February 2020 has been quite a month! On January 31, I emailed Fr. Paul Patitsas, the priest whose interview on Ancient Faith Radio inspired me to reach out to the Archdiocese of New Zealand. My momentum on this project had stalled out somewhat since my first trip in April 2019, and he strongly encouraged me to get a small group together and go to Tonga while the team from Greece was still working on the Church of St. George.
I thought it was a crazy idea. The timing couldn’t have been worse for me. My business is growing, but I’ve had to make some structural changes recently, and as a result money has been tight. We have four small children. Our time and money is extremely limited. Nevertheless, Fr. Paul continued to encourage me, saying it would be really valuable to connect with Ilias and the other men from Greece who have made so much progress on the church during the last four months. With their help we could learn some tricks to navigate the obstacles of working in that remote, developing island nation, plus get an idea of what projects remained to complete the Church of St. George with the hopes of bringing other teams back to finish the project.
After a lot of prayer and wrestling with our own hesitations, my wife Meghan & I decided that I should go for 1 week. As soon as we made the decision all our worries disappeared. Meghan & I both felt at peace about the trip. We put it in God’s hands – if He wanted us to go, He would provide the means for the trip to happen. And it happened!
My first task was to assemble a team – primarily skilled carpenters who could get some work done even in the short amount of time we had. The first person I asked was Myles Kelly, who had committed to going on my second trip to Tonga while I was still on my first visit 10 months ago. He has been very supportive and helped me keep up the inspiration about this project, even when I was feeling overwhelmed. Once he gave the “thumbs up” to go, I knew we would be able to make it work.
Myles, me and our new friend Manoa, who works for the car rental company we hired, and told us where we could watch some rugby – the national sport of Tonga.
I contacted two friends who own construction businesses in Colorado, Peter Lynch and David Young, and they both were immediately on board.
Unfortunately, Peter wasn’t able to make it this time around, but David found support from his parish and put his work projects aside to join us in Tonga.
We needed someone to handle logistics – purchasing, arranging meals, running errands, etc. – so I contacted Ryan Smith, who had just arrived to join the Project Mexico missionary internship program we are hosting here at St. John’s in Eagle River. I hadn’t actually spoken with him yet, but I figured if he had committed this part of his life to learning about missionary work he’d probably be the right kind of person for the trip. He turned out to be a great addition to our team. Plus, his participation led to the addition of a 5th member who also fit in perfectly – the Executive Director of Project Mexico, Fr. Demetrios Andrews.
When Fr. Demetrios heard that Ryan was invited to go work on a church building project in Tonga his immediate response was: “I want to go!” He called me and explained that he is working to re-brand Project Mexico and start building projects – both homes & churches – anywhere in the world where there is a need. This trip was an opportunity for him to jump right into an active church construction project and begin developing a framework for future construction-focused missionary trips. As you’ll discover as you read this blog series, Fr. Demetrios sees the big picture of any situation immediately, and before you blink he’s got plans in motion to get things accomplished that most of us never would have imagined possible.
Thanks be to God, with the support of Fr. Demetrios and the infrastructure of Project Mexico, I believe now more than ever that this church-building in Tonga will be completed, and other similar projects in Fiji & Samoa may finally get the support they need to be realized.
Up next: How the Holy Spirit moved peoples’ hearts to donate nearly $20,000 in two weeks to get our group to Tonga to help with this project.