This past March a team of 22 volunteers, including five elementary teachers, traveled to Lupane, Zimbabwe, Africa to build the Mtshibini Secondary School. Three years prior, a group of 40, including students from Sunnydale Adventist Academy and 20 adults from around the conference, built the Mtshibini Primary School that now has 368 students in attendance.
The 2014 team stayed on site, sleeping on desk benches they constructed upon arrival. Mattresses were provided by Solusi Adventist University located in Bulawayo. For six and a half days the group diligently worked—framing, attaching walls and roofs, assembling windows and desks until eight new buildings were in place for the Mtshibini Secondary School.
Each evening Kathy Ulrich, conference administrative assistant for the Youth and Women’s Ministry Departments, led evangelistic meetings in the center of the Primary School circle. Average attendance was 350-400, and at the conclusion of the meetings 15 people were baptized and 20 more are actively studying.
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Joseph R. Allison, EdD, is superintendent of education for the Iowa-Missouri Conference.
