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(Spring 2019 Issue 65) (Day we completed house foundations, Blantyre, Malawi)

Another break for some great French coffee

Contents

New Chairman for Brass TacksP4

Bruay la Buissiere, Northern FranceP5

Breaking new ground in MalawiP7

Challenge of building in remote D.R.CongoP10

Wukwashi wa Nzambi - From small beginningsP13

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Editorial

Brass Tacks is a mission support group: our purpose is to enable others to share the good news about Jesus Christ more effectively by giving practical support. We take on building and maintenance projects, allowing mission workers to focus on their core activities. Clinics, hospitals, schools, homes for street kids, church buildings, security walls, vehicle maintenance, solar panel installation, access for those with disabilities - these are just a few examples of what Brass Tacks has done over the last 30 years.

We facilitate holistic mission by providing expertise, experienced workers, tools and travel, and insurance cover. Our team members are often joined by local volunteers - giving opportunities for personal evangelism, passing on knowledge and practical skills, and having fellowship with local Christians.

Volunteers usually find these trips abroad are life-changing experiences: hard work - but a time of seeing first-hand how cross-cultural mission works; a time to be stretched from your comfort zone; a time to build new relationships; a challenge to your personal faith and commitment.

Skills we need: builders, carpenters, electricians; welders, plumbers - and general good DIYers. We have an ever growing list of requests for projects, so we would urge you to contact us if you think you might be interested to join us for a week or even a few weeks, depending on location.

Prayer partners require no practical skills or experience but are vital to everything which we do.

Thank you for standing with us in this ministry.

Sheila Park Page 3

Introducing our Chairman

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Sam Phillips

We would like to welcome our new chairman, Mr. Sam Phillips, to the Brass Tacks board. As a Chartered Civil Engineer, he has over 40 years’ experience working in the Consultancy sector of the industry. Sam has long had an interest in missionwork from hearing missionary reports as a young boy and he first went on a GLO team to Caen, NW France in 1977. He is a keen traveller and has visited missionaries in many countries around the globe, including Africa, India, Pakistan, Hong Kong and Europe. In 2004 he became involved with the Zengamina hydroelectric scheme for Kalene Mission Hospital and surrounding district and is a Board Member and Trustee of the North West Zambian Development Trust (NWZDT). He has visited Zambia annually since 2005.

Back home in N. Ireland, Sam is a member of Scrabo Hall Church in Newtownards, and is involved with the Home Groups Team in the fellowship.

Our ProgrammeFor The Next Few Months

God willing we have the following jobs to tackle:

7th June to 26th July

2nd September to 12th October ..

16 th September to 23rd October . 1st November to 29th November..Kavungo mission house, Angola.

Chitokoloki mission hospital

operating theatre, Zambia

Katoka mission house, D.R.Congo. .Moshi Childrens home, Tanzania.

Ongoing needs: We need builders or a project manager to help out in Blantyre Malawi with the new mission house and security walls.

A Boost for Bruay la Buissiere

(Office meeting)

Brass Tacks received an application from a small church in a former mining town, about an hour’s drive from Calais. Brent and Carol-Anne Greiner form part of the Operation Mobilisation team who are based in Bruay with a view to establishing a sustainable work there

As part of their strategy, they provide craft classes for women and also teach English to refugees and others from the locality who are interested. All this helps to build bridges to France’s very secular population.

(A crafts class) (since any decoration work had been done on this property.Once the new walls were in place, we then had to paint the ceiling, which was a challenge: the very heavy-duty scaffolding had to be dismantled each time we needed to move it under the three support struts which traversed the room.)The building was well over 100 years old and had seen better days. Our task was to install new internal walls with insulation in the main hall so that the heating bills could be reduced and the overall visual impact of the meeting room could be improved. It had been a very long time

(Insulation system)Building the access ramp

Paul Trotman, Philip Kennedy and Alan spent two weeks completing this task.

We were delighted to meet Denny who attends an evangelical fellowship and had committed himself to being present and working alongside us. In addition, one of the men who is taking English classes joined us and was a great help.

When the work was completed they asked if it would be possible to install an access ramp in the main hall and make a new front gate at the side of the building. The access ramp was large compared to

Measuring the plasterboardthe overall floor area, and this caused us quite a lot of mirth, however rules are rules, and it was built to specification. Solidly. It would make a great ramp for children’s skateboard games!

The members of the church organised themselves to provide food which was brought to the apartment above the main hall where we were staying. So, lunch times were noisy and sometimes challenging times as we shared conversation and stories in French and English, with few speaking both languages completely. Great fun, and a very helpful way to relax.

The local Christians were absolutely delighted by the transformation, one lady saying with tears in her eyes that she had been praying for years for such a new start for the church. Denny even brought his daughter along to hear the singing from the impromptu Irish, Welsh and Scottish choir. It was an easy building to sing in because of the acoustics. We do not take bookings for concerts!

Breaking new ground in Blantyre, Malawi.

By Alan Park

Arriving at Blantyre International airport our first impression was of the two beautiful mountains around which the historic city is built. Just a few weeks previously, devastating rainfalls caused great damage across vast areas of Mozambique and southern Malawi. Blantyre itself seemed to have escaped the devastation, being set on a high plateau. As the second city of Malawi, Blantyre is the commercial and industrial centre. However, a report just issued by the IMF stated that Malawi is the fourth poorest country in the world, even behind Southern Sudan and Liberia for income per capita.

Our purpose in coming to Malawi was to spend a month in preparatory work for a project which had been a long-held vision. A large plot of ground was obtained some years ago by the missionaries who were based in Blantyre at that time, and since then the ground has been used for cultivation. The original plan was to have a missionary house, a guest house for visitors and a

small building for Bible training. Planning permission for the new buildings was finally granted last year, and so we began phase one at the end of the rains to start building work on the first house.

It is a daunting task to arrive in an unfamiliar location and try to put together a suitable workforce with all the associated logistics of accommodation and food for the team. Ananda and Grace Pula, who were commended from Andhra Pradesh (India) in 2012 have done great work in making sure

that things ran as smoothly as possible.

Brass Tacks planned many years ago for this project, and Colin Breeze sent out a good supply of tools and equipment. So where to begin, with a cultivated field? Armed with the layout drawings, we tried to set out the boundaries of the site. This proved difficult, as there were no marker beacons to be seen. After making extensive measurements, we gave it our best guess and plotted out the location for the buildings.

One of the Christians from south Malawi was very helpful to us, sending some of the young men with whom he has contact and hiring out his truck for the start of the work. This was a huge help in getting many tonnes of building materials delivered to the site. Much of the smaller stuff was transported in Ananda’s pick-up. When the local workers arrived, they set to digging the foundation trenches for the first building. The ground was very hard, and progress was slow. At least we can be sure that the building is well set on its foundation concrete footings. With such a large plot, we employed a man with his JCB to help prepare the ground for vehicles coming in and out with the necessary building equipment. Heavy rain then made the site a mud bath, so the workers had to tow the wheelbarrows with rope, while another man pushed.

As we had nowhere to store a cement mixer long-term, we hired one from a local contact, and a neighbor from nearby was willing to store it in her walled compound for security. We had to shop Page 8

around for concrete blocks which were in short supply due to an increase in local building work before the May elections.

Phil, Paul and I had great Indian meals served under the shade of the mango tree, and attended by Grace, who insisted that we were “looking very thin “and heaped more food on our plates when we were not looking! This made it challenging to then go back to work in the afternoon with such enormous lunches and no siesta!

The local people showed a lot of curiosity about what was happening as we were very

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visible in the community. This was a good opportunity to connect with them and explain what the plans are for the future.

Ananda and Grace have several aspects to their ministry, and have integrated well into the Christian expatriate community in Blantyre with Bible study groups etc. Ananda has taken on many tasks previously done by Jonathan Newell, not least as national coordinator for the Challenge Christian newspaper. Many of these activities had to be placed on hold while we were there.

At weekends, Ananda would generally visit rural assemblies, staying overnight with local believers. As we worked half days on Saturday, we decided to do these visits in one day. Each Sunday we would descend from the heights of Blantyre down to the valley floor, where the humidity shot up. These journeys generally took around 2 hours each way, through some of the river beds where the force of the water had damaged the bridges. I think even before one stage of repairs was completed subsequent rainfall had swept away much of the ground for the new bridge supports.

As protocol dictates, the visitors were always given the best seats in full display of the audience, a bit like live TV for the villagers perhaps? The services for the day started with Sunday school and one of the star pupils lead the singing. He had a real natural talent and sang well, jumped and stamped his feet with gusto. The kids loved it and took the opportunity to singtheir most favourite and interactive songs. We were prevailed upon to give the Sunday school lesson, and using some hastily gathered “props”, a very interesting lesson was delivered. I just cant remember at this point what it was, so no repeats. Following the gospel preaching, we were given generous hospitality, usually rice and greens which had been prepared by a large army of ladies.

Last day with the workers

Our month passed quickly, and after laying the foundations for the house, our attention went to building a store room and then a septic tank and finally pouring over 100 m of concrete for the foundations of a boundary wall.

I have attached some photographs so that you can see some of the progress made so far during our visit. Please pray for the ongoing work here, for good security and for more helpers to commit to making this dream a reality for an extremely needy country.

Challenge of Building in Remote D.R. Congo

By Keri Kaye

Josh and I made our first 3-month trip to D.R.Congo in March 2016. Most of that time was spent at Katoka Mission, situated approximately 45 kilometres from the Angolan Border. Many may know the name of Mary Ratter, who has faithfully served God there for over 50 years.

That initial visit confirmed that God was calling us to Katoka. Two things were obvious requirements: first, the need to learn French, and second suitable housing. After much prayer, the Lord clearly guided towards building a new property, and so since 2017 we have been involved in language learning and organising a new build.

The building of any house, anywhere in the world takes careful planning and organising of resources and logistics - but building in rural DR Congo takes things to a whole new level. And Josh and I were (still are!) novices. Thankfully we have been blessed with experienced and helpful colleagues at Katoka and in Angola and Zambia. Invaluable help came from others including Jim Smith who designed and built the shell of the new house, and the team from Brass Tacks who made a trip out to help us in 2018. The challenges include the continuallydegenerating road network, the difficulty in sourcing ‘western’ materials and unfortunately, some corruption comes in to play too. Finding ways to overcome these problems often seems like a full-time job and we are continually seeking God’s wisdom for how to best use our time and available resources.

One way around the difficulties with transportation is to source goods in neighbouring countries which are geographically closer to Katoka Mission than the main cities of southern DR Congo (Kolwezi and Lubumbashi). So, we ordered the raw materials needed for building the shell of the house from Angola. This drastically reduced the delivery time and meant that we could buy the materials more cheaply - BUT: due to the need to bring the items through a border point, transportation and customs charges often cost us as much as buying the items in the first place.

Always there are blessings in the trials. We were very thankful for the expertise of the local people who made bricks less than

100 metres from the building site. Also, near the site, workers were able to ‘mine’ for rocks and gravel for the foundations and dig up sand to mix in with the cement - a wonderful reminder of God’s abundant provision through nature.

The shell of the new mission house was completed in January 2018 and in September 2018, Brass Tacks sent Phil Kennedy and Paul Dodds to help. In just under 6 weeks.they installed the windows which we had sourced earlier in the year during a visit to Angola, installed the external plumbing , built a staircase, made a revision to the centre part of the roof of the house to help eliminate a leak, built a veranda area at the front of the house (at my request!) and built a generator house (at Josh’s request!).

Listing the jobs in this way makes it all sound so simple (and there were dozens of other jobs done too), but that couldn’t be further from the truth. From dealing with the language barrier with local workers, to adjusting to the intense heat, Phil and Paul took everything in their stride. Even the two-day road journey back to Lubumbashi at the end of their trip wasn’t enough to dissuade them from contemplating coming back to help us again.

Their ability to find “work arounds” when the desired resources weren’t available, and their ever-positive attitude really encouraged us and opened our eyes to new ways of thinking about how to tackle jobs which at first seem impossible. We are very thankful to God for the time they spent with us.

So, what next? Well, the new house is still currently uninhabitable, but it is our hope and prayer that our next trip to Katoka from the end of April to the end of October this year (2019) will facilitate the necessary work to finally allow us to live in it. Namely we need to install the rest of the exterior and interior doors, fully wire the house including installing a generator and solar system (currently waiting for us in Zambia), complete the internal plumbing throughout the house and get a kitchen built/installed. Oh, and source/ build some furniture too!

God’s call on us was to feed the hungry and to preach to the poor - but we weren’t sure how that would work out practically. What we know now is that there is plenty to do at Katoka, and it is our hope and prayer that we serve Him to the best of the abilities which he has given us. We are particularly interested in working with the younger generations, both on a practical level with the two assembly-run schools and on a spiritual level, with the existing youth work and some extra activities, God willing.

Wukwashi- from Small Beginnings

Becky and John Wright, from Exmouth in Devon, went to Zambia in 2005 to start a community-based rehabilitation project for children with special needs. Based mostly in the Copperbelt churches in central Zambia, the project enabled families to receive support and provided for their children to engage in play, physiotherapy and educational activities.

John and Becky explored the options available: mainstream schools struggle to cope with the sheer numbers of children, let alone inclusive education. Special school were for specific needs - and so despite the distance, children who had academic ability were transported to Mambilima special school.

The project was taken over by local trustees in 2007, and header up by Henry and Joyce Mutembu. Parents pleaded for a local school to start in Kitwe, and so a parent/project working group was set up. Funds were sourced from Opportunity Zambia, and in 2009 a small school opened in a rented house.

Fast forward to 2011: land was donated, John constructed a store and workshop, while the school moved into the house on the plot. We approached Brass Tacks for help, and one of their board members, David Thorp, drew up the plans. The planning, land registry and other essentials were done by the Zambian leadership. Several UK-based Christian charities helped with initial funding.

John was unable to be in Zambia to supervise the build and so Brass Tacks agreed to step in and help. The concrete slab and the first two classrooms were constructed by a small team from Luanshya together with Paul Dodds, Phil Kennedy and Alan Park. With no actual resident missionaries to assist in project management and procurement, and the community project still running, getting two classrooms up in 12 weeks was an amazing feat, in 2014.

The small school moved into their new rooms to take over the much better space and continued to meet the educational preparatory needs for the younger children. There were also older children who needed life skills, who remained in the school to improve their independence. As time went on, demand for places increased and the Wukwashi wa Nzambi Trustees raised enough money to build classroom three. This was done at a

Zambian building pace - it took over 6 months. We have often visited Zambian homes that gradually get plastered, painted or plumbed, when funds are available, even though they are fully occupied. So, this is normal life for many locally grown projects.

Two years ago, we heard that the local Copperbelt Energy Corporation, had agreed to support the remaining build. Joyce, Henry and the rest of the team were more than surprised, in fact they were somewhat sceptical, as this promise had been made because the director had heard about the project on a radio broadcast. But - it happened, and in 2018 the remaining school build was completely sponsored by this company, not only funded but project managed too.

(Looking into the school courtyard)Now a building stands on 4 sides around a courtyard, with a verandah for walking practice, offices, therapy rooms, toilets and storage. Work is on-going painting the classrooms, installing a borehole and renovating the roof of the old staff house, but it is expected that all will be completed by the end of May.

The Lord has done immeasurably more than we asked or imagined, (Ephesians 3v20). Thank you, Brass Tacks for helping us, and enabling the Zambian project leaders to demonstrate their faith in this substantial way.

Please continue to support the Zambian team in your prayers. Currently over 700 children are being helped in various capacities:

· support groups in various provinces encourage parents to bring children out of isolation. They are assessed for needs in surgery, mobility aids, education. They receive food, physiotherapy, play therapy, and God’s Word.

· Wukwashi Pathway Christian school currently has 35 children enrolled, with

· A further 23 children are being supported to attend Mambilima Mission school, plus 24 more in mainstream and other schools for those with special needs.

· During the August school break, one- week training sessions are planned in more distant areas, to teach activities for daily living and basic education.

· Over 70 volunteers from local churches help in implementing these programmes.

If any readers are interested in supporting Wukwashi and the children with special needs, see

https://www.bethanychi1drenstrust.org.

uk/donate/give-to-wukwashi

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Could you be our new Accountant?

As our Accountant will be retiring in the near future, Brass Tacks is seeking to appoint a successor.

The job is likely to involve about four hours per week maintaining the accounting records, attending to the approval of payments, reconciliation of bank accounts, preparation of payroll and Gift Aid schedules, preparation of interim accounts for trustees meetings (two per year) and also the preparation of the end of year accounts for the auditors and company secretarial responsibilities.

If you are interested in finding out more, please contact the office.

0141 237 4131 brasstacksuk@gmai1.com

You are invited

To a Fellowship evening with Brass Tacks

Ardmore Gospel Hall, 80 Ardmore Road, Derryadd, Craigavon, N.Ireland BT66 6QP

November 8th, 2019

Time 7.30-9pm

(BrassTack^)A great time to renew fellowship with our volunteers past, present and future!

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www.brass-tacks.org.uk

brasstacksuk@gmail.com 0141 237 4131 All correspondence to: Challenge House,

29 Canal Street, Glasgow, G4 0AD

Registered office: 1 Tower House, Tower centre, Hoddesdon, Hertfordshire, EN11 8UR

Company Reg No. 2216281 Charity Registered No. 298767