Today I heard a sermon from Pastor Nina at New Life Church entitled “A Divine Invitation from God”. In the sermon, Pastor Nina quotes Watchman Nee saying “God never asks us to do anything we can do. He asks us to live a life which we can never live and to do a work which we can never do. Yet, by His grace, we are living it and doing it.” Pastor Nina continues by saying that God will call us to do the impossible. In fact, if it’s something we can do on our own, it is probably not from God (loosely quoted). After hearing this, I began to reflect on the impossibilities that God has called me to. Immediately, the wall came to mind.
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| The original "plan" |
In 2020, we began building a perimeter wall around a property we have in Guatemala. Building a wall to enclose the property is the first step to constructing our ministry home. We had an initial idea about what it was going to look like but had no idea of how it was going to come together. Our land is just over ½ an acre and the wall would be 788 linear feet and 9 feet tall. At that time, I had pretty limited construction experience, and if you had told me that I would be building a wall I probably would have laughed. We also had no idea what it was going to cost or how we were going to pay for it.
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| Raul Working on the Panels |
In March of 2020, I went to the States to visit my sister. During this visit, the pandemic exploded across the globe, and I ended up being “stuck” in the US for seven months and unable to return to Guatemala
as the borders and the airport were closed. It was during this period of time that my husband, Raul, began constructing metal panels for the wall. The wall at that time was pretty much only a dream. We still had nothing to attach these metal panels to (thank God for a visionary husband). After I returned to Guatemala, Raul began working with local construction workers to dig the ditch for the footings, place support beams, and connect the initial rebar panels in the base of the wall.
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| Me "Playing with Rocks" |
As 2021 started, I felt an urge to start working on the wall. I had been hands off until this point, but the pandemic was dragging on, there were no classes at the school where we serve, and the death of my mother in December left me feeling like I needed “do something”. Raul and I had talked about constructing the base of the wall from mortared rocks, so I started to Google. I had no idea what I was doing, but I knew there was an urgency in my spirit to act. I had never worked with cement, lime, or rock before. My thought was “well, Jesus… let’s see if this works…” and I “stepped out of the boat”! I still remember starting in the initial corner in January 2021, and little by little, working section by section, we placed mortared rocks on both sides of the rebar panels. We learned a lot doing that first side, and also realized that if we wanted to work faster, we were going to need funds to buy the materials.
In August 2021 we officially started fundraising to build the wall. Our initial cost projection was $10,000… and then building materials skyrocketed and our costs jumped to $16,000. Honestly, fundraising for a project from Guatemala during a pandemic seemed impossible. I felt like we were trying to sell a “pipe dream” when all we had was a few mortared rocks and a partial ditch. BUT, GOD. We made a video which we sent out to supporters and churches and little by little the funds started to come in.
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| Mortared Rock Base of the Wall |
One mortared rock at a time, we made our way around the base of the wall. There were days we laughed, days we cried, and days we decided to “try again tomorrow”. We got faster, perfected our lime mortar mix, and used muscles we never even knew we had. In February 2023, we finished all 788 linear feet of mortared rocks to form the base of the wall. Our next step was making a home for those metal panels Raul had made three years prior.
Even though we only had a vague idea of what the wall would look like when Raul started the panels in 2020, he made EXACTLY the number of panels we would need for the front (street side) of the property. Initially we planned to use metal panels on all the sides of the property, but then found it was more cost effective and less maintenance to put concrete on the remaining sides of the wall, and we had just the right number of panels for the front of the property.
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| Pouring Columns |
We all agree that pouring the concrete columns on the front of the property was THE HARDEST part of the entire wall. Due to the size of the molds we were using, the columns were poured in two parts (two days). It was nerve-wracking trying to get the columns lined up right and the rebar pins placed just right to support the panels, but we did it. Next it was the child-birth-like process of inserting the panels between the columns and anchoring them to the pins. There was more than one column to chisel and more than one panel that needed to be cut down. I still remember when we got the last panel anchored in place… we all collapsed on the ground in the shade.
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| The Front of the Property |
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| Putting the Rebar Panels In |
As we worked on the base of the wall, we also slowly put in the rebar panels that would serve as the support for the top portion of the wall. The top portion of the wall is made with a ferrocement technique. In ferrocement, rebar panels are covered with chicken wire on both sides and then a concrete mixture is troweled onto one side and then the other to completely coat the materials. We had literally ZERO experience in ferrocement, and when we did the first trial section in June 2023, I remember thinking here’s another crazy God idea!
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| Ferrocement on the Remaining Sides |
As with many things, we improved our ferrocement technique as we gained experience. We mixed over 500 wheelbarrow loads of concrete, learned the right consistency for the mix depending on the side of the wall, learned the right amount of pressure and
angle to use to apply the mix, and got pretty efficient at applying it. In May 2024 we were blessed with a construction team from New Life church that helped us knock out 52 ferrocement sections of the wall! Their visit gave us the energy and motivation to keep going despite feeling like we were never going to finish. And in October 2024, we applied the ferrocement to the last section of the wall and the major work of the wall was FINISHED.
As we inched closer to finishing that last section of the wall, we sang “Goodness of God” through tears and laughter. Three years. Three years of blood, sweat, tears, cement, rocks, and mortar. Three years of watching God move, watching Him unveil the next steps as we worked, watching Him convert what felt as a pipe dream into a reality, watching Him provide funds at just the right time, watching Him multiply materials when we knew we didn’t have enough, and watching Him protecting us from a SINGLE INJURY (other than minor cuts/scrapes). ONLY GOD. HALLELUJAH.
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| Finished |
When I heard Pastor Nina’s sermon today, I thought about our Impossible God and what He has done over the past three years on our property. If you had told me that it was going to take three years, I am not sure I would have started. But I will say that in the past three years God has taken me so much deeper, walked with me through some major storms, and made me realize that even though the crazy God ideas seem impossible, we serve an Impossible God. Thank you, Jesus.
