At Hope Haven Rwanda, we are currently building two types of foundations. First of all, obviously, the heart of our mission is building an educational foundation for 900 students this academic year. In a few short years this campus will accommodate 1,800 students. This foundation is very intentional, with the highest quality education we can provide and strong character development. This happens every day alongside modeling and mentoring at the highest levels possible in our context. It’s what we do.
Secondly, we are literally building physical foundations for our new campus. During my time on site in recent months, I have been thrilled to watch the careful application of skilled labor to ensure that we have the strongest foundations possible. It is tough in “The Land of a Thousand Hills” to excavate, fill, build massive stone retaining walls, set footers for large buildings and then go back and fill in where necessary.
Every step of the way requires soil assessments and adjustments to the depth and width of various portions of the foundation. As our site supervisor emailed today, “due to existing poor load bearing capacity of the soil in some parts of the site the excavation had to go deeper by 1.5 meters (4.9 feet). This meant increased excavation cost, increased retaining wall height, increased sub column height….and so on.”
As expected, building foundations usually involves more work than we initially think. Professional builders consider contingencies like this when planning and pricing projects.
In a similar way, whether building into the life a daughter or son, or a Rwandan child’s life, we should expect that it will be tougher than we imagine. But the reward is out of this world!
Thinking about foundations also reminds me of a favorite Scripture of my wife, Kimberly: “I pray that you will…grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ” (Ephesians 3:18). Recognizing and resting in the matchless love of God lays a solid foundation for all of life!
What foundation are you building?