Once a master of making millions, Hein Vingerling is now busy building poverty. One brick at a time.
Surrounded by 540 acres of tree-filled land in Clayton County, the former business executive and teams of church campers are constructing closet-size houses with bricks manufactured by hand.
They clear land and plant sugar cane under the sweltering sun. They walk 20 minutes to fetch water in plastic milk jugs. They relieve themselves in the woods -- girls and women on one side of the village, boys and men on the other.
Sweat trickles down their faces as they make their way to the makeshift village market to haggle for prices on basic food items. The rice, oil, onions, plantains, carrots, potatoes and mangoes they pick out total way more than a day's wages for Vingerling's workers. They pool their money so they can eat.
What they would not do for a juicy steak, air conditioning and a bathroom faucet. This might as well be Haiti.
And that, said Vingerling, is the whole point of his Global Village, tucked away in the heart of the Calvin Center, a wooded campground 15 miles south of Hartsfield International Airport run by the Presbytery of Greater Atlanta. Eventually, four other settings will occupy ground next to the Haitian-style hamlet -- a Brazilian urban barrio made from scraps collected at the local landfill, Kenyan and Nicaraguan villages and wartorn neighborhoods in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
By next year, missionaries will be able to spend time at Vingerling's mock village before being dispatched to faraway lands. Vingerling said he hopes the Global Village experience and training will help soften the shock of being thrust into a strange new land.
"For years, I've been seeing mission teams go into the field unprepared," he said. "People don't know how to deal with no running water, no electricity and cockroaches and spiders. But that's how much of the world lives. We want to increase the knowledge of future teams that go so they can be more useful to the people who live there."
A boom in mission volunteers has resulted in roughly 100,000 Americans participating in overseas trips each year. In Atlanta, some churches send hundreds of people, some of whom have never stepped foot outside the United States, to every corner of the globe. They spread the word of Christ while helping improve the lives of people less fortunate than themselves.
Vingerling said the hands-on experience will also help lessen the unflattering perception of "spoiled Americans with fat bellies" and enable missionaries to go into the field without bags full of modern-day conveniences such as cellphones, high-tech tents and battery-operated fans.
"We go in with all our glitz and glitter and we do not know what kind of hurt we create," Vingerling said. "I tell the kids here that 'you are much more of a role model than you realize.' "
All summer, Calvin Center volunteers and visitors have been helping Vingerling get his Haitian village fully functioning.
"This is way cool," said Cheryl Mack, a student at Decatur's Columbia Theological Seminary who has been to Haiti as a missionary. "It's basically taking [people] to a Third World country without having to go there."
The training is equally welcomed by Calvin Center employee Terry Pitts, who traveled to remote parts of Venezuela with a church group.
"The first time I went to Venezuela, I cried. A lot," he said. "I wish I had had this kind of experience before I left."
Vingerling is convinced that missionaries cannot be effective unless they live and work among the people to whom they are spreading the word of Christ. At the Global Village, missionary teams will be trained for difficult tasks that lie ahead.
It takes roughly 900 bricks to build a one-room shelter. By early afternoon, Vingerling's 11- and 12-year-old recruits from St. Andrews Presbyterian Church have managed six -- the seventh ends in failure. Too much dirt has been forced into the Belgian brick press, which runs solely on muscle power.
"This is the kind of machine we use in Haiti. It doesn't require any electricity," Vingerling said.
Volunteer teams mix by hand Georgia dirt and sand with water, then run it through the press. It takes five or six preteens to crank the lever down. They use concrete to build the houses and make them earthquake-proof with concrete bars. But to run the concrete mixer, the teams must buy gas. And gas is $12 a gallon, a high-ticket item for people earning $1 a day for their hard labor.
Nearby, Calvin Center volunteers will soon begin building a pond and stocking it with tilapia to teach folks how to fish. They will even learn how to slaughter chickens.
Vingerling had no such help himself when he abruptly changed careers more than a decade ago. The Dutchman first saw Atlanta in 1985 as an executive with Fokker, the multinational aeronautics company from his native Netherlands. He later worked for a Danish firm but when he got laid off, he relinquished the fast life of the corporate world for a small furniture restoration business.
But furniture, too, was a bust, so he "gave up my drive for making money." Instead, he ventured to Africa for a monthlong stay. His first taste of foreign mission work led him to impoverished Haiti, where Vingerling has run feeding centers and established an orphanage.
"I believe you cannot preach the Gospel to hungry people," Vingerling said. "But you cannot just feed the stomach and leave the soul unsatisfied."
To that end, Vingerling is determined to prepare more foot soldiers for God.
"It's my personal passion to see this program grow," he said. People "come out of here with a survival mentality. That's not what I want to promote, but then again, maybe it is."
On some days, however, frustration sets in with the heat and exhaustion.
"Do we have to sleep out here?" asked Scott Williams, 11. "Geez, that would be torture."