I have to begin by apologizing for the long gap in blogs! I don't really have one good excuse but a bunch of little ones. I will try to do better! But instead of telling you what we've been up to, I thought it best to just show you! Enjoy!
(Also, we're heading home to the U.S. for a visit in just over two weeks, so hopefully we'll be able to see many of you in person while we're back. We can't wait!!)

While in London (on our way into the country, me and couple other directors had the chance to do a lightning quick tour of London - self-guided of course!) When I saw this I had to take a picture: a police officer, talking on his cell phone while mounted on a horse, and waiting in the middle of the lane at a stoplight! See, funny cultural things don't just happen in Uganda!

Something I have really missed while in Africa is the Fall - my favorite season! I haven't seen Fall since October of 2007. So this walk through St. James park in London was a huge treat for me!

Another treat for me was that a friend of mine from the UK who lives here in Uganda connected me with a friend of a friend who got me a ticket to see the Chelsea vs. Manchester United match on Sunday at Stamford Bridge in London (Chelsea's stadium)! It was the fulfillment of one of my dreams in life - to see a Man U game! It was a great experience - though as a ManU fan I didn't say a word the whole game sitting amongst the Chelsea faithful! I'd been advised that it was in my best interest to stay quiet!

Alisha leading chapel - doing what she loves most...speaking in front of people! Actually, for those of you who know her, you know I'm being facetious. It's her biggest fear, though she's actually quite good at it. But she did a great job and the class performed perfectly.

"The Heist"

At that point, one of the hotel workers came out of our building and motioned for us to come see him. He led us up to room 227, and where we found some of our bags, now empty, along with the room key for 227 that was supposed to have been dropped off at the front desk before leaving the premisis. The eMi projector bag was there also – I hadn’t noticed before that it was missing from my room. I went back to my room to look for what else might be missing, and realized that my backpack had been gone through, and missing was all of my Kenyan shillings (about $500 worth), Ugandan shillings (about $300 worth) and $50 US. Fortunately, my wallet, mine and Jason’s passports, my camera, and $500 US were all still in my pack. Also still in the room was the survey total station, which is worth up to $10,000 new! Obviously, the thieves felt it was too big to carry out (or the had no idea what it was!).
As we were looking through this stuff, Pastor Sammy called Farouq and asked him to come immediately, not telling him why. About 5 minutes later, Farouq arrived, and when he found out what had happened, he said, “I just saw them!” Apparently, as he was driving just down the street from the hotel, he saw the two people running while carrying shoulder bags. The man riding with him said, “Those are thieves!” Farouq suggested they go after them (as he would do in Uganda) but the man told him that in Kenya thieves are usually armed so you don’t want to approach them.
So we hopped in the van and took off driving to find them. As we did, the security guard got on a bike and road off to look as well. After about 15 minutes of driving around, we returned without finding them. I was starting to realize that the stolen items were very likely gone for good. The hotel wanted us to go to the police to file a report, so we decided to do that. I really was against the idea since I knew that would just slow down the process of trying to find the thieves and likely end any chance of finding our stuff, but that is the process the hotel insisted we go through. So we went anyways, and as I expected, the process was painfully slow. Pastor Sammy and the hotel worker explained the story a couple of times to a couple of different people before finally we all got back in the van and were followed by a police truck full of detectives and officers. We showed them up to room 227 and our rooms, and then discussed what to do in the hall. I told them that our concern was to try everything possible to get the stuff back, and that it would likely only happen now by finding and hiring someone (probably another thief) who knows where the local thieves gather to sell stuff and see if he could buy our stuff back (this is what Farouq was suggesting we do as well). But the police pretty much ignored me and said that it would take time to go through the process but they would do their investigation. They were nice enough about it, but I knew at that point that our stuff was gone. They may actually catch the people eventually, but the stuff would be halfway to Nairobi by mid-day, never to be seen by us again.


All told, we lost a combined amount of $5400 worth of equipment and cash from three separate rooms. But we were feeling fortunate for the many things not stolen; including our external hard drive where most all our work to that point of the trip was stored (we did loset about 2 hours of work on Jill’s computer). We were also feeling fortunate that no one was harmed. Elisa was in her room the whole time with her head phones on lying down, so if they had gone into her room who knows what could have happened.
I also remembered earlier in the morning when I was shaving in the bathroom hearing the room door open 3 or 4 times – I had assumed that Jason had left to use the restroom, but after the 3rd or 4th time hearing the door open, I peaked my head out to make sure it was just Jason. He was just returning to the room so I asked him what was going on. He said he had just left to use the bathroom and was coming back. When I asked later if he had opened the door several times, he said no. I’m pretty sure it was the thieves entering our room who then noticed that I was still in the bathroom. I also thought that if one of us had returned to our room to get something (this happened a number times during the week) and found the thieves at work, who knows whether they were armed or not and what might have happened. So all considering, we felt blessed that the situation wasn’t much worse.
But the rest of the day was pretty much a down day work-wise. I spent the day working with the hotel and the police filing a report (I had to return to the police station the following day as well to give a statement). The team traveled to the site, minus Roger and me who stayed behind, to visit with the children from the two day-care facilities who had been bused to the site for a few hours. Roger wasn’t feeling well, and my head was focused on damage-control as I began realizing the ramifications of losing the information stored on my laptop. Fortunately, I had 95% of it backed up, but I was on the phone off and on most of the day with Alisha, who had gone home from school to secure up all of our personal affairs. I also worked with Janet who was taking care of the office stuff too, and notifying eMi headquarters in Colorado as well. What a mess! But again, I had to keep reminding myself of how much worse it could have been. That kept me pretty thankful that God had protected the team members and a lot of other stuff too.

My most recent project trip was to Nakuru, Kenya to help design a new orphanage project for a ministry called Miracle House. Miracle House was started by Deanna Bjork and her husband Dan (from Breckinridge, Colorado) in response to the huge need for orphan care found in the slums in Kenya. About 5 years ago, God spoke to Deanna's heart the message, "How about an orphanage here?" Though she had been on many missions trips before with other organizations, she had never entertained the idea of starting her own orphanage. A message she heard early on in the process remains at the heart of their ministry. She was told by someone to “not be motivated by the needs of the people, but be motivated by the heart of God.” That really resonated with me, as I realized that that statement is the reason eMi exists as well, and it’s an important distinction to make and remain cognizant of.
Miracle House (MH) began with a day-only care house in Limiru (just outside of Nairobi) where children could come and be fed and educated during the daytime. A couple years later MH opened another such facility in the western Kenyan town of Webuye. Over the past few years, God has continued to confirm and provide for this vision, and earlier this year they completed the purchase of a 10-acre site near Nakuru where they plan to transition the existing 50+ children to full-time boarded care. The eMi team was asked to come help them master plan the new site and provide design information for the buildings and utilities on the site.
Coming into the project, we were aware that a water survey had been performed at the site and that MH had been told that there was no water to drill for. Obviously, this was going to be a major constraint for the design team and could possibly severely restrict what the ministry could do with the land.
Our team consisted of 8 design professionals: Elisa Wheeler (civil engineer) and Roger Glick (agricultural engineer) flew in from the states directly to Nairobi, where MH picked them up and drove them 2 hours to Nakuru; Casey Snell (architect), my friend from Medford Jason Prins (structural engineer), Jill Eckloff (eMiEA long-term volunteer architect), eMi-EA interns Travis Greiman (civil engineering) and Jaclyn Miller (architecture) and I drove in a van from Kampala 10 1/2 hours to get to Nakuru. The van we rented was driven by Farouq, a driver we’ve used a number of times and one of the nicest people on the planet.

The drive to Nakuru was long! The roads in Uganda (the first 3 1/2 to 4 hours) were good, but that changed at the border. The roads had been resurfaced in the not too distant past (5-7 years), but the subgrade was done poorly so there are huge ruts from the truck tires that pass through. These ruts were 12 inches deep in some areas! There are a ton of trucks on this particular road since it is the main route from the shipping port in Mombasa to Nairobi, Kampala, Kigali (Rwanda), the Congo and other East African cities.