This is our land after we had cleared trees and brush up to my head in several places.

These bulldozers made short work of clearing our land in the first phase of our building program.

There was at least six dump truck loads of concrete, dirt and vegetation to clear from our land.

This was our crew plotting out the exact points where the corners of the house/church should be. They have to be exact because the building can't be any closer to the boundaries of the land than 3 meters according to the law.

This large hole in the ground is called a katlavan. The foundation had to be at least 1.3 meters below the ground because soil in our area any higher than that freezes and then thaws, cracking foundations. There is a significant incline to the land so at the beginning our foundation in some places was 2.4 meters below the ground and in others only 1.5. We would level out the land further to make it more even around most of the building.

It took dump truck after dump truck to take away all this earth.

This was what we put on the floor of the hole. It is a large footing for the concrete walls of the foundation that will be made by those large blocks you see in the middle.

The concrete footing is one complete mass, all poured at the same time, reinforced with five pieces of rebar along the length, and many short pieces of rebar crossing that to form a net effect. Every foundation "sits" a little bit, in other words it sinks into the ground just a bit. The important thing here, is to make sure that the whole house "sits" the same, and not one side more than the other.

Each one these blocks had to be lifted into place by the large crane you see pictured here. In all there were 216 blocks that needed to be placed.

This is what the blocks looked like when they were finished. We then leveled out the land further to make it mostly even with these walls so that we would not have a problem with freezing.

Here you can see a little of the scope of the project. The great thing about having this basement space is that in the future it could come in very handy for an expanding church family.

In the background you can see people laying bricks, this will provide for some head room in the basement making the space useable and also help the floor to be exactly level.

Here the brick layer is mostly done and ventilation tubes have been installed to help with the moisture that can accumulate.

These concrete panels also need a crane to lift them into place. They are prefabricated with lots of rebar and are built so that they can support a great deal of weight only sitting on a couple of centimeters of foundation at their tips.Each one of these panels can support 800 kg (1763 lbs) of weight for every square meter of area. I guess I can eat as much fudge as I want now with no worries.

The entire foundation is now covered with tiles, and there has been installed a little concrete staircase to the garage as well. It will sit fine until we can begin working again on it in the spring. Praise the Lord for this progress. Thank you to all of those who pray and sacrifice to make these things possible.

2010

These are the first walls that we built. We are building with blocks that resemble cinder blocks and are much warmer in the winter than regular bricks. We also decided to begin doing most of the labor our selves to save money and prepare us for future projects.

At the beginning of our construction of the 1st floor, it was 115 degrees. By this point however, it had already started to get colder with rain slowing down the work some.

This is some of the floor plan of the first floor. All you see here are the walls that will hold the weight of the ceiling. Any walls that simply divide rooms will be added later.

Here is the frame for one of the stair cases. Russian folks build things so that just in case you have a pet elephant, the pet elephant will have no problems with a weak stair case.

This is a picture of what holds up the windows frame. Of course these needed to be lifted in to place with a crane as well. I think people here just like to play with cranes, and any building project is just an excuse to bring cranes out.

This is a picture of what will become Sunday school space. This is where I think things begin to get exciting. Children will be praising the Lord right in this space.

This is the view from the the pulpit.

2011

Here is a picture with me in it so you can have an idea of the proportions. There will be a roof at a 45 degree angle that will cover this space. After all is said and done we should have a more than a 1000 square feet of space for our church.

I might not look like it, but I am scared out of my mind right now, heeeeeelllllppppp!

Here is what the house/church looked like before the roof.