I wanted to give you, our loyal supporters, an update on the building God is providing for Arm of Hope in the slum community.  Many of you have invested in this building by generously partnering with the ministry in Ghana at our 2018 Arm of Hope banquet.  We want you to know that your resources are being put to use, and the walls are going up!  In a few months, Arm of Hope will have its very own headquarters smack dab in the middle of the area in which God has called us to serve.  Wow!

So to show you exactly what is going on, here is a picture tour of the progress…

This is what the school room we use for Bible Club looked like this past August when our team was in Ghana for camp.  This room holds about 60 children for preschool through first grade school classes.  Arm of Hope uses this school room for Bible Club every Sunday.  Two of the walls are shared with other buildings, and two of them have narrow walking paths next to them.

This picture shows you how close the Bible Club school room is to the next building on two sides.

Before school started for the new year in September, bamboo poles were put in place to add the second floor about the school room.  After the concrete floor was set, the poles were removed and school resumed as usual under the new “roof”.

This is what the school room looked like after the second floor was added.  You can see that the quality of the school is already so much better with the permanent ceiling in the room instead of the makeshift, sometimes leaking tin that was there before.

Here is the second floor being set on top of the bamboo poles you saw in the last post.

Concrete was carried by the bagful into the slum by hand.  It took an entire night, and many from the community were employed to get the supplies to where they needed to be. Remember, there are no roads going to this building – only narrow walking paths.  This is very hard work, but the Ghanaian construction crew is amazingly resourceful in getting a very difficult job done well.

When the children were off for Christmas break, the roof to the second story was put into place.  Instead of a traditional roof, we opted to spend a little more money to make a concrete slab on the top of our building.  This area will be walled for safety and will provide a great place to hold outdoor meetings, Bible Club small groups, etc. This slum community has no open land, so a roof is the perfect place for meeting and using our space to its full potential.

The concrete was then mixed for the roof, and yes, it had to be carried up there by hand. Here you can see the view out over the community.  To the right, you can see the peak of the school building where grades 2 through 12 meet.  Remember, under this area is where the younger children have their school classes.

In the past few weeks, block has been laid on the second floor to form the rooms for the Arm of Hope offices, library, and computer center.

Steps going up!

There is so little space for people to live in this community, so people are already using the walls and area for sleeping and for laundry.  While we want to share with the community, one of the next steps will be to make the building burglar proof with bars on the windows and locks on the doors to insure that it is well maintained and safe. Other steps in the process happening soon include putting up railings for safety, putting in composting toilets, and repairing the school room on the ground floor from the damage caused to it by the building process above.

Ultimately, these little faces are the reason for all of this.  This community is just overflowing with the potential of little ones made in the image of God and for His glory.  We can’t even imagine all that God is going to do in and through this location, but we trust Him, and we wait with eager anticipation for Him to reveal His plans.

“Now to HIM who is able to do IMMEASURABLY MORE than all we can ASK or IMAGINE, according to HIS POWER that is at work within us, to Him be GLORY in (THIS BUILDING) and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations (OF THESE BEAUTIFUL CHILDREN), for ever and ever.  Amen.”  Ephesians 3:20-21

Cheryl Zimmerman