our Zombodze church needs help

Over the past 20 months we've established a relationship with a small Christian church in our Swaziland chiefdom of Zombodze, and they have a pressing need that we thought perhaps some of you might want to consider as a charity/outreach opportunity. So if you and/or your church group are interested in helping to fund the construction of a new church building for this congregation, now is the time to contact us and donate.

This is an unofficial fundraising effort. No Peace Corps program affiliations, just us two trying to help our adopted church. Anyway, $5,600 (USD) is what's needed to make this happen-- $5,600 builds a church structure here!-- and we're inviting you to be part of it.

Here are the basics: some years back a storm severely damaged the church's one and only structure, collapsing half of their one-room concrete block building. There are about 60 church members, and they're quite poor-- can't raise enough money to fix the damage. They still meet there every Sunday, holding service under what remains of the roof, yet the building is just not safe. It suffered major structural damage (I inspected it), and all but the concrete slab needs to

be completely replaced.

So I had the pastor make a listing of the building materials needed to build a new structure (same size/dimensions as the existing one), and we've now received competitive price quotes from two local hardware stores for the purchase of that material.

The cost of materials comes to about US$4,300 at the current exchange rate, and the cost of labor is about US$1,300. So for about $5,600 USD we could build this congregation a brand new church building.

Here's how it'll work. No cash will be given directly to the church leaders; instead, we'll collect donations personally and then purchase the building materials ourselves (in conjunction with the pastor, of course) which will be delivered to the building site. Contact us for more info.

We're leaving Swaziland in August, so we need to set a tight fundraising timeline on this project: please contact us no later than July 15th. That's about 2 weeks away. Any donation amount is gratefully accepted-- and please consider asking your church group to participate.

Thanks! email us: cooktimothy@hotmail.com and we'll tell you how to donate.