5Crawfords

The new Samfya Bible School Master Plan Part III Thursday 9/9 This morning during our devotional time we had asked Donald (the pastor from New Zealand who has been our main point of contact) to give his testimony. One of my favorite parts of eMi trips is hearing the team member’s stories. When it’s someone from another country it’s especially interesting to hear how God has impacted a life in a distant land. After his testimony, he also shared a verse with us from Colossians 3:2-4: “Think about the things of heaven, not the things of earth. For you died to this life, and your real life is hidden with Christ in God. And when Christ, who is your life, is revealed to the whole world, you will share in all his glory.” It was a good reminder for me to not focus so much on the world around me, but focus on the things God would want me to focus on. I was thinking how much time I waste thinking and talking about things that really aren’t important, and how I could do a much better job of think...

The smoky skies make for beautiful sunrises at Samfya Bible School, overlooking the waters of Lake Bangweulu The eMi team with the Samfya Bible School Board and Pastor Donald and family from the partnering church in New Zealand  Part II Monday 9/6 We had our first devotional time this morning since all the testimonies were done. We studied Psalm 139 about how God knows us so completely, down to every action and thought, and the ramifications of that. It’s both comforting and a little scary to know that the creator of the universe knows every thought we have and has our days numbered. For me, it’s been a part of the process of letting go of fear, which plagued me for most of my life. But getting rid of that fear and placing confidence in God’s will for my life has allowed me to do things like this project trip – it wasn’t too many years ago when I wouldn’t have been caught dead flying overseas for 2 weeks. So today, we met with the ministry leaders (four local Zambian men who compris...

Part I Traveling - Weds. 9/1 thru Fri 9/3 Well, it’s finally our first night at the site. After 4 plane flights totaling 22 hours in the air and an 8 hour drive this morning, we have finally made it. In all, it took 52 hours to the minute to get from my front porch in Colorado Springs to stepping out of the car at the Samfya Bible School campus. Me with interns Rachel (left) and Melissa in the Johannesburg airport in South Africa, posing with Nelson Mandela - he's a lot taller than I was expecting! Just a few highlights – probably the worst part of the flying was from Denver to Washington DC. It was only a 3 hour flight but it was pretty bumpy. Fortunately, the 17+ hour flight from DC to Jonhassburg was relatively smooth for most of it. It’s actually 2 flights – 7 ½ from DC to Dakar, Senegal, where we stopped for an hour and a half but couldn’t get off the plane and then back up in the air for an 8 hour leg to Johannesburg. In Dakar, some people got off the plane and others joined ...

On Wednesday morning around 8:30am, myself and two interns from the Colorado Springs office will board a plane out of Denver Int'l Airport bound for Zambia. We pass through Washington DC where we'll meet up with our full team of 10, and then a 17 1/2 hour flight will land us all in Johannesburg, South Africa before the final 2-hour flight to Lusaka, Zambia. From there, after spending the night we'll drive the final 8-hours to Samfya. We'll return to the US on September 16th, landing back in Denver around 10:30am. Please pray for: our team's travel to be safe (and no motion sickness for me! :) ), the flight out of DC to not be impacted by either Hurricane Danielle or Earl, our design to be a blessing to the ministry, the lives of all 10 of us team members to be changed, for God to use us as He sees fit to accomplish the work He's doing at the Samfya Bible School. Please also pray for Alisha and the boys back home, especially Alisha as she continues to figure out...

One of the things I'm really excited about in being at the eMi headquarters is possibly getting involved with our disaster relief program. For the past couple of years, we have been partnering with other aid organizations such as Samaritan's Purse and Food for the Hungry. How it works is, very soon after a disaster one of these organizations will call eMi and let us know that they may have need for our help. Our DR coordinator, Scott, will then begin recruiting for whatever techincal needs the ministry has. Once eMi receives word that the trip is a go, the team of volunteers is mobilized and travels to whereever the disaster is to either scope out what needs to be done, or to actually meet a techincal need. The week we arrived, I was asked by Scott to join at the last minute on one of these DR trips that was going out to Haiti. They needed one more structural engineer to fill the team that was going down to evaluate 360 houses to let the owners know whether or not they were saf...