The Bricks for Ricks Foundation was founded in 2009 as a means of helping third world countries find economical ways to contract housing. After spending time in Liberia during the civil war and in the aftermath of the civil war, Dr. Michael Helms began to understand the desperate need of finding means to provide affordable, sustainable housing to people in impoverished areas of the world. His search led him to the most basic resource for building: the earth itself.

 

The oldest inhabitable continuous dwelling is an earthen dwelling found in the Lima, Peru basin. It is over 3500 years old. About one-third of the world's population live in earthen dwellings. They are usually the poorest of the poor. However, the process that is used to produce earth block today is quite advanced.

 

The machines that the Bricks for Ricks Foundation are purchasing to place in third world countries are made by the Vermeer Corporation. The BP-714 Block Press uses hydraulics to press a block from 94% earth and 6% Portland cement. The result is a block that does not break down in the elements and can be used to build most any kind of dwelling.

 

The Foundation and FBC Jefferson, GA received the first machine manufactured by Vermeer and shipped the machine to Liberia and to Lima, Peru. 

 

The Foundation has paid for the machines through donations and through Dr. Helms' writings. His second published book was published by Smyth and Helwys, Hoping Liberia—Civil War Stories from Africa’s First Republic. The book shares personal stories of people directly affected by Liberia’s 15-year civil war. It especially follows the life of Olu Menjay, a young man rescued from a refugee camp by Rev. John Mark and Betty Carpenter, Southern Baptist Missionaries who spent three decades in Liberia. While attending Truett-McConnell College and Mercer University, Olu Menjay met the author, Dr. Michael Helms.

Following college, Olu enrolled at Duke Seminary and during his first year as a student, he and the author travelled to Liberia four months before the city of Monrovia fell to rebel forces (April 1996). During their time there they visited Ricks Institute, once the county’s premier boarding school, only to find that the rebels had destroyed many of the buildings and homes on the campus. They saw the Internal Displacement Camp on the school’s property, which was home to 35,000 refugees.

Unbeknown to either of them, a decade later God would lead Dr. Olu Menjay back to that very campus as the school’s principal to revive it and reclaim it as a school of hope for the children and teenagers in postwar Liberia.

Dr. Helms spent a month on the campus in 2007 listening to the students, faculty, and people in the villages share about their experiences from the war. He returned a year later with a work team to repair the school’s water lines, getting water flowing on the campus for the first time in over fifteen years.

Hoping Liberia doesn’t just tell modern-day stories of boy soldiers and families living in the bush for months at a time to survive a war. It digs deep into Liberia’s history and asks hard questions. How did a country erupt into such a deep divide that one in every ten Liberians died? How did a country get to a point where two-thirds of the people had to be on the move at some point to escape the wrath of rebel soldiers? The answers might surprise you.

In the aftermath of these harsh realities, Liberian Christians held on to hope, and Hoping Liberia is ultimately an inspirational and uplifting story of faith being lived out and the body of Christ coming together and joining hands to do God’s work.

Dr. Walter Shurden has called Hoping Liberia a “magic story of Christian stewardship.” Dr. David Gushee says it’s “an inspiring work in every way.”

Royalties from the book are being placed in the Bricks for Ricks Liberian Housing Foundation, Inc., founded by the author, for the purpose of buying brick-making machines to construct homes for Liberians still living in displacement camps and to assist the ongoing work at Ricks Institute (www.ricksonline.org). 

Purchase Your Copy of Hoping Liberia

Copies of Hoping Liberia--Stories of Civil War from Africa's First Republic can be ordered from Smyth and Helwys Publishing by calling 1-800-747-3016.

Signed copies of Dr. Helms’ first book, Finding Our Way-An Introspective Journey Through the Labyrinth of Life, can be purchased for $15. Make Checks payable to the author.

Bricks for Ricks Liberian Housing Foundation, Inc., Jefferson FBC, 81 Institute Street, Jefferson, GA, 30549.