Breaking Ground

We broke ground! We are officially building! As soon as we had the blueprints for the first floor in hand, we found a contractor (after going through a few) and he got started that very day. God really does work everything out perfectly. The contractor we settled on is married to the woman we are currently renting the church from, and they live right around the corner. Some of our Deaf church members have experience in construction, and he has agreed to include some on his work team. This church that will be such a blessing for so many has already become an economic opportunity for a few families. 

We are currently starting work on the foundation, which is the most difficult and most expensive part of the whole construction. This will be a 2-3 story cement block building in a country where earthquakes and hurricanes are pretty common occurrences, so we want to make sure we build a strong foundation with good quality materials. Once the foundation is ready, we will focus on the first floor, which will include the church sanctuary, an office, a kitchen, bathrooms, and a couple of small storage rooms. With this, we will be able to move our church services into the new building while we continue fundraising and building the second floor, where we will have classrooms. 

We have been raising money for a while and had some funds for the initial costs, but we now have some immediate needs. I made a table breaking down the material and labor costs required for the foundation of the church, and I am reaching out to all of you to see how you can help. Every little bit helps. Every bag of cement, every rebar, every cinder clock gets us closer to having our own church building. 

If you would like to donate, you can do it through the “Donate" button on the right hand side of this blog. All donations are tax-deductible. You can even set up a recurring donation. Please note that this button does not show up if you are on a cell phone. You must access the blog on a computer. No idea why that is, to be honest.

As we get close to finishing the foundation, I will be sending out another table breaking down the costs to finish the first floor. If everything goes well, we will reach that point in a few months.

Material	Quantity Needed	Cost per unit	Total cost
Bags of cement	600	$6.63	$3,978.00
Rebar 3/8	296	$3.85	$1,139.60
Rebar 3/4	96	$16.00	$1,536.00
Rebar 1/2	98	$7.15	$700.70
Cut wire C-16	200	$2.12	$424.00
Square meters of sand	36	$36.00	$1,296.00
Square meters of gravel	28	$31.81	$890.68

Labor cost

$7,068.39

Grand total for foundation

$17,033.37