5Crawfords

Day Three (Feb 5) I actually slept really well considering I was sharing a bed with another man! Actually, the bed is so big it really is like a separate bed. Think king size x 1.5, so one of us can get in and out of bed without the other feeling a thing – one of the benefits of a foam mattress. One of the few benefits I should say - ha! We set out for the Bo hospital campus after breakfast and our morning worship time. John leads worship and Mark from Mercy Ships was able to find a guitar to borrow this week, so that’s been really cool. Since it is Sunday and none of the maintenance workers were expected to be at the site, we decided to do an unescorted walk-through of both the Bo and Kenema sites so we could wrap our brains around the remaining work that lies ahead. At the Bo site, we once again ran into a wrinkle – the site map from Google Earth that we had drawn was somewhat inaccurate, with a number of new buildings to add. Since we have internet on our phones here, we pulled up ...

Sierra Leone Trip II Part I of III - Travel days (Jan 31 – Feb 2) I’m sitting in London in a hotel (since I had an overnight layover this time) and I am amazed by two things. One, even though I’ve spent a fair amount of time in the UK over the past few years with EMI, I am once again reminded how different the cultures are. As with many cultural differences, they are subtle and many times difficult to even describe, but they ultimately serve to make you feel very out of place. So when I travel to the UK, I typically try to be quieter, less obvious in what I say and do, and just try to blend in. I do become somewhat of a target for being taken advantage of though since if things don’t go as I think they should, I am very unlikely to buck the system. For instance, if a sign says something is one price and when I get to the counter they charge me for more, I will probably just keep quiet and pay because I don’t want to be that obnoxious American demanding my rights overseas! (Not that all...

ORIENTATION EMI operates on a semester system, largely to match our intern program to the college system here in America. We have 3 semesters or trip cycles that begin in February, May and September each year. This past week, 26 new interns and staff stayed at a local retreat center outside of Colorado Springs to go through a very intensive, 9-day orientation to EMI. Topics covered include history of EMI, future strategic planning, personality tests, culture training, testimonies, and many more topics designed to introduce incoming personnel to our organization. I teach the culture training sessions, along with two other staff members here. It's always a great week of getting to know the new people some, though it is definitely exhausting for them. We went through this orientation two weeks before we moved to Uganda, so it was a pretty stressful time of life! Still, we thoroughly enjoyed it. PROJECT TRIP In just over a week (January 31st to be exact), I depart on another project tr...

Earlier this morning, our CEO here at EMI, Jim Hall, went home to be with the Lord. He was 57. Jim passed after a very brief bout with the reoccurrence of his melanoma cancer first diagnosed in his foot in Sept 2010. He had been given the all clear for just over a year, but unfortunately, the cancer returned aggressively in mid October. Jim and his wife Nancy had flown to Florida to be with family a week ago Saturday and at that time he was doing fairly well with the help of medication (for pain). On Tuesday they had their family Thanksgiving dinner. But that night, he suffered a stroke and lost mobility on his left side. His symptoms then progressed rapidly, and his communication became less and less. By Saturday, he was no longer responsive and it was clear the end was near. We are all in a bit of shock here that things happened so quickly – it was just earlier this month when we learned that his cancer had spread and that he’d be stepping away to battle it, and he joined our office...

It's nearing the end of the 'semester' here at EMI (we call them semesters because we match our project seasons up roughly with the college schedule here in the US). That means projects are getting ready to finish, interns are wrapping up their time, and project leaders are ramping up for next semesters trips. Here is a summary of what's been going on at EMI as well as around the Crawford household recently... EMI's CEO, Jim Hall It's been a tough last few weeks for EMI. Our CEO, Jim Hall, had to step down a couple weeks ago after learning that his melanoma cancer (diagnosed in Sept 2010) had come back and spread to a number of spots and organs. We were all heartbroken to learn this news, as Jim had been given an all clear just this past August. Jim is a great leader whose relational style and steady demeanor have been a huge blessing to our organization for the past 3 years. Jim was a big factor in Alisha's and my decision to stay on with EMI after returnin...

The EMI team (More pictures at end) Monday Sept 12: It felt like a typical Monday morning on the ship this morning. The weekend is mostly off for people on the ship (from my estimation), so things were pretty low key. But Monday morning, by 6:45am the dining area was bustling with people with a very ‘back to work’ atmosphere. For our team of course, we worked through the weekend so the only difference was breakfast started at 6:30am instead of 7:30am. The report is coming along really well - we may come back to the office 90% done. That would be great, and would allow intern Mike to work on a number of other projects for other project leaders who have a backlog of open projects. For me, it would allow me to get an early start on recruiting for my February trip as well as work on a few other small projects I would like to get to. This afternoon, intern Mike and I took a ride into town with our Mercy Ships host Dulce, who is Honduran (though she sounds and seems as American as we are). S...

The storms make for beautiful sunsets in Freetown, Sierra Leone Saturday Sept 10: Today was a bit of a day on cruise control. The team is feeling good about where we’re at so the urgency of getting through the work has relaxed a bit. The data gathering at the sites is mostly complete, so now it’s a matter of compiling the information into recommendations and writing the report. When we woke up this morning, it was a very gray and rainy day. I had been scheduled to go out to visit a previous EMI project site that has now been constructed, but because of the foul weather the Liberian man who was to pick me and intern Mike up called to say that the trip was cancelled. So, we all worked on the report around the lounge areas of the ship. After lunch, I took 4 of the guys into town to do souvenir shopping. It’s always fun to see the different personalities of the shop vendors in different countries around the world – some places are more aggressive, whereas some are passive. In Sierra Leone...