Elliot Huff and his group from the Affinity Baptist Church of Cleveland landed in Bujumbura -- the capital city of Burundi -- with much anticipation. The group had come to see the fruition of a church, a multiservice center -- the completion of a home -- for which Huff had helped lay the foundation several years ago.

The Affinity team gladly joined Pastor Osias Habingabwa and the Kinama Baptist Church family, in the dedication of their sister church. Just a day before the special Sunday service, men, women and children sang songs of praise as they passed bricks and mixed mortar to complete walls on the church, and lay stones for an entrance into this new house of the Lord.

But the dedication and celebration of this new house was also an opportunity to celebrate as the household of faith. For in building this home, indeed the lives of many in this depressed slum were being vitalized by the faith, fellowship and resources that would be shared in Kinama. Affinity, with a resemblance of those who came from afar to honor the newborn Christ, came bearing many gifts, including a banner for the church, beaded bracelets with a message of the Gospel, a pulpit Bible, 200 bibles in the native language and over 100 children's Bibles for persons in villages.

The dedication of a building was the dedication of a body of believers -- a body that stretches from Cleveland to Bujumbura -- made up not just of places for Christians to glory in the incarnate king Jesus, but rather for Christ to dwell afresh in each of us. For as the old Negro spiritual says:

I'm buildin' me a home
This earthly house is gonna soon decay
And my soul gotta have some place to stay