We appreciated a visit from Mark Post of Post Associates Architects, Inc. last week.  Mark who is a long time member of our home church in Grand Rapids, helped us think through possibilities for building a new hostel and housing for missionary staff on our joint Covenant / Free Church property which is adjacent to the RFIS property. 

There are three hostels for students of RFIS whose parents are serving as missionaries outside of Yaounde.  Now that the Rain Forest International School has moved to a new location the hostel parents are doing a lot more driving to drop off and pick up their kids.  The Baptist missionaries have begun building a new (CMF) hostel.  Missionaries with Assemblies of God have completed one house and are working on a second.  So far, we are still in the planning stages and Mark is helping us through that process.

Ron and Paul Noren gave Mark a walking tour of the property, looking at the terrain, talking about which trees might be spared.  Then Mark was able to visit the current UBAC* Hostel (that’s “ours”) and other houses to see how homes here are different from those in the US.  Ron and Paul showed him construction of the Baptist (CMF) hostel,  and he was able to talk to Ivo the Cameroonian construction foreman a bit.  He then sat down for a couple days to draw up plans and options for us to consider.  The next steps involve counting the cost and finding funding.

And to give Mark the chance to see a different side of Africa, one afternoon Ron and Paul took him out for a drive outside the city, to a Primate Sanctuary, run by British women, where they got to see various gorillas and monkeys.   “It was just like being in Jarassic Park!” Ron said of the forest surrounded by electric fences.  Their Cameroonian guide was thrilled to discover that Paul knew so much about the trees, so he gave them a special tour of the forest in order to learn the names of trees there.

Thanks to Mark for his expert assistance and sacrificial service.  Thanks to those of you who prayed for him during his trip.  Stay tuned for updates as the process continues, and for  opportunities to be involved in seeing the dream of a new hostel and staff housing adjacent to RFIS property become a reality.

*UBAC Hostel opened in Yaounde when Covenant and Free Church (Reach Global) missionaries evacuated from Zaire (Democratic Republic of Congo) in 1997.  Moving on to ministry elsewhere in Africa, they brought their children who’d been attending Ubangi Academy (UBAC) in Karawa, Zaire to begin attending RFIS.  Those students were housed together in one hostel that they named “UBAC Hostel” in honor of their former school.