Writer: Chris Ahrens
Where I live, in Southern California, shelter is not absolutely necessary to support life. The temperature is rarely over 80 or under 50, it rains a dozen times a year, and the public restrooms are nicer than the luxury apartments in other parts of the world. Some of those other places are so cold that shelter is not an option.
    Armenia in the winter is just such a frigid place, and there housing can be nothing more than a metal cargo container. While life exists in those tin cans, it is often cut short by the brutality of the season. Kenn Coil of Lazarian World Homes, the project’s founder Steve Lazarian, and builder George Fermanian found a way to deal with the problem. The solution came in the form of foam blocks. These blocks, which weigh no more than your home computer, are easily assembled by volunteers. Many such blocks have since become homes. And many of these homes are now receptacles of hope.

Risen Magazine: You just got back from building homes in Armenia. Why there?
Kenn Coil: We’ve been associated from the beginning with Steve Lazarian who is the name behind Lazarian World Homes. Steve heads up Armenia Gospel Mission [AGM], and his good friend, builder George Fermanian, wanted to help. George and Steve are both Armenian, and that opened the door for the first home to be in Armenia. My involvement came as a pastor when I started working on another building in Armenia. I’ve been there five times now. We have so many connections and friends and the need is overwhelming.

RM: What city were you in?
KC: It’s called Vanadzor, and it’s the third largest city in Armenia. It’s in a beautiful northern mountain region called the Lori region, which is very artsy. Back in the days of the Soviet Union it was a retreat center, summer vacation type of place. I think there are a couple hundred thousand people living there. We visited several different homes, many of them these Soviet Union high-rises. A classic case was a lady with her two daughters. One daughter is a college grad, the other is a dentist. The mother is a businesswoman who walks the town every day. They were given this Soviet apartment. We had dinner with them in their apartment, and one of the daughters said, “My mother doesn’t like to let you know how poor we are, but in the winter, we close off the other rooms and live in the kitchen, to try and maintain body heat.” For that region, this is a good situation.
    The worst are living in these metal storage containers that we’re trying to get rid of. They install a door and windows and that’s it. In some cases they put a hole in the ground for the toilet, and move in a fragile little wood-burning stove. AGM has a program of buying wood for them, but it can get 30 below there in the winter and the inside of those places gets as low as 20 below. There are thousands of those containers. I’ve even seen large oil drums with a door and a window in it.

RM: What do people do for work there?
KC: Work is hard to find, and while I hate to guess, it seems the unemployment rate runs around 50 percent. Jobs are just nonexistent. The mafia and the government run everything. What happens in those former Soviet Union countries is that the same people are in power after an election as were in power before it. In the city we would see dozens of black Mercedes and everybody would say, That’s the mafia. Great extremes of wealth and poverty.

RM: Did you guys have any scary experiences?
KC: The incredible thing is that you feel incredibly safe there. My wife would walk all over that city with no problem, no fear of any kind. Even in the city you have a total sense of safety there. It’s not Tijuana.

RM: Do you think it’s societal structure, or fear of punishment?
KC: Where we were you could see the prison. I’ve heard stories of incredible difficulties there. I would think that would be a great deterrent. I can only tell you that I’ve never had a sense of fear of walking in the wrong place, ever.

RM: How is the Gospel received there?
KC: The biggest enemy of the Gospel is the Apostolic Church, the Orthodox Church. They are the greatest force defending against evangelism—in fact they are proposing a law against what they call “soul hunting.” It would then be illegal to do what we call evangelism, the door-to-door, anything that could be interpreted as trying to break someone away from the Orthodox Church.

RM: What is the emotional state of the country?
KC: The overwhelming sense I get there is hopelessness, a sense of What’s the use? That’s what we face all the time on the work site. Why work harder; why work at all? I make $7 a day for digging a ditch all day long. The only place where you sense hope is Sunday morning at church. The rest of the time there’s a sense of purposelessness. Seventy years of communism results in a sense of hopelessness. You can have a Ph.D., be a medical doctor, anything, but you’ll still have to try and sell trinkets on the weekends just to buy