5Crawfords

On Thursday evening at 5:20pm, I will be flying out of Denver bound for Uganda (via the UK). I'm leading a team of 10 design professionals from all over the country (Colorado, North Carolina, Ohio, Indiana and Wisconsin) and even one intern from Northern Ireland. We will be working 15 km outside of Kampala on the Gaba Bible Institute project Master Planning a Bible college on their new site. A surveyor from British Columbia has already been on site surveying so we have a jump start on the design. We'll spend 8 nights on site gathering information, performing tests on the soil and water and learning all about the ministry so we can help them plan for the future development of their site. I'm really excited to be going back to Uganda, and will spend some time in our East Africa office and visit with friends for a few days after the project trip is done. You can pray for our team's safe travel, unity, good decision-making, and most of all that we can be a blessing to the ...

In our Ducks' gear, at kickoff time for the big game. The Ducks didn't win, but it was a great game and we had our chances. We can't wait until September 3 - the next Ducks' game! This past week, we have had a 'staff week' around the office. Each day, we've spent half of the day in worship, prayer and other bonding and team-building activities. It's really been a great time to connect with the other staff here - something that happens much less naturally than in the East Africa office. Why that's the case is not for any single reason, but for a number of factors that serve to make connecting as a staff here more difficult: Geography - we all live many miles apart since Colorado Springs is a large, sprawling city Cultural - working in an office in the US is naturally much more formal than in Uganda Situational - everyone has their own lives here, with many having family and friends surrounding them (as opposed to life in Uganda, where we were all stri...

Being a part of the ministry of eMi back in Colorado Springs has been both a challenging and eye-opening experience. I have to say, God knew what He was doing. The more we learn, the more excited we are about the impact eMi has on people and ministries around the world. Last week, we had a guest speaker during our morning prayer time – a former client-ministry director from India who is visiting the US right now. She shared how the design report eMi did for her orphanage ministry 6 years ago has been a huge part of her sustaining an onslaught of persecution from the government as it has cracked down severely on Christian ministries in the past year. Because they had our project report, including a master plan with extensive plans and specific details of their plans for their site, the government has been unable to shut them down. And when the government tried to steal land from her by providing a false survey of her land that made it look much smaller, she was able to prove that it was...

The Samfya Bible School Master Plan and project report is almost complete! Well, the last few weeks aren’t the most glamorous part of my job here with eMi, but they are amongst the most important as we’re in the process of finalizing our design report for the Zambia trip. Between the volunteers, interns and myself, we’ve spent over 1800 hours working on this project so far, and it all comes down to these last weeks before the intern semester ends. So, while the project trip makes for more exciting and interesting blog posts, as is the case with so many things in life, the real nuts and bolts of the work we’re doing for the ministry takes place back here in the office. We have been finalizing plans, sending things out to the volunteers and the ministry for review and comment, and now we are incorporating all of those comments and making the final changes to finish the report. We’re really excited about this project and how our design ended up, and are especially excited that the ministr...

The boys out trick-or-treating on Halloween - their first time ever trick-or-treating (it doesn't happen in Uganda)! I have been asked by eMi to be the interim Disaster Response (DR) Coordinator while the current DR Director is on Administrative leave through the end of the year. Being fresh off the training conference in North Carolina, I feel like I have some idea of what's going on but it's definitely a new program to me with lots for me learn. I am excited to be a part of this aspect of eMi's ministry, especially because it is working closely with some other great ministries such as Samaritan's Purse, Food for the Hungry, Water Missions Int'l, and others. So, new to this position, I received a call yesterday afternoon from Samaritan's Purse requesting a small team of water and sanitation engineers to come to Haiti this next week to help them set up a base camp for dealing with the Cholera outbreak that is on the verge of exploding into a big problem sin...

Graysen in the Portland airport, proud to be a Ducks' fan! This past week, for my birthday, Graysen and I flew out to Portland, Oregon to see the #1 ranked Ducks' football team play UCLA in front of a nationally televised audience. My parents picked us up from the airport and drove us to Eugene, where I went to the game with my dad while Graysen stayed back with Grammy at their RV. It was just a quick overnight trip, but we packed it in with a lot of fun and had a great trip. Most importantly, the Ducks' won big and we were loving being at ground zero of Ducks' fever! Now this week, I will be travelling to Asheville, North Carolina to attend the eMi Volunteer Conference and Disaster Relief (DR) training seminar. Attending the conference was a last minute decision but one I am excited about. I will be learning about water purification in a disaster relief context, as well as completing a course on structural assessment of buildings after an earthquake. Beyond that, it wi...

Part IV of IV At the end of all eMi trips, we try to have a day or two of ‘closing time’ where we spend time together doing something fun and also have a chance to talk through and process some of what we’ve experienced on the trip. On my past trips, this has typically been an overnight at a lodge or something small like that. Other eMi trip leaders have done larger scale activities, such as 3-day safaris or other sight-seeing trips. Well, since we were going to be in the same country as one of the seven wonders of the world, I thought the team would be mad if I didn’t get us over to see Victoria Falls. Since it was around 1200 kilometers from the project site, we had to add in a couple of travel days. But when I went to purchase our airfare, the travel agent told me that we would save about $400 per person if we waited to go home the next day! So, we ended up with a four-day closing time that included two full-days of travel! Note: In lieu of pictures in this post, I've uploaded a...