Maranatha Starts Work on First School Campus in Angola

By Adventist Review staff

A group of Seventh-day Adventist volunteers with Maranatha Volunteers International has started construction on a large high school campus in Angola, the first of several schools planned for the African country.

The school in Huambo, the second-largest city in Angola after the capital, Luanda, with a population of 665,000, will have 12 classrooms, an auditorium, and a capacity for 1,000 students a year, Maranatha said.

“The campus is located in a new section of Huambo that is being developed by the government, and this will be one of the first schools in the area,” it said in a statement.

Maranatha is a nonprofit Adventist-affiliated organization that coordinates the construction of urgently needed buildings with volunteers who seek a short-term mission experience. It is known throughout Africa and many other parts of the world for its One-Day School classrooms and One-Day Churches. But it also takes on longer-term projects, including the two-week expansion of a school in Panama and the two-week refurbishment of Milo Adventist Academy in the U.S. state of Oregon earlier this year. Its schools and churches have been known to help local Adventist communities flourish.

Huambo, formerly called Nova Lisboa (New Lisbon), was once known for its beautiful colonial architecture, but war destroyed nearly every part of the city.

The new school, which will be owned and operated by the Adventist Church, will be officially called an Education and Evangelism Center. Maranatha did not say when the school would open.

In addition to the school, Maranatha intends to construct 200 One-Day School classrooms throughout Angola. Maranatha has built One-Day Churches at more than 200 locations in the country since 2013.