Dapaong Construction Trip 1

This past week I took my first trip north to Dapaong by myself, well actually I had two Togolese with me. We arrived on a Tuesday and began immediately producing blocks for a village church. The site was remote and running water wasn’t available so the women in the village hand drew and carried the water for the entire project, an estimated 300 gallons plus.


In Togo there aren’t any Home Depots or Block Manufactures to rely on for your supply of cement blocks. All construction in the country consists of either mud blocks or cement block construction. There aren’t wooden framed structures like we might be accustomed to State side. The cement, all two and a half tons of it had to be trucked into the village, by us of course, then the water was brought by the women, and the sand had previously been brought much the same way the water had been, one pan full at a time.

The Mason, Egloo and his apprentice plowed through 10 bags of cement in the first day, about 1,000 lbs. Then on the second and third day they completed another estimated 40 bags or 2 tons. While the Mason and his apprentice were working on the blocks, Pastor Sopa, who has 6 villages works (basically he is a modern day ‘circuit riding’ preacher), traveled to another remote village and began to move by hand gravel from one site to the construction site. It took 1½ days, 17 loads and about 8 village young men to completely move the gravel from point ‘A’ to point ‘B’ of this second village church construction project. Now this church, that I was able to meet with under a Mango tree on Wednesday afternoon has all their sand, gravel, cement, and cement blocks to begin construction sometime in the next month.

It was an interesting few days in Dapaong. I went out to two other villages to deliver some benches that Randy had made and was able to visit with one chief and many of the other villagers. It always is an incredible experience for me to see how God is working in other Christians lives especially ones that I really can’t communicate with (they speak Moba).

I spent the entire trip speaking only French—there weren’t any English speakers. It was a great experience and I felt at the end of the trip as if I had gained some ground on my French.

The final progress report was that two village churches have about 90% of their needed benches in their completed church buildings and another two village churches basically have all the supplies ready to begin construction sometime in the next month. It is wonderful to see these churches who have served the Lord for so long finally get a church, especially since one had been meeting under a tree for 9 years.