Glen and Rita have been instrumental in transforming the Kikongo pastoral training school into the Baptist University of Congo (UNIBAC). Glen is vice-rector of UNIBAC, where he teaches Old Testament, Hebrew and Baptist history. Rita runs the library, teaches English and works with the wives of theology students. Rita and Glen both are very much immersed in the life of the community and the church through village ministry, transportation and environmental ministries such as beekeeping, raising rabbits for agricultural training and planting trees for reforestation, lumber, firewood, charcoal and fruit.

They write – We are in the midst of a building project. It is exciting at this point to watch the bright red roof go up. It will be a real landmark here at Kikongo. It is always inspiring to see our collective vision for a nice women’s dorm taking shape.

Since we have upgraded to university level, we have had the challenge of housing single women. We have provisionally housed the women in a building we have used in the past as a nursery. Rita has described it as a “hot house”. It is not very adequate as a dorm.

When we returned to Congo after our year of home assignment, we knew we would have the challenge of building a women’s dorm. We were not sure how we were going to manage, but our administrator introduced us to three men who had just completed building a medical dispensary in a nearby village. We really don’t have skilled builders here at Kikongo, so we were happy that these men showed up.

We are very pleased with the builders, and the new dorm is definitely being built to last. We have tried to incorporate much of the brainstorming aspects the staff and girls pooled before the building was started. The girls suggested some personal storage space, so we are building shelves which can be locked. We have added a veranda at each end of the building so that the girls can have an outside visiting space. We have also added glass bricks to let the light in along the hallway. It will all be practical and pretty.

The building project has been a real communal effort. Without a vehicle to carry supplies and without a local home depot there have been significant challenges. The sand has had to be harvested from the river. Canoes carry the sand to the bank where it is carried in buckets up the hill. We discovered that there are rocks not far from here. These also came up on top of people’s heads. Other building material had to be purchased in Kinshasa and trucked to Kikongo. …

Read their full journal at https://internationalministries.org/new-red-roof-in-kikongo/