At Emerald Hills, Team Expansion’s training and retreat center in Louisville, Ky, we are building something amazing! We’re creating a Global Training Village, where authentic houses representing people groups around the world will serve as a training ground and immersive missions experience. After living in the planning stages for several months, we’re excited to report that the first house is in motion.
Volunteers from Iowa joined local Congolese pastors to construct an African mud hut. The materials included items found around the site: tree saplings, clay, creek sand and reeds around the ponds for roofing thatch. Besides the battle against ticks and mosquitoes, participants got good and dirty with their bare feet deep in a mud-mixing pit and hands-on plastering of the walls.
The Congolese pastors helped enthusiastically and expertly, having built and lived in such huts not so many years before. At meals and break times, they shared their harrowing stories about fleeing from invading rebels who inflicted unthinkable losses. They shared stories of their agrarian lifestyle and lost traditions, while feeling excited that now there was a place where their children and grandchildren can experience a simulation of that same lifestyle.
This is just the first house for the Global Training Village along with gardens planned using Farming God’s Way. If you would like to donate or bring a team to help us build more elements, we’d love to talk with you!
