, a pause for a personal moment.

When GCR cancelled phase two of the Kingdom Now project that would have completely remodeled the auditorium for the first time in 45 years, I was pretty depressed.  I felt like we had lost a great opportunity to transform the nature of our worship and our church.  I wondered if we had completely wasted a lot of time and money designing a room that will now never be built. I took this as a personal insult, even though I know it wasn't about me at all.  But one thing I have learned about God in the last few years is that He is able, and totally willing, to use tremendous pain in this life to teach us about His nature. In every loss, there is a lesson to be learned.

During the design phase for Phase Two, I met a brilliant architect named Kevin Callahan.  Kevin is a little weird, very west coast and ADD at the same time.  But Kevin did the very cool thing as we were gearing up to start construction.  He took the entire building design, every page, and taped it to the walls of our meeting room.  Then he invited a representative of each of the sub-contractors to pour over them, asking him questions and taking copious notes.  He was as eager to learn from them how better to do his job as he was to get the project ready to build.  He totally exposed himself to their criticisms, in order to make sure the design was as tight as he could make it.  Now, I'm no Kevin Callahan, far from it.  But I saw the tremendous value in what he was doing and it stuck with me.

So today, when we went over the design of the new training institute with these Kenyan tradesmen, I tried to emulate the master, and I asked them over and over to ask questions, make suggestions, and help me get this right.  At the end I did just what Kevin did at GCR, I asked each of them to look me in the eye and tell me that they could build it like I had drawn it.  And they did.  So we are going to build it.

God uses loss and tragedy to teach us lessons He needs for us to know, when we need to know them.  I have no idea why I am here, at this time, doing this work.  I could never have imagined that almost everything I have ever learned is being put to use in the kingdom in this way.  But God knows, and that's enough.

So why are we building this?  To do our part to help God redeem the world through the power of His church.  Because it not enough to save the life of a child if you leave them as a helpless young adult.  God expects us to lavish His gifts on them like he would, and He is doing it through us.  No gift is too small, but none is too big either for our God!  Praise Him!

After our meeting we drove back to Kisii to welcome our orphanage workers for our meeting together tomorrow.  On the way home I put my fancy Bose headphones on Thomas and let him experience Gungor's Beautiful Things album.  He really liked it and so do I.  There's a song on that album that says, "He makes beautiful things, He makes beautiful things out of the dust. He makes beautiful things, He makes beautiful things out of us!"  How right you are.

Pictures from today are here.