June 2018

The EMI Global Office

The past few months have been an all-out push to get all the documents ready for our June board meeting where EMI Global would be officially formed…and, it’s now happened – EMI Global is a registered charity in Colorado! …So what’s the big deal?

As I’ve shared in the past, one of EMI’s 10-year goals is to bring in people from all nationalities of the world to be a part of every level of the ministry of EMI – volunteers, interns, staff, and leadership. With this, we want the overall direction and vision of the organization to be formed and guided by people from every country, not just Americans. By creating EMI Global, there is now a vehicle for that to happen.

Locally led, EMI Network conferences are now taking place
around the world!

An example of how EMI has changed...this is a recent
staff photo of our EMI Uganda office!

Because of all my work in this globalization process, I haven’t traveled as much in 2018 as in recent years. But that’s not to say we haven’t been involved in the work of EMI around the world! Here’s a small sample of the more than 30 projects EMI’s worked on so far in 2018:

* A new, family-style children’s home for 50 orphans in Nigeria, including a new primary school.

* A retrofit and repair project in India for a Christian training center that sustained damage in a recent earthquake.

* A rescue and transition center in Haiti for young girls rescued from a life of slavery and abuse.

* A ministry center in eastern Uganda for Christian leaders in East Africa.

* A strategic master plan for a new Bible College near Hanoi, Viet Nam.

* Continued work on several hospital projects in Kenya.

Beyond projects, one thing we have been stressing in recent years at EMI is our unique position to not only provide strategic design help for the ministries we serve, but also to bring renewed spiritual focus to the work we engage in. One example from a recent trip in the Caribbean illustrates this focus.

The EMI team arrived to help a very large, well-known ministry with a community water project they were struggling with. The system was broken down, and the necessary repairs weren’t readily obvious. But on arrival, our team noticed a different kind of ‘repair’ project that was perhaps even more urgently needed.

Early in the trip, one of the EMI team leaders asked the ministry leader what kind of spiritual goals the project had, to which the leader replied, “Well, this is really just a water project. We don’t have any spiritual goals.” To our team, it was a sad comment, and one that was overlooking some deep spiritual needs of the community.

So, over the course of the next week, on top of digging in and figuring out how to restore the water system to full functionality, our team went about intentionally modeling an attitude of discipleship and care for the people they were serving. And what they found was, that kind of spiritual engagement and just talking about Jesus seemed to be just as impactful as getting the water system up and working. And as significantly, the renewed spiritual awakening of the people seemed to give them a deeper level of hope that they could do something about keeping the water system functional in the future!

At EMI, we value both the physical and spiritual impact of our work. One without the other is something short of what we feel Jesus modeled. Sometimes it’s easier to talk more about the physical help we provide given the readily apparent needs we see around the world…but in that, please don’t miss our deep desire to bring spiritual renewal and hope alongside the physical relief!

The work we do is physically helpful, but it also provides a
unique opportunity for spiritual conversations and discipleship.

Fixing a water system for a community is one step. Training
them in how to sustain it is another. But engaging them on
a deeper spiritual level is what unlocks hope.

As a family, we Crawfords are doing well, but the teenage years amount to a busy season of life! School let out in late May, and even more so than the boys, Alisha is enjoying her summer break after a very challenging year of teaching kindergarten at a school on the Air Force Academy base. But mostly, she’s very excited to have accepted another teaching job at a school much closer to home next year – just a mile from our house!

Summer time hike - start at 14,115 feet and go down!

Fortunately, this mountain has a road to the top!

The boys are all in summer sports – Jonah (basketball) and Brodie (soccer) with their high school and Graysen with joining a new soccer team after his team that I’ve coached for 7 years finally had to split up. As for me, I’m fully recovered from a hamstring-tweak and pulled calf muscle that saw me miss my entire men’s soccer league this spring. Booo! Most of all though, we’re thankful that God has blessed us with good health and a deepening faith in His love and care for each of us!

Brodie is 17 and driving now!

Graysen took 6th place for 7th graders at the district track meet
in the mile...though he claims he doesn't like to run. (This
picture was one of the regular meets - the district meet had
over 30 runners!)

I actually started coaching these boys 3 years
before this picture...

...and now some of them are heading off to high school in the Fall!
Such a special group of boys. Go team Villa!

As we officially move into our ‘middle aged’ years, for the past year or so Alisha and I have started deliberately doing two things together: taking walks most days in the evenings, and getting up early to spend time reading the bible and journaling. And it’s no surprise that I think we’d both say that the past year has been one of the most significant spiritually for each of us as we’ve grown to deeper levels of understanding of God’s love for us…and a lessoning reliance on our own feeble abilities to navigate this broken world on our own. Though God’s used a variety of challenges to teach us these things, in retrospect, we wouldn’t exchange any of it for the growth we’ve realized in our own faith journeys and in our relationship with him.

Growing old together isn't so bad!

My parents and sister came to visit this month!