Byline: Roger Harris
Dec. 28--Construction is expected to start in January on the first phase of the Jimani Project, a $2 million worship, health care, agricultural and educational facility being developed in the Dominican Republic by East Tennessee and Southern Kentucky medical missionaries and business people.
A worship hall and hospital will be the first buildings to go up on the 10-acre site on the outskirts of Jimani, a poor, remote community about 12 miles from the border with Haiti.
'We believe we now have adequate funds to start construction,' said Knoxville cardiologist Dr. Clint Doiron, who recently returned from Jimani, where he was finalizing a construction contract.
About $542,000 has been raised through private donations. Construction of the hospital and worship center complex is expected to cost $680,000. Doiron, leader of the mission team and a partner in East Tennessee Heart Consultants in Knoxville, is confident that the balance of the construction budget will be raised soon.
'It's going to be beautiful,' Doiron said. It will include a baptismal area in the center, an open-air chapel with a 'huge' outdoor cross, and a medical-surgical unit.
Construction should take about six months.
The hospital and worship hall are just the beginning, Doiron said. Plans include development of a fish farm, water treatment facilities, orchards and a job-training school. An additional $1.3 million must be raised to cover those costs.
Building a school is a new element of the project, which has been in the planning stage for more than two years.
'We want to do whatever it takes to provide sustainability for the people of the region,' Doiron said. 'Jobs, education and the Lord -- that's what they need.'
Construction of a job-training facility got a boost in October when Knoxville medical supply company DeRoyal Industries endorsed the project. DeRoyal, which has a medical supply manufacturing operation in a free-trade zone north of the city of Santiago, is looking to expand its Dominican Republic business.
'The existence of an educated and available labor force is crucial to our expansion in the Dominican Republic,' DeRoyal vice president of manufacturing Gary Burchett wrote in a letter the mission team delivered to Dominican Republic government officials.
Gatlinburg businessman Phil Ogle and Don Smith, president of Radio Bible Hour Inc. in Newport, Tenn., also are participating in the project.
Although the Jimani Project is intended to serve the people of the frontier region of the Dominican Republic and Haiti, mission team members often travel deep into Haiti to provide medical care.
During a trip in August, Knoxville ophthalmologist Dr. Frank Murchinson performed what the Jimani Project team believes was the first corneal transplant in Haiti.
'The transplants were done on a communion table in a church at the Eden Garden orphanage in Montrouis,' Doiron said.
Members of the medical team also performed 38 cataract extractions on elderly men and women during the August trip
In addition to ministering to the physical needs of the people in the Jimani area, the mission team has been working to establish churches, including one in the prison in Jimani.
'I can't tell you how excited I am about that,' Doiron said. 'When we were there earlier we had asked the warden for use of a small room as a chapel. This last time we were there the whole prison yard was being used as a church. There were 30 or 40 men with their Bibles open and two pastors leading Bible study.'
Donations to the Jimani Project may be sent to Baptist Health System Foundation, 101 Blount Ave., Suite 530, Knoxville, TN 37920.
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