A Jon Post
Last week the generosity of the Kingdom of God and its King was on full display.
Sunday, the 1st, I flew to the town Benjamin and his family live in. It’s only a 1 hour flight but it’s about a 14 hour drive and it would cost more in fuel to drive than the ticket on the airplane so I flew.
It started with the kindness of our friends Wayne and Tracey Greenwood organizing a place to stay and a vehicle I could use while I was there, all at no cost. I had planned to stay in as cheap a place as possible and use public transport but was able to stay in a house with a wonderful family and use a vehicle for the entire 5 days I was there.
Mozambique is notoriously difficult to get things like buildings/houses built so I had a tough task before me. I had 5 days to scout the building site, coordinate with SOMEONE/ANYONE about building a house and work out all the details (materials, payment, land permissions, etc.) that needed to be settled before a brick can be laid. Not a small assignment.
On a whim, the day before I left, Layne reached out on a local Facebook page, asking for contacts or references for a good construction company in the area. A local businessman’s wife saw the plea and forwarded us her husband’s phone number the next day. I called him up. He agreed to a meeting the morning I called and, over a cup of coffee, I explained what we wanted to do. His company does not do cheap work. As I showed him what I had hoped to build for Benjamin’s family, and told him our budget he grimaced and explained that it wasn’t even a third of what he would usually charge to build something like that.
Once again, the generosity of our King is immense.
He probed more into what we do and why, we agreed that we could reduce the size a bit but even with these changes, we didn’t have the money to do it. A couple minutes later… he looked at me, confirmed our budget one more time and said, “Jon, we’ll build it for you.” And that was that. For less than half of what he would usually ask, he promised to build a home for Benjamin and his family.
I spent the rest of the week going to Benjamin’s little rented house (a single room about two meters by two meters) and visiting with his family, going over details of the build, walking to the building site, (it’s about 2 kilometers from the end of a drivable road), and visiting with other former Casa Ahavá patients or their families.
Our King’s generosity is a stunning thing.
Thank you, to everyone who contributed to this. We will hope to be posting pictures as things develop; we hope that’s very soon.
Family
Friend
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