March 2018

Our 2016 design project trip to Honduras has been built! This
community center is operational and serving the nearby
people in a variety of ways - church services, occupational
training, food programs, and more.

The first quarter of 2018 has been one of the busiest times of our 10 years at EMI. While my work lately has been centered around establishing EMI as a Global organization, here are some project highlights:

EMI led 14 projects in January and February, with project teams going out to Guatemala, Uganda, Liberia, Gabon, Vietnam, Kenya, Angola, Dom. Republic, India, and Haiti.
Here in Colorado, EMI's US Office sent teams to help design a Kenyan hospital, a conference center in Ghana, two hospitals in Angola, another hospital in Gabon, an electrical design project at a ministry center in Tanzania, and an irrigation system rehabilitation in the Dom. Republic.
We’re also mobilizing a new staff member to Myanmar, where he’ll oversee the construction of a new runway project for Mission Aviation Fellowship. This runway will eventually turn a 3-4 day drive to access a remote village into a 1 hour flight!
We’ve received our first request from post-war Iraq and Syria for a rehabilitation project that includes septic systems, boreholes, water lines, agriculture, and electrical service for a newly planned community for Yazidi refugee families.

All the while, we are moving forward with our goals of hiring 50% local staff in the coming years. In early 2018, our Uganda office has hired 3 more Ugandan engineers/architects, and our India office has hired 2 additional Indian engineers. We’re very excited by all these developments and the growing international diversity in EMI!

I visited our EMI Canada office in late January with Graham
Frank, EMI's Development Director. At the airport, we ran
into former EMIers Scott and Jennifer Peck, on their way
back to Cambodia, where they now live and work
alongside the EMI Cambodia office team!

Meeting with the EMI Canada staff

The EMI Canada office (after hours)

The EMI Canada team took us out to Banff for some outdoor
ice hockey. It was just a chance for them to humiliate the
visiting Americans. Beautiful nonetheless!

In early February, I attended a conference in Orlando for
mission groups who raise personal support. This couple has spent
over 30 years training local nationals around the world how to raise
support in their own context. Fellow EMIer Randy Larsen joined me.

I went for a run by this rural lake in Florida...looked harmless...

...until I saw the 'Do not feed the alligators' sign. Does that
double as a 'Do not Swim' sign?

And then I saw this guy. Yeah, definitely not going
for a swim in Florida.

At home, Alisha is making her way through the school year in her kindergarten class on the Air Force Academy base. It’s been a tough transition as her heart is still to first be ‘wife’ and ‘mom’, but she has nonetheless seen God work in and through this new job.

We blinked, and suddenly Brodie and Jonah are full-fledged into the high school scene. Fortunately, they have become very involved with the youth group at our church. They also attend a small weekly bible study with kids from a few different high schools, and are active with Fellowship of Christian Athletes too. We’re so thankful that God has provided these Christian environments for them to plug into!

Graysen is figuring out middle school, with all the ‘fun’ that brings – both literal fun and ‘fun’ fun, for those who can remember their middle school years! Fortunately, he too has plugged into the church middle school group and he’s recently signed up to be baptized at church. And, soccer season is starting!

Alisha and I also attended the wedding of EMI UK board
member Michael Day to American (and former EMIer)
Suzanne Cox in Seattle. Michael is Scottish, if you can't
tell. It was another great cross-cultural event for EMI!

Michael is a family friend!

We went into downtown Seattle for an afternoon while there
and stopped by the original Starbucks. Yep, that's the sun
shining on our faces in Seattle!

You can pray for our family to remain open to God’s leading in our lives while continuing to grow in our faith and love for him. We consider being a part of what God’s doing through EMI to be such a privilege. The world of missions is changing as rapidly as the world is changing, however, and sometimes it feels like we at EMI are trying to keep up. Some of the changes in missions are very good – moving away from the strong Western influence and funding model, including ‘all people to all people’ in the Great Commission, working to empower and grow people instead of just giving handouts, etc.

However, some changes are not so good – governments are becoming increasingly adversarial to Western Christian influence; the social media age serves to promote ‘quick fix’ projects and agendas, leaving long-term, healthy and sustainable efforts in the shadows; education on the evolution of good mission practices has been slow to take hold, causing mistakes from the past to be repeated, etc.

In all things – both family and EMI related, we’re so thankful that God is in control and that we don’t have to worry about the outcomes. Our biggest prayer request is that we don’t get in His way! Thank you for your support that enables us to work at EMI – and for your prayers that the work we do is effective in helping the church around the world.