New School coming along nicely

click here to see pics of the New school progress as on Aug 21

I really never thought I would do something like this. Here I am, in Cambodia, helping with all the goings on of building a new school. That has been a crazy part of this job, and at the same time it is a really great thing to see happening here. (Even though the practices of Cambodian construction and safety are completely foreign to me). As some of you have asked a few times, I will post this link above to the latest pics I took on Friday of the new Logos school being built out in Phnom Penh Thmei. This building really is an amazing story for Logos. In short it goes something like this.

As Logos is currently now occupying three homes side by side as it's current school, the quarters are cramped (mind you there is a charm about the lack of room). Logos is facing the constant increase in rent costs as each home is owned by a different home owner and each owner knows the school needs his building to keep going. Rent increases are going up way beyond affordable for the school. For example, one building the rent is $700/month. However, when the idea of re-negotiations came up, this home owner now demands $2200/month (for her house only!!!) The other landowners talk and see how much the other is charging and try to extort more from the school. Even the basketball court land is a problem. That homeowner has told us he won't even rent it to us again because he wants to put up a different building and charge more rent.

Along comes a Cambodian developer who, two years ago, says he will build us a school the way we would like, as long as we sign a long 25 year rental agreement. Excuse me?? Could this be too good, or perhaps God is involved here?? The rent is all scaled and predetermined. Logos school has not even had to pay most of the building costs.So we asked the developer for certain thingslike, we would like a pool. The developer says "OK". We then say, we would like a basketball court. He again says "Fine". We then say we would like a small playing field. He says, "no problem". Wow, this really is incredible! However, as we are going through this project we are noticing that the developer is still trying to cut costs wherever he can and that is leaving us to pay for certain things.

One of the desires for the school has been to get a covered roof on the basketball court to help keep the blazing sun off the children. Thanks to a gentleman in Manitoba, that is going to be a reality. He has donated $18,000, half the cost of putting up this roof structure (a real answer to prayer).
There are other costs that we are responsible to cover like, We are also looking for a diesel generator for the school (I am thinking this is about $20,000)- we have not got this one figured out yet.

We also need a computer lab (need 25 laptops here because the power goes out for a many hours/day). The laptops have the built in UPS and also a built in power supply. Some of the newer laptops can last over 3 hours, which would be great. The laptops also draw less power, a real plus in an area where power costs alot.


We have a field, and it is going to be a mud bath or a dust bowl- I am dreaming big and praying for some turf! Dream Big right?

Anyways, take a look if you are interested. This project does take a fair bit of my time here.

Blessings,
Dean

P.S. We also took the staff to the site around March of last year and we prayed and sprayed Bible verses all over the building. The Khmer workers thought we were crazy because they said they were going to paint over it. We told them that is exactly what we wanted to have happen.

From march 28 cambodia

P.S.S. Below are some of the old pics from before.

Logos building from January