Promised Land 3.0 Many Hands Raise Hope-filled Hearts

As the 2.0 campus remained submerged for several months, Pastor Johnny, the community, and the teachers started praying for a more lasting and much drier solution to effectively educate the children in a suitable structure.

Tribal and civic leaders in the community noticed the surge in school enrollment and learned about the positive developments at the Promised Land Campus. To sustain the children's hope, they chose to provide land for the construction of a new building. The aim was for a significantly larger structure made of cinderblock, which would not suffer from frequent flooding throughout the year.

Mr. Pollard and Pastor Johnny started developing a plan to build on the land. However, the water remained an issue because the donated land was swampy. Before any construction could begin, the land required surveying and clearing of rocks, trees, and other vegetation. This task took several months of strenuous labor, as there was no access to bulldozers, backhoes, or other machinery. Consequently, the land had to be cleared using traditional shovels, picks, and hard work in the hot, humid conditions.

There were even days when the help of the school kids and parents in the community was enlisted to move large rocks and stones. Eventually, it became clear that the land must be filled in with large amounts of dirt before the foundation could built upon, otherwise the swamp would take over the structure, no matter what it was made from.

With financial donations secured by Mr. Pollard, it was determined to move forward with filling in and building up a foundation for a future, permanent, building of cinderblock, wood trusses and roof of zinc panels.

During the years 2021-2023 the foundation took shape as load after load of dirt filled in the space. Eventually it was also determined to hire more workers to do the hard work of building the structure. Again, there was no funds to purchase power tools, or premade materials so all blocks had to be made by hand by adding the proper materials into wooden forms and then stacked together, one by one to raise the structure. The work was hot, wet and intense, but also provided a living wage to those who signed on to the building crew. Many of the Promised Land teachers would work on the crew as well since they had experience with molding blocks, cutting and placing rebar and carpentry skills to cut and build the roofing trusses.

In the summer of 2023, Mr. Pollard made the trip to see the construction and connect personally with all of the members of the Promised Land community. He also spent two days of his trip providing professional development for the teachers so they had the most impactful instructional methods to take back to the classrooms when the year started again in September of 2023.

In addition to the teacher development, Mr. Pollard spent time helping where he could to be a part of the building of Promised Land 3.0. He spent time meeting Emmanuel the foreman and Jackson the on-site architect so he could get a feel for the helpful hearts and callused hands that were building a future of hope for the children of the community. It was certainly a labor of love... hot, humid, dirty, sweaty, love.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

•