Family update

The earliest reference to Colchester was in AD 77.

It’s finally starting to feel like Spring here in Colchester! The temperature hasn’t been in the 30’s for over a week now, and we’ve actually had a number of days into the 60’s with plenty of sunshine. It’s amazing the difference it’s made. So, a good time to update on how we’re doing here.

This picture was from a few weeks ago, before Spring arrived.
We took the boys to the Clacton-on-Sea pier during their Spring
Break...and froze!

We did let them ride one ride - the roller coaster to the right.
Given the weather, they were the only ones on the ride at the time!

My niece Holli Morrow has been staying with us after graduating
early from HS. She will have been here 8 weeks when she
leaves in 10 days - it's going to be very dull without her around.

First off, some news. Though perhaps you’ve already learned this from other bits we’ve put out on Facebook or by email, we’ve decided to stay in the UK for another year. We had a number of discussions with the leadership of EMI, both in the USA and the UK, and after praying about it, we all agreed that we felt God was leading us to stay here one more year to help the UK office.

Specifically, we have agreed to stay on until June 2014 to help give this office the best chance for remaining solvent going forward. At that time, EMI-UK will decide if the office will remain open in its current format, or if we will need to restructure it for the time being to allow it to exist for the foreseeable future - we will by that time have three staff families sent out in the field so some solution will need to be figured out. We have already begun to make plans for contingencies if we have to restructure, and honestly, it may very well be that this was why God needed us here - for me to come and help Mike keep the office afloat to give Mike the space to work on getting things set up to function well going forward. So stay tuned on that note...

One real blessing in this decision is that we do not need to seek any additional funding to stay here for a second year beyond what we currently have. There were a number of significant costs involved in staying a second year - most notably, having to return home to the US to reapply for another year of visas - but this money came in while we were in the process of deciding whether or not to stay, without our asking for it or communicating the need. This is a huge blessing. It is very expensive to live in the UK, and we feel so blessed that God has provided for us to be able to say yes to His leading to stay on here in the UK.

We feel overwhelmingly thankful for the generosity so many of you have shown and continue to show to our family and EMI over the past 5 years. I hope it is clear that we never take for granted the role our financial support team plays in our ministry. One thing I like about the support-raising model that EMI uses is that it naturally holds our ministry to accountability. Whenever we think about decisions like this for what we’ll do and where we’ll go, they are always made from the standpoint of what is a good use of the resources God has provided through our supporting friends and family. Honestly, it feels like a great responsibility, making sure we are being good stewards of the money God has provided us to do this work with EMI. But it’s also a major blessing to see God use the resources of His people to accomplish His work through our ministry - just a very humbling position to be in that I don’t know Alisha and I could ever adequately describe.

Suffice it to say we are very, very grateful for all of you who see fit to partner with us in this ministry, and we sincerely pray that God uses our ministry to bless you as well, knowing you are directly involved in rehabilitating hospitals, or helping orphans have a home and a school to attend, or providing clean water and sanitation for some of the poorest people on earth, or saving people from dying in collapsing buildings by reinforcing them structurally - I do my best to tell these stories so you’ll know the direct impact you’re having, but sometimes I feel like I need a full-time journalist at my side to take note of all the ways your contributions have directly led to each of these items happening for literally hundreds (thousands in some cases) of people.

Ok, a quick family update...

Graysen has really doing well for his football team. He's been
practicing with them since September, but just started playing
in matches a month ago. He's been playing really well, having
fun, and even scoring a few goals!

Sporting his Uganda jersey I brought back from my latest
project trip.

Brodie at a Colchester United match - our local professional team
that is in League One (two down from the Premier League). Alisha
took the boys since Graysen's team got to walk out with the players
before the game. Sadly, I was home sick. :(

 

Brad - I think you know plenty about me, though I will just mention that we are just about to finalize the report from my latest project in Uganda - the Mustard Seed Academy School we designed.

This is us, standing outside at 4 Privet Drive...if that means
anything to you, then you'll want to continue on at the bottom
and look at more pictures!

Alisha - still homeschooling the younger two boys, and also enjoying having my niece Holli Morrow staying with us for two months after having graduated from high school a few months early. I think it’s safe to safe Alisha struggled through the gray and cold winter here, so the sun coming out these days is no small treat for her. She has begun to help some at the church with the younger kids, both during services and other events. She still doesn’t feel very well connected here, owed largely to the fact that she’s home each day schooling Jonah and Graysen. She keeps in contact with friends back home regularly though. She has felt God leading her to encourage women to be transparent, feeling like so many women feel pressured to appear as if they have everything put together to be the perfect wife, mother, professional, house cleaner, cook, woman and overall glue of the family, when in reality, mastering any one of those areas is nearly impossible and more days than not, most women feel like they’ve failed at more than they’ve succeeded at. So, she has been seeking out these relationships with her friends as opportunities have presented themselves, hoping that she can encourage as many people along the way as possible.

Brodie - our one boy in school is still doing well and loving his school. He is rapidly approaching his 12^th birthday next month, and we are definitely getting more and more into the pre-teen stage around the house. Since he’s our oldest, he’s having to suffer through mom and dad cutting their teeth on how to adapt to parenting older kids. Hellllppp!!! Brodie has been training with a football (remember we’re in the UK, so that means soccer) team that he is hoping to ‘sign’ with for next season (that’s just fancy talk for joining the team and playing in matches, as opposed to just practicing, which is what he’s been doing this year since we arrived here last August, too late to sign with a team). He also made the reserves for his school football team too. Otherwise, we try to keep the thoroughbred ‘run’ regularly - he’s caught up with me in pace when we go jogging (about 6:50/mile over a 5K for those keeping score - pretty good for him considering how short he is; not nearly as impressive for me!).

Jonah - overall, he likes home-schooling, but he’s also a social kid so it presents a challenge for him as well. He’s still as creative as ever, and we were able to swap his bed for a loft bed recently, allowing him to build his extensive lego train setup under his bed. He is a good big brother to Graysen, and they have really grown close this year from the home-schooling. Jonah has also been training with a football team, though we have just found him a new team where he will have a chance to trial at goalkeeper, his favourite position (the last team’s GK was the coach’s son - not much chance there!). He has also taken well to Jujitsu, which we started taking the boys to in January (the other two boys have lost interest, but Jonah really enjoys it).

Graysen - life has taken a major turn for the good in Graysen’s life as he was recently able to ‘sign’ on to his football team and has been playing in games. And, he’s been doing really well! He is very aggressive and focused even though he’s the smallest guy out there. He’s scored 4 of his team’s 5 goals in his first 3 games. It’s been so fun to see his excitement in getting to play in games again. Apart from football, Graysen is really enjoying home-schooling, though he says he would love to find a school to go to next year (please pray with us on that - we really have no new leads to speak of in that process). Also, Graysen came to us recently and said that he felt God had told him that He wanted him to one day teach other people about God. He didn’t have any other specifics, but he was actually kind of choked up about it. When we asked him why he was fighting back tears, he said it was because he didn’t think he knew enough to teach people about God! When we told him he could maybe go to bible college to learn more, that put his mind straight at ease. Wow, if only solving our kid’s problems would stay that easy! I’m sure between now and when he’s grown, he’ll cycle through the normal list of things he wants to be when he grows up - astronaut, cowboy, professional soccer player, billionaire tycoon, etc. But regardless, it’s nice to know that at this stage he’s at least thinking about how his faith might play into his future life.

So yes, we had the chance to visit the 'Making of Harry Potter Tour'
at Warner Bros. Studios in London. This was at or near the top
of our 'to do' list while in England since our boys are big
Harry Potter fans. Holli is also a huge Harry Potter fan so we
wanted to try to do it while she was here.

This picture is of the Great Hall - all of the
following pictures are the actual sets used in the films! Such a
cool thing to see - our boys were on Cloud 9!

Brodie and Jonah, checking out Harry's Gryffindor boys' dorm room.

And the Gryffindor Common Room, with the actual wardrobes
for Harry, Hermione and Ron displayed.

Dumbledore's office

Alisha and I at the Ministry of Magic fireplace entrances

Riding Hagrid's bike - 4 Privet Drive can be seen in the back-
ground. The original Privet Drive was actually 12 Picket Post
Close in Bracknell, just West of London. After the first movie
though, they built this replica set at the studios for all filming.

Jonah in Diagon Alley - very cool to walk down. An amazing
amount of detail went into these background sets.

Standing in front of the Hogwarts Castle. All the exterior shots
of the castle were actually of this 1:24 scaled model - there is
no real life castle. The model is amazing though.

A roughly 30-yard section of the bridge at Hogwarts was the
only life-size portion of the bridge built. Actually, one of the
biggest things you learn in the tour is how much of the movie
is actually 'green screened' - shot in studio with no actual set
and then background scenes added in.

The full bridge only existed in this model, shown on the left
side of this picture.

 

Ok, that’s the update - for those of you who actually made it through this entire family update blog, I say to you:  ‘Thanks for reading, Mom... and Harry Potter fans.’ J


Uganda Project Trip Part IV (of IV)

My old friends, left to right, Jade, Matt and Beau. Great guys
and being with them made me wish we still lived there.

Monday March 4th:

Packing up and leaving the ministry for Kampala, I was reminded how stressful it is to once again be in charge of meeting the team’s every need, in a place where meeting needs and making people feel comfortable are near impossibilities. Also, making sure I have enough money, exchanged to the right currency, keeping track of receipts, finding places to buy not only drinking water but enough water for teeth brushing as well, and planning a schedule to keep people fed is a full-time job and then some. I look at the volunteers sometimes and think how nice it would be to just be along for the ride. Ha! Actually, I very much like leading trips, and especially in Uganda it really isn’t too hard to sort things out since I am so familiar with the place, places to eat, shop, exchange money, etc.

A few random pict's that didn't make the cut until now:

Testing water from the nearby water source.

Looking at the water test under a blacklight 24 hours later reveals
whether or not there is a chance of e-coli being present if it turns
fluorescent. If it's just yellow, it means that other more common
bacteria are present. It's rare for these water tests in Africa to
not at least be 'yellow'.

You have to get creative to make things work on a project trip.

I think every school kid around the globe has, at one point
in their career, played the all-important parachute game.

I'd shower twice if I was guaranteed these would come true
(I've tried it though, and it clearly doesn't work).

Today was our closing time, so we had our typical meeting of sharing in the afternoon followed by a team dinner at a nice restaurant in the evening (Cassia Lodge, overlooking the lake).

At dinner atop a hill overlooking Kampala, at Cassia Lodge.

For the next few days, most of the team will be on safari (I’ve hired my old friend Farouq, who we’ve known from the beginning of our time in Uganda and who is one of the nicest people I’ve ever met. He has proven himself to me many times and I completely trust him to send my teams away for a few days, something I otherwise wouldn’t think of doing). While they’re away, I’ll have a few days to connect with friends, spend time meeting with our EA staff, and doing some business with the EA office as well. I’m really looking forward to it.

Tuesday March 5^th thru Thursday March 7^th:

'Scary Hill' road, near our old neighbourhood. It felt like I
was back home, strangely enough.

It has been so fun to be in Kampala. It still very much feels like home even though it’s been nearly 3 years since we moved away. So many people still remember us around town it is so fun to see their faces when they see me walking up. I was once again reminded of how much I love Ugandan people – some of the warmest and most friendly people in the world I’m convinced.

On top of visiting with some of our old dear friends, I visited some of our favorite restaurants, was shown a new one that actually serves a good hamburger (I really thought it was impossible in Uganda!), drove around town on a boda (if you’ve read this blog for long enough, you’ll know that means a motorcycle taxi - of which there are thousands upon thousands in Uganda), met with friends, played basketball at Tuesday night basketball that I helped start with a handful of guys years ago, joined morning prayer all 3 days at the EA office, connected with most (but sadly not all) of the EA staff, and overall really just felt like I had a great chance to visit the people and place we once called home.

Morning prayer at EMI-EA under the newly rebuilt gazebo.

People especially remember our boys, and asked when they were coming back to visit. So yes, a great visit – I still love Uganda and as I told many people there, as much as anywhere else in this world, it feels like home. That’s a weird phenomenon, but a reality of the lifestyle we now live. It’s good, hard, and bizarre all in one – thankfully, we rest in the knowledge that this is what God has called us to do, so it really doesn’t matter how we feel about what or where our life journey is anymore. That might be the biggest lesson we’ve learned thus far in our over 5 years with EMI, and as unsettling as it might sound, it’s actually giving us the most peace and contentment we’ve ever felt.

The basketball court at the boys' old school, Heritage Int'l
school. When I was there, we started Tuesday night bball for
a bunch of us missionary guys. We raised money and I brought
back the backboard and rims from the States after one of our
furloughs home. They've since resurfaced it, and the building
beyond is a new extension for the school. A lot of changes at
that school since we were there.

Our good friends Matt & Angela - we miss hanging out every
Saturday.

Uganda Project Trip Part III (of IV)

No new backpack patch earned on this trip, but then again,
there's good reason why I've put this patch 2nd from the top,
just below the USA flag. As strange as it may seem, as much
as any place in the world, Uganda feels like home to our family.

Friday March 1st:

I haven’t introduced the team yet, so here goes:

 

Tim Butcher – Volunteer architect from Sheffield, UK; 1^st time EMI trip volunteer

Zach Butcher – 7 month old son of the Butchers; a very cute little boy who has stolen our hearts

Izzy Butcher – Volunteer landscape architect from Sheffield, UK; 1^st time EMI trip volunteer

Alan Adams – EMI-EA office Long Term Volunteer Land Surveyor

Johnny Martin – EMI-UK Intern; Architect

Jaimee Schmidt - Volunteer Civil Engineer from Manitoba, CAN; 7^th time EMI trip volunteer

Angie Parra – Volunteer Civil Engineer from Boise, ID; 3^rd time EMI trip volunteer

Matt Lammers – EMI-UK Intern; Structural Engineer

Jana Van Singel – Volunteer architect from Michigan; 1^sttime EMI trip volunteer

Rob Johnson – EMI-UK Long term Volunteer architect who works in the UK office with me for this year

Dan Critchley – EMI-UK Intern; Mechanical Engineer

me - this was my 14th time leading an EMI project trip

(L to R) Tim, baby Zach, Izzy, Alan, Jonny, Jaimee, Angie,
Matt, Jana, Rob, Dan, me

It’s really been a great team and we’ve all got along very well. Once again, it’s going to be sad to say goodbye to the team when all’s said and done.

This afternoon, after we’d finished a 4-hour meeting earlier in the day to nail down the master plan and most of the building designs, the team took a break and went to the primary school to see their end-of-the-day school assembly. Though it was hard to put our work aside just as we were finally all set to forge on, it was a very neat thing to see, all the children lined up outside and repeating various answers in unison in response to one of the head teachers. Then, they brought us up in front and had us introduce ourselves. As the team leader, I had to explain who were and why we were there. It was a fun time as the children were very engaged as I explained what the different types of engineers do. I took a good video of the kids singing their school Alma Mater.

Also, one of the funniest things from a trip ever occurred, and I’m sick that I didn’t get it on video.  Some background - when I lived in Uganda, I was eternally being called ‘Brian’. The name Brad is not really used in Uganda, so most of the time Ugandans had a hard time even hearing the differentiation between Brad and Brian. Never has this been more clear than in this instance.

Before I got up to spoke, one of the ministry leaders sought to introduce me it went something like this:

“Hello boys and girls.” - Joseph, one of the American ministry leaders, said.

“Hello Papa Joseph” - the unified response from the nearly 300 students was impressive sounding

“I want to introduce you to the team who has come to help us build you a new school. This is their team leader. His name is Brad.” - Joseph explained.

“Hello Mr. Brian.”  - The 300 students happily answered back together.

“No, listen. His name is Braaaaaaad.” - Joseph calmly explained.

“Briaaaaaaan.” - 300 little voices together

“No, listen carefully. Braaaaaaaaa-duh.” - Joseph, though calm, was still determined.

“Briaaaaaaaaaaaan-duh.” - We all laughed and the introduction was complete (or as complete as it was ever going to be!)

Guess what the team called me the rest of the week?

These kids were so polite and respectful, and seemed genuinely
interested in what we had to say. I can't imagine kids back in
the US or UK being so interested if a visiting African man was
up in front of their school talking.

 

The school of 285 kids, staring up at some weirdo named
'Briand', who's apparently very particular about his name
being pronounced correctly.

Such lovable kids!

Saturday March 2nd:

Well, this is our main work day, and as I probably could have predicted, the power is out. Arrg! The guesthouse we’re staying in is at a monastery and operated entirely by nuns. But impressively, they have one of the best power and water back-up systems I’ve ever seen. For water, they have 8 enormous rainwater storage tanks. For power, a very nice and large generator, as well as a bank of batteries operating as an inverter system (batteries charge when national power is on, and then run the site when it’s off). Unfortunately, also predictably, both of the power backup systems are currently inoperable. Yikes! We have some battery power on our laptops, but this will run out in a couple of hours. Stay tuned!

For as rural as our guesthouse was, I don't think we could have
imagined staying at a nicer place. It's simple, but clean, quiet
and flush toilets and showers. So nice!

 

One of the levely nuns who took such good care
of us at the St. Stephen's Bon Repos Guesthouse
in Butende, Uganda

 

On the guesthouse grounds, where I sat, writing this blog.

Well, as it turns out, after a 5 hour outage that started early in the morning, power returned in the early afternoon and stayed on. This was a very good thing, as we had a ton of work to do. In fact, many of the team members stayed up until 3am working. Had the power not returned, we would not have been able to finish our work here. Thank you Lord for answering that prayer!

Sunday March 3rd:

Per usual, we attended church Sunday morning. It was a small rural church, and though we were nearly 30 minutes late (Africa time!), the entire congregation (60?) were all out front waiting for us to start when we arrived! Too funny. It was actually a very subdued African service – nothing at all wrong with that of course, just a noteworthy difference from the typical lively African service that goes on for 3-4 hours. As it was, we were done in an hour and 20 minutes, which was good because we had a lot to do to be ready for our 5pm final presentation to the ministry.

The team, along with the ministry leaders and the family of the
church's pastor. Two things are givens when Westerners visit
an African church: 1) you are going to have to take a picture
with the pastor; 2) someone from the group is going to have to
get up front and speak...

The list of rural African churches where I've had to get up and
speak is growing. You can be praying for these churches! :)

The presentation went well, despite the projector failing us (the bulb shone our slides blue on the wall, which would have made for a depressing feel in the room I think! J) So, we placed 4 laptops around a circular table and just had people press the keyboards simultaneously (or nearly so) for the next slide. It worked quite well.  The ministry was very grateful and excited for our team’s work. And actually, since we were working right up to the presentation, I hadn’t yet seen all the work that was produced. It was very impressive indeed what the team had done in such a short period of time. Really, up until Friday, sorting out the master plan had taken all our efforts, and so producing final drawings and sketches was accomplished between midday Friday and Sunday afternoon (with the power outage and church service included). But having 5 architects on the team paid off, as they were able to produce more work for a presentation than I’ve typically had on most trips, where I’ve usually only had 2 or 3 architects.

The team worked all over the guesthouse campus - here, the
architects found an inspiring and mostly shady spot

 

Meeting with the ministry throughout the week ensures that
we're heading down the right path.

 

...meetings and more meetings...

 

...and more meetings. (The interns love this picture because it
makes me look completely aloof! I admit it looks bad, but if
you want to know the full story...I'm actually holding baby Zach
in this picture, and had been walking around to get him to fall
asleep since both of his parents were presenting their work to
the ministry for feedback. It worked, and he felt fast asleep, but
the sun kept peeking through the clouds and I was worried about
him getting burned. In this shot, I'm looking at the sky to try to
figure out if I should head back into the shade or not based on
what the clouds were looking like. But yes, on the surface, I do
admit I look like I'm completely useless in the work at hand!)

 

The work room

 

A project leader's job is never finished. It's a tough job... but
fortunately, little Zach was a big fan of the Veggie Tales music
I had on my computer.

Intern Dan presenting to the ministry his findings on how to
convert the sewage generated on-site into biogas for use as
cooking fuel in the kitchen, thereby saving money on purchasing
cooking fuel (charcoal, etc.) as well as alleviating some of the
strain on the site's wastewater system. And, the compost byproduct
is a super fertilizer for any crops being grown.

Getting that presentation done always brings a sense of accomplishment, even though our work is far from over. But knowing that we have a path forward to complete the report by mid-May is a freeing feeling. It’s a fast turn-around time for us, but fortunately these three interns are proving to be top notch. I have been very impressed by all three of them so far this term, so that’s a big blessing, and gives me hope that we’ll have no trouble finishing on time.

(L to R) Interns Dan (from Colchester, UK), Jonny (from Northern
Ireland) and Matt (from Toronto, Canada). Top notch guys, other
than Jonny's unfortunate and blind allegiance to Liverpool FC.

Steve Hoyt, who has now worked out of our East Africa office
for 8 years, was my project leader on my very first project trip
back in 2006. Steve's a great friend now - he stopped by our site
for a couple of hours to show his own Construction Management
project team what an EMI design trip looks like.

Uganda Project Trip - Part II

Joe and Elaine Griswold, founders and directors of RPU and MSA

 Tuesday February 26^th:


On this project, we’re working with an organization in Uganda called Tree of Life Ministries, which partners with a USA-based ministry called Real Partners Uganda (RPU) in operating a nursery and primary school called the Mustard Seed Academy (MSA). Having been started 4 years ago by a couple from New Jersey, Joe & Elaine Griswold, who were touched by the poor quality of education they encountered unintentionally while on a tourist trip to Uganda, the school is now home to 285 primary school students and 160 nursery school students. While a 3-acre site has been purchased and is being developed for the nursery school, the primary school is still held on a small, poorly equipped site that is leased.

The temporary classrooms where MSA now meets.

 

With the growing numbers and success of the school, the ministry has now purchased a few plots of land nearby totaling 11 acres and has asked EMI to come master plan and design a new primary school and secondary school to begin to move the school into for this coming school year. With their lease expiring on their primary school site at the end of the year, the ministry hopes to have a large classroom building built by the end of the year to move the school into starting in February 2014.

The MSA primary students praying at the end of their school
day. The temporary classroom buildings can be seen behind.

So back to the trip, this morning we finally got to do our programming meeting with the ministry in the morning, and then the surveyor went out and did the boundary survey. We have the blessing of using an RTK GPS survey station on this project, which is a first for me. This piece of equipment can cost nearly $20,000 new, but this is a slightly older model that was donated to us by a company in Canada that knew one of the East Africa office staff members. I walked around with the surveyor as his official ‘hacker’ – which is to say, I carried a ‘panga’ (an African machete) around and cut down some small eucalyptus trees that were blocking him from getting a reading. Eucalyptus trees are very easy to cut down (it only took 2 whacks to bring down a 3” trunk, and not more than a dozen whacks to bring down a 6” trunk with a 20+ foot tree towering above). But nevermind the efficiency of the panga, it made me feel pretty manly to be out downing trees. (By the way, lest anyone think I was needlessly ‘murdering’ innocent trees, eucalyptus trees are an ‘introduced’ species in Africa that can actually damage the surrounding ecosystem. They suck up water like few trees can, and they grow like weeds and tend to choke out other species. The ministry plans to get rid of them on the site anyway, and reintroduce native species.)

Cutting down the trees - I suppose it would look a bit more
impressive if I'd had to remove my backpack to fall the tree.
I can assure you though, it took extreme manly qualities to
chop these trees down... but I was able to do it anyway.



Who wouldn't want a picture with
a friendly foreigner carrying around
a huge knife?

By the end of the day, I was feeling the effects of the heat after a long day in the sun. Apparently, I’m out of practice from being in the UK - my pale white skin serving as sufficient visual confirmation of that.





A beautiful forest...of non-indigenous species.

One other notable thing from the day, I was reading my bible during a brief break in the action (I honestly don’t do that very often, just open my bible and read it for a short spell in the middle of the day), and I came across a very familiar verse in Psalm 51 (verses 10-12). In fact, it was made into a song by Keith Green many years ago – “Create in me a pure heart, Oh God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me from your presence, or take your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.”

Now I have listened to that song many times through the years, but to my knowledge/memory I haven’t really taken notice of the meaning of these verses before. This time however, when I read this passage, I felt it immediately spoke to me in a couple of ways. Firstly, a pure heart for God is something that should produce joy, and God wants us to live in that joy. And second, it takes a willing spirit to be able to experience that joy. Sometimes when I come on trips, I can get very task-oriented and focused on the project, and during any down time I tend to just think about Alisha and the boys back home and start missing them and feeling sorry for myself, waiting to return home. But on this trip thus far, I have really felt a strong sense that I’m to live in the moment, and not think beyond the day I’m living.

Setting up the equipment on site...

I realize that probably sounds very basic to most people, but when I am separated from my family on these trips I sometimes have to battle a dark, inner struggle with missing them and just wanting to get back to them and our ‘normal’ life (ha – normal!). Of course I am able to hide it and still function as a team leader, and I sincerely doubt anyone could know from the outside that such a battle was raging on the inside, but it’s definitely a struggle I wrestle with on project trips. This time though, I really wanted it to be different.

Surveyor Adam and his captive audience. If you ever want to
draw a crowd in Africa, just set up some fancy equipment.

Very fancy equipment - the RTK GPS station.

Alisha and I talked about this before the trip and it was encouraging to come to realize that sometimes, talking and communicating with home a lot during a trip can make it harder on both of us. So this trip, we decided that I should really focus on only the day I was living and not worry as much about contacting home, and in doing so, to have joy despite the struggle. Seeing this verse was a good reminder and confirmation that God was leading us to keep that mindset. Fortunately, the miracle of the iPhone allows us to iMessage all  over the world, so while contact was reduced, we could still get a message to each other when necessary.

And I have to say, thus far, for this trip, it has been much easier to be ‘here’ than it normally is. I hope I can keep it up - one day at a time.

Heading out to setup for the survey

Thursday February 28^th:

Yes, I know I’ve skipped a day. But I think I’m going to be changing the format here and just report on trip highlight and/or lowlights. It feels more interesting to me than a chronology. But catching up to the present, we had our first presentation back to the ministry after the architects came up with an initial master plan scheme.  The ministry absolutely loved it! It was clear that our architectural team was very skilled and had done an excellent job of planning out the site.

However, right before the meeting, Rob and I (Rob is a volunteer architect in the UK office for this year, and a good friend) had a discussion about the site being over-programmed and crowded. One thing that is unusual about this site is that it is split into two, with a piece of land between that is not theirs. Rob and I discussed and ultimately presented to the ministry that we felt it was important for many reasons that they acquire the land between their two sites.  They had previously tried to purchase it, but the landowner, sensing that some westerners were planning a big project, raised his price to absurd levels.

We advised them of the many concerns that we saw with not having the land: they would have to provide double utility services since there would be no way to connect water, power or sewer lines across; the potential exists for a neighbor to move in and build something they wouldn’t want near their site (some past examples I’ve seen happen are a mosque, pig farm and noisy retail and nightclub buildings; there would be security concerns and challenges with having to secure two separate sites; the master plan as they want it ultimately doesn’t really fit on the site, and thus there will be a loss of program.

(L to R) Architects Tim, Rob and Jana work away on a master
plan scheme to present to the ministry.

They heard our concerns and said they would think and pray about what to do. Then this morning, I went out to their apartment to meet with them and they confirmed that they had contacted their board back in the US and all agreed to pursue purchasing the land in between. It meant that our preliminary master plan would need to change, but overall it was a relief as it gave us more space and flexibility to work with.

Meeting with the ministry leaders to present the master plan.

One interesting thing that the ministry is doing this week while we’re here is to finally be able to test their current students for HIV/AIDS. The results from the first day of testing the nursery school students was not perfect, but was very good and significantly lower than the positive rate in this region of Uganda, which has one of the highest rates in the country. They were generally happy with the news, and any students who may have been positive can begin treatment soon. And, with the drugs for treating HIV having improved so much in recent years, the prognosis is actually fairly good.

One interesting, and somewhat disheartening thing about that though is that the fear of contracting HIV has diminished in the region. Since the medications for treating HIV/AIDS have improved so much, it's not necessarily viewed as a death sentence to test positive anymore. So in regards to changing risky behaviours, it's actually becoming a new obstacle in the fight against the spread of AIDS in Africa.

The students head down the road, single file, to the testing center.
Part of me was sad to see it, but at the same time, it was a good
thing that they would find out and be given treatment if necessary.

Happy, though clearly not understanding what they're there for.