Volunteers are preparing to add another story to the building and another chapter to the book of the Yap Administration Building Project for the Seventh-day Adventist School.

The plot began (literally)  four years ago when the foundation for the building was laid, plumbed and wired . . . then sat unfinished for the next three and a half years. 

It then picked up again in March of 2003, when Canvasback Youth Committee member Ron Torkelsen led a team of 35 students and their adult sponsors to the island of Yap to construct the first floor of the building.  (See Youth Building Team Update for details.)

Now Canvasback is working with volunteers from the Oklahoma Conference of Seventh-day Adventists to put the second story on the building in January of 2004.  The Oklahoma team will include a contingent of health professionals who will run medical clinics; at the same time Canvasback will be running a urology clinic at the hospital.  

In preparation for the team's visit, the school staff, students and student missionaries have been working together to install a ceiling/floor between the first and second stories. 

Students, student missionaries and staff work hard
tying rebar on the second floor.

Another "Story" on
Yap Admin Building

The Yap SDA School administration building in the early
and final phases of second story construction.

While the Canvasback urology team was hard at work in the Yap Hospital, a team of 10 Parkview Adventist Academy students and 28 adults from Oklahoma and other states put the second story on the administration building for the Yap Seventh-day Adventist School.

Readers may recall that last March, Canvasback sent a group of Pleasant Hill Christian School youth and adults to construct the first floor of the building. During the past few months, the Guam Micronesia Mission has been working to prepare the site for construction of a second story.

Building the second story was a daunting task because some of the building materials had failed to arrive and others had "disappeared" from the work site. In addition, the team had to manually raise fifteen 1,000-lb. trusses into place because the crane that was sent to lift them onto the building was too small for the job.

"What impressed me most about the team was their Christian spirit," says Jacque Spence. "They traveled for over 15 hours and arrived in hot, humid tropical weather. They went right to work and continued until 10:30 every evening. Some slept on the floor in rooms without air conditioning. Others awoke at 4:00 a.m. to prepare meals for the team. They mixed and hauled cement and laid block. Yet despite the difficulties and hard work, the team really shined for the Lord!"

During the construction period, the team conducted a Vacation Bible School for 118 young people and held evangelistic meetings every evening.