DIOCESE OF AITAPE CHURCH BUILDING PROGRAM

	News report No. 1 April 2002 Diocese of Aitape P O Box 179 Aitape Sandaun Province Papua New Guinea Ph +675 857 2046 fax +675 857 2056
Aitape Haus Lotu Projects

Introduction:
This is the first report from the Diocese of Aitape about the project to build eleven new permanent churches to replace those destroyed by the Aitape Tsunami disaster of July 1998. The communities have all been relocated away from the coastal tidal wave disaster areas onto inland traditional lands. The rebuilding of the schools and teacher houses have been completed in many of these areas, and now there is the task of rebuilding the churches for the communities.

1. Sunday mass in the bush church at Teles		2. Children after mass at Teles.

Temporary Churches:
At present the communities gather each Sunday for mass or liturgy (without a priest) in bush material churches. These buildings are actually grass huts made from locally available materials. These buildings can last between five to ten years before the materials disintegrate, or are toppled by high winds etc. They are only a temporary measure. The communities have organised the building of these bush churches themselves so there is somewhere to worship on Sunday, or meet during the week for the various church groups (eg Catholic Mother's group). These churches are too small to hold the whole congregation, and on the Sundays when there is a priest to say mass often half of the congregation is outside under the trees.

Planning for new Churches:
Bishop Austen has invited a volunteer civil engineer from New Zealand to come to Aitape for two years to plan, design and build these new churches. There is a survey of congregation sizes underway to assess the most appropriate size of each church for each community. The churches will be designed, and after approval by the bishop, the materials and labour can be organised for the construction. So far three site visits have been made to Ainrin, Aipokon, and Teles/Lampu.

Ainrin Church

1. Site for the new church		2. Front of the old church		3. Parish group

Aipokon Church

1. Parishioners at Aipokon		2. existing classroom		3. side of classroom (church)

Teles - Lampu Church

1. Existing church		2. Ex. Church side		3. Ex. Church end		4. New church site

In all cases the local community have made lands available for the construction of a new church. The land has already been surveyed. In these three cases, the new church will be constructed alongside the existing building.
At Ainrin on the day of the visit, there were 454 people at mass, but only 240 of these could fit inside the bush material church. There is a keen community spirit at Ainrin and the people are prepared to cart gravels from the local river for the new church's concrete floor, and provide logs for the church. Some of these logs can be used as posts and some can be sawn into planks with the portable sawmills, to provide timber for purlins, wall studs and timber pews.
At Aipokon the community meets in a bush material classroom on the school site. It is hoped that once the replacement classroom is complete, that a new church can be built in place of the old classroom. There were 350 people at mass at Aipokon on Sunday. At Teles there were 256 present at mass. As for the other communities many from the congregation were unable to fit inside the bush material church and sat outside under the trees. Aipokon and Teles communities also have logs for use on the projects.

More Site visits:
Visits to the other communities of: Amu, Pou, Arop1, Arop2, Wuipom, Olbrum, Barupu, Tainyapin are planned for the near future.