Serving the local community

One of the important principles taught to local churches is the need to be out serving their local communities. As a way of demonstrating this principle in practice it was decided that all the staff within the La Paz FH office should be involved in a small seed project. As in so many cases it is very easy to talk the talk but yet not as easy to walk the walk, so we were all encouraged to actually do something in relation to what we talk about others doing.

As a result of this idea, 3 small seed projects were put together in such a way as to support and encourage a church or individual. The office staff were divided into 3 teams and assigned to one of the projects. We were assigned to the team that were to help paint the inside of a small church in El Alto, called ‘Centro ministerio Agape’ and Ed was designated co leader to co ordinate the project. The church had been in existence for 9 years and was in its 3rd year of receiving training from FH about its place within the community.The small congregation had already done much to build the church and prepare it for painting, our job was to give a helping hand to paint it.

Finally after a couple of date changes a team of 8 people (Plus Alana) set off for El Alto at 8am armed with paint brushes and rollers to the small church. When we arrived our first job was to sand and wipe down all the walls to prepare them for the paint. Ed and I then enjoyed a cultural lesson on how to mix paint. Rather than just purchasing a big tin of paint to the colour requirements, they buy big tubs of white paint and then small bottles of the required colour to mix in then mix together with water. This is all very well and good if you can do all you need to with the first mix, as it appeared to be quite difficult to create exactly the same colour second time around.

Still we managed to do a good job and worked well together as a team and had a good laugh. For Ed and I it was a nice change to have been doing something practical again, having spent so much time sitting at computers in recent months. Even Alana had a go at it all, sanding the walls, mixing the paint and then turning her hand to painting. It was nice that she had little company to enjoy it with too. It didn’t take too long before the girls were best buddies and sharing their lolly pops with each other.

By midday we had finished the job and enjoyed sharing a lunch together which some of the women from the church had prepared. It was an array of different food, which when served together was known as ‘Ajtapi’ . All in all a very satisfactory experience.