Updates and ‘lowlights’
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| A nice British family |
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| The Colchester Baptist Church, where EMI-UK's office is located. We're in the back corner and stare out the window at brick walls, but we're very grateful to the church for giving us two rooms to work in, rent free. This is also our home church - we really like the people of this church. |
We have a list a mile long to accomplish for year two, many
of it renewing exactly what we had to do for year one. It’s an expensive
undertaking, but we are hopeful that staying another year will make a big
difference in EMI’s ability to mobilize British design professionals to the
developing world. We’ve made some big strides of late, including a partnership
with another ministry that very well may ensure that EMI-UK lives on beyond our
time here. So we’re excited about that possibility!
We also are hopeful that we’ve found a school for Jonah and
Graysen next year. It’s a Church of England school (again, like Brodie’s
school, a strange mix of a religious school while still being a public school
with no fees). They haven’t been officially placed yet, but we are feeling good
about the chances after having met the headmistress last week. It has been our
top prayer request for awhile to get them in a school – they very much want to
go to school here and we agree it’s probably best for these two little
socialites.
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| Picking up interns at the airport is becoming no small feat! |
Beyond that, I just picked up our next batch of interns at
Heathrow Airport today! They head out on our office’s next project trip to
Ghana in a couple of weeks. Mike’s leading this team since we have to return to
the USA. Also, it looks like we will be sending out three new staff families to
EMI offices overseas by the end of the summer. A lot is happening here, but yet
there’s still a lot of work to be done.
My next trip to Uganda in September is almost fully
recruited! I have a bigger team (12) and I am really looking forward to working
with YWAM on their new primary school project! And, a quick update on my
previous project in Uganda, that ministry (The Mustard Seed Academy) has been
in contact and they are moving forward with starting construction, with the
goal of moving the school to the site we just designed by February!
Ok, now some ‘lowlights’ from around the Crawford household… J
#1 – “Three parents”
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| A make-shift campfire, orchestrated by Jonah. |
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| A makeshift BBQ, also orchestrated by Jonah. |
Something Jonah struggles with at times is parenting his
brothers. It’s probably the thing that gets him in trouble the most. He usually
has good ideas and is right more often than wrong in what he’s saying, but it
just doesn’t work for a kid to parent his siblings, especially when the parents
are right there in the room! Recently, Jonah and Graysen got into it over this.
Jonah was parenting Graysen, who responded in a ‘physical way’ to communicate
his displeasure. So we gave them each an appropriate consequence – Jonah to his
room where he couldn’t parent, and Graysen out front pulling weeds. Just as we
were thinking to ourselves of how perfectly we had solved the situation, we
heard the argument re-erupt. So we head up into Jonah’s room to figure out how
they could be arguing while separated, and lo and behold, we found Jonah at the
window shaking his head at his window telling Graysen that he’s not pulling the
weeds correctly! ‘Stop parenting me Jonah!’ came the inevitable reply.
#2 – “Pride cometh before the fall”
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| Brodie and I went to London last weekend to meet up with a couple of guys from the Colorado Springs office who were passing through on their way to a project trip in Kenya. |
I asked Brodie after
school today how his day went. ‘Great’ he said. ‘Really?’ I pressed. ‘Mom told
me that you had detention.’
‘Oh, well yeah, that.’‘Why did you have detention?’
‘Because I was making jokes in French class.’
‘Tell me what happened.’
‘Well, the teacher was reading off scores from our recent quiz and one of the smarter kids got a low score. So I yelled out ‘Waaaaaayyyy!’. (side note: ‘Waaaaayyyy!’ is what soccer fans here yell out at a game when a player has made a silly mistake, such as firing a ball way up into the stands when trying to take a shot on goal, or tripping over the ball).
‘Oh, so what did the teacher say?’
‘Well nothing at that point, but a few moments later, she read out my score and I got the exact same score as the other boy. So the entire class yelled, ‘Waaaaaayyyy’ and starting laughing. It was pretty funny.’
‘Did your teacher laugh?’
‘No. That’s why I got 10 minutes detention.’
#3 – “Soccer fail”
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| Graysen is a passionate little man, and he wears his emotions on his sleeves. |
After the last game of his soccer tournament this past
weekend, Graysen walked off the pitch in tears. They were outclassed in the
tournament, losing 3 games and drawing 2, and scoring no goals as a team in any
of the games. The last game, they lost 6-0 to a team of kids a year younger
than his team (a couple of their players I have no doubt will end up playing
professional soccer someday – unbelievable talent for 8 year olds. Arsenal had
a couple of scouts at the tournament, so it’s even possible they could be
signed away soon.) Anyway, I tried to encourage Graysen that he had actually
played well and really hustled and tried his hardest against what was nothing
less than world class talent. Graysen was having none of it though, and said
through his sobs, ‘Stop dad. I don’t want to have a good attitude. We did
terrible!’ So much for the theory that all young boys want in life is to please
their father. Graysen is clearly internally motivated! (By the way, the U8 team
I mentioned ended up winning the whole tournament playing in the U9 bracket!)
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| This is out our back window yesterday...at 9:45pm! It's weird to not have true darkness until around 10:30pm. |
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| Brodie's just found a new team too, so this was their first time playing together in a tournament. The season starts when we return from the States. The season runs Sept thru May. Hard to believe he'll be playing U13. |
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| Graysen's football team - Stanway Villa FC U9 Spartans |
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| Brodie turned 12 a couple of weeks ago. Hard to believe. I don't want to talk about it. :) |
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| The brothers got him some 'unusual' fruit for his birthday! |
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| Our long-time friends Jason and Julie DeJong stopped through for a short visit. Jason had a work trip to London, so they came to see us. Fun to see friends from home on this side of the pond. |
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| We also had a visit from some friends from Colorado Springs! Hugh and Rachel Jones came to the UK for a holiday, and stayed with us for 4 nights. So fun to have them around for awhile, though we missed out on seeing their 3 young daughters. A couple years ago, Hugh started an EMI-style ministry called 'Law as Ministry' - yes, lawyers can be Christians too! :) |
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