A Special Project

Brothers! Sisters! We are excited to be able to share with you a great project that recently came our way! We hope you will be encouraged, and might even want to get involved in some way!

So, we recently rented a house that will be our multipurpose ministry building! We are super excited! It is a reasonably priced 4-bedroom, 3-bathroom, 2-storey house about half of a mile from our apartment, situated on a main road at a well-accessible junction. What a find in Buea! What are we going to use it for? A gym ministry, an after-school program, a library, a Bible-study area, a volunteers’ residence, an office, small assemblies, youth programs, and perhaps most exciting- eventually our school!

Our plan specifically is that downstairs, we can have our gym ministry, where we can offer physical fitness training and thus meet people to whom we will also offer spiritual “fitness training.” The dining room area will be for Bible studies with a table and some bookshelves of Bible study books. In addition to the Bible study books, we’d like to have a shelf of school textbooks. There is a high school right across the street, and a primary school not much farther down. We’d like to be able to have young people come and study in our library area when the gym is not going on, not only to build good-will and as a justification of our NGO, but also to be able to impact young lives for Christ! This triple-purpose area will also double as the dining room for any volunteers that we have. Speaking of volunteers, here’s another exciting thought…

Two young people in Ghana, products of the Christian school there (Grace Appah and George Owusu) have expressed interest in coming to Cameroon to help out with our work here. They are incredible young people and would be a HUGE help, increasing our impact manifold times. A number of others also have expressed interest in coming to help. Where will they stay? Well…

The upstairs has four bedrooms. The master bedroom has an attached bathroom.  This would be our volunteer’s quarters. Volunteers will have use of the kitchen, downstairs, and the dining room, and would be able to help out with gym memberships as well. Of course, we would only put people of the same gender in the house, but having this means that we could put the other gender in our guest room in our own home. Besides serving as a volunteer’s quarters, a second room upstairs will become our mission’s office, where we can meet people, work on lessons, and do additional Bible studies. Many will not take an NGO seriously that operates out of your home, so having an official office helps with getting status/recognition. Finally, the other two rooms are available as our school rooms! This is exciting. We could have a Learning to Read class in one room, and a primary class in the other.  (We probably won’t add high-school until Hannah is that age.)

So, what do we need? We have already been able to get some equipment and to pay the advance of rent on the place, by draining much of the start-up savings we had left, as we feel that this is a great opportunity and that it will greatly expand the reach and impact of our ministry, both immediately and in the long term. What we have done is really just a beginning though, and in order to do more, we need help, as the well is beginning to run dry. To be honest, many of the things associated with startup here have been more expensive than we initially estimated. For example, we have already had to spend over $800 just on immigration status. Appliances and furniture are more expensive than they would be even in the states. We are not complaining, but want you all to understand why this appeal. We do not want to strain folks, and will proceed with this project even if no one is able to help out, it will just be on a smaller scale and slower. We thought it best to however share with you all about this project, as there may be some who would be interested in helping out on a one-time basis, or who would be excited by it and might want to do something extra. Please, we are not pressuring or anything… it’s just something we are excited about that we wanted to share.  Here’s a short table of some expenses involved in seeing this project take off, so you can get an idea of what we are looking at.

Rent-	1 Years Advance at $160 per month.	$1920
Weights and Bars-	~750lbs of weights at $1.50 per pound.	$1100
Equipment-	Benches, Squat Rack, Pull/Press Machine	$600
Carpeting/Padding-	To Protect the Floor	$250
Renovations-	Changing Locks, Repairing Wiring and Plumbing, Other Work	$400
Cardio Machines-	Rower, Stepper, Stationary Bike, and Manual Treadmill	$600
Various-	(Bookshelves, Various Furniture for the Guest Room, etc…)	$500
Transportation-	Of weights and equipment to and from Douala	$50
Total-	Our best estimate of what we will end up spending. After start-up, additional work will be funded out of dues/contributions of members, as well as our monthly support.	$5400
Spent-	What we’ve spent on Rent, Equipment, Etc… from our start-up savings.	$3000
Remainder-	What we estimate we will still spend.	$2400

So, that’s what we’re looking at. If you have any questions/contributions/advice, please let us know. We feel that getting this set up and running will really expand the work that we do here and open up numerous opportunities for Evangelizing, Educating, and Equipping, our Big 3 E’s here. Please let us know if you or someone you know would be able to help out! Thanks so much!

In Christ,

The Hostetters

The Front view of the house. The volunteer's room is upstairs on the right, the office will be upstairs on the left. The gym will be downstairs.

The gym area, with the library/study area in the back.

The kitchen for our volunteers and school.

One of the rooms we will use as a school room. These two rooms are in the back.

One of the bathrooms upstairs. It needs some cleaning.

Some of the equipment we've already bought.