5Crawfords

Part II of II The Thorn Every year around Easter, New Life Church here in Colorado Springs puts on a production called ‘The Thorn’. It’s the story of Jesus in theatrical form, and covers a brief synopsis of the history of the bible with the focus on Jesus’ life, death and resurrection. Last week, I went to see it while Alisha took the boys to a similar but rated-G version of the production called ‘The Crown’. I have to say, it was one of the most powerful things I’ve experienced. The quality of the production was on par with Broadway – I couldn’t believe how well done it was, with a cast of nearly 400 and professional dance-fighters, pyrotechnics, and other special effects. Seeing the reenactment of Jesus’ flogging and crucifixion in person was something I’ll never forget. In the production, Jesus wore a lead vest to protect him from the whipping, but apparently, it doesn’t protect him from 100% of the blows. Anyway, it was very graphic and violent so it was certainly not for kids, but...

Part I of II Winter Project trip (Uganda) update Interns Phil and Alex have been working hard at finalizing the project report from our trip to Uganda in February. Our goal is to finish by mid May, but we are well ahead of schedule and should be done by the end of April. The volunteers did a great job of getting the majority of the design work done in country, so we’ve just been working on putting together all the drawing sheets, writing the written report, printing out the colored renderings and making sure all the different components are in place and consistent with each other. As we’ve been working on it, the ministry has been forging ahead with the work on site, so we’ve been feeding them individual documents such as the site grading plan to ensure that they can move forward while they are waiting for our final design report. It’s great to be involved with such a proactive ministry who has already started implementing our design! Disaster Relief EMI’s Disaster Response (DR) progra...

An aerial shot of the master plan for ARU Thursday, February 3 Sleep has been hard on this trip. I’m not totally sure why, but maybe it has something to do with bunking in the same room with 9 guys – at any point in time, at least one of us is snoring. I can’t complain too much as I’m sure I’ve probably taken my turn. This morning after breakfast, the two interns, Alex and Phil, and I went into Kampala to return the hand auger to our office. Overlooking Kampala - our old 'hometown' This time, when we got into the area where we used to live, I saw a number of my Ugandan friends around. It was so fun to see these people who were such a big part of our daily lives when we lived here. The looks on their faces were so fun for me to see. Their eyes widened and huge smiles came on their faces. I saw our head of security Stephen, our administrator Semei, Joyce the seamstress down the street, Martin and Nasser the boda drivers (Martin bought my boda (motorcycle) from me when I left and...

A couple of the nearby village kids who delivered our food supplies each day. It's always amazing and humbling when the local kids help out in hosting the EMI teams. The kids love interacting with Westerners and the team is always so blessed to talk and play with the local children. Monday, January 31 Today was our first real work day. I think everyone was a little anxious to get to it, so after morning devotions and breakfast, the team split up into their various disciplines and went to work. The civil engineers split up – two of them took the hand auger out to dig bore holes for the percolation tests (these are the tests we use to figure out how well the soil will disperse the wastewater), and the other two went down the road to test the closest water sources, which happened to be the well at the church we visited yesterday and a nearby neighbor’s well. The architects got back to work on the master plan and drainage plans. We got a great look at how things are currently draining...

Looking down on part of the site from our work room. The pit latrine and showers that we all used during the week are seen in the middle distance (small grey buliding with red roof). Part I of III Travel – January 27-28 For some reason, leaving this time was especially hard. I should look back at previous blogs to see if I’ve said that before! Part of the reason I think it was hard this time was because of how it went down. Since my flight wasn’t until late in the afternoon (5:20pm), I had much of the day to kill before leaving for the airport. So I decided to go to the school to say goodbye to Alisha and the boys. Well, I think that was a mistake as it made me sad to see them in their school environment and realize that I really knew little about their normal school day (since I never see them there). Then seeing them get choked up saying goodbye to me was really hard too. In the end, Alisha walked me to my car and I drove off a blubbering mess! I decided that the best remedy for thi...