What would happen if you couldn’t get to your hospital, work, or grocery store? If a vital road in your town was unusable because a bridge was out? Here in the states, we walk, cycle, and drive over bridges every day. Small streams, flood plains, drainage canals, railroads, intersections… Bridges are everywhere! Think for a moment about all the bridges you use and imagine how difficult life would be without them.
In northwestern DR Congo, getting around can be challenging! Roads are rudimentary, and rivers, streams, and marshes present impassable obstacles. Yet transportation is no less important there than it is here. Bridges link people with markets, farms, schools, churches, and hospitals, and in northwestern DR Congo the government often lets roads wash away and bridges crumble. So the church steps up. In January, the Covenant Church of Congo (CEUM) asked PCP if we could support a bridge construction project. Knowing how vital roads and bridges are to development in this part of Congo, we eagerly accepted their proposal. We were also impressed by the amount of time and materials that CEUM contributed to this project. Using training they received from missionaries and volunteers in the past, a team of local, church led engineers built this bridge at Gbo, a key link between the town of Karawa and its closest river port. On a recent trip to Congo, a PCP group got to be among the first to benefit, traversing the Gbo Bridge on our way to a nearby hospital.
We’re so glad to see this bridge and can only imagine the impact it will have for years to come! Plans are already in place to build another bridge on a different section of road. Would you join us in supporting this project?
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