5Crawfords

Late summer family pict This past weekend while on the sidelines of a soccer field watching Jonah and Graysen referee side by side games, I was approached by three missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. We had a friendly conversation, and one where I tried to avoid the normal defensive and/or aggressive posturing we Christians often feel is our ‘duty’ to display in such situations. I led the conversation by asking them all kinds of questions about their home and backgrounds instead of allowing them to ‘drive the boat’ – something I think we often don’t realize we’re doing as we freeze up and focus on trying to remember some key scriptural references we’re going to need to do battle! The average weekend attire these days. Actually, our conversation never really took much of a turn towards the spiritual side of things, though they did ask me if I was a ‘religious person’. Having spoken to Mormon missionaries many times, I know that this is not the...

The EMI World Staff Families (well, most of us) Last week, we were up in the mountains for the EMI World Staff Conference – where all EMI staff from every office around the world gather to connect and learn and get recharged for the work of EMI. The conference is something we only do every 5 years due to the costs for staff to attend, but each time it proves to be well worth the effort and expense - and this time was no different! While a few of our local staff from the field offices were unable to get visas into the US, some of them were! It definitely added to the excitement to have Africans, Middle Easterners and Indians in our midst - in all, the total number of attendees including families was over 260! (By comparison, there were only 135 attendees at last the conference in 2011 – meaning EMI has more than doubled in size in the past 5 years!) Next time, we likely won't hold the conference in the US given the difficulties encountered with visas for our local staff. ...

Enjoying the Summer so far...school is just around the corner! Every now and then, I like to update on our overall perspective of the work we do with EMI. This is one of those posts, and therefore be warned that it breaks from my preferred rule of being 'picture-heavy' and 'text-light'. Actually, there are no pictures...so grab a cup of coffee sometime and sit down for a good read, if you're interested ('good' meaning a lot of content, not necessarily 'quality' content!). Here goes... What is the goal of today's missions? In decades past, the mindset of the church was pretty much that the needs were so great in some places in the world that anyone who was willing and able should go there to help. Build a house for someone. Hold an orphan. Dig a well. Anything, really, would help in these places because the people were so desperate that any help (well-intentioned help, at least) would no doubt do some good. They need and we have, so we sho...

Keep your eyes on the road! Each weekday that we’ve been here, Alisha and the other wife Candy who’s on the trip, have joined in with the ‘One Egg Ministry’ at three of the local primary schools. Both Alisha and Candy have taken turns leading the devotion they present at each school before handing out an egg to each student as a snack. Andy’s wife Carmen has accompanied them, but since Carmen doesn’t drive Alisha has also had the chance to drive here – something she’s very much enjoyed doing as it’s brought back memories of Uganda. But I’ll let Alisha describe all of this for herself… Welcoming committee. This is my second project trip, and like the first, I came not really knowing what to expect.  The One Egg Ministry is a special way in which Andy and Carmen are able to help the community children in the San Francisco area.  Each morning this week I drove our group of ladies (it was fun to drive overseas again!) to three different schools. The school...

Glad to have Alisha with me on a trip again! I underestimated the impact on our project design efforts that the political elements of this project would have. A key reason Andy (the ministry leader) was able to get the land and his NGO status here in the country was because of the relationship he’s formed with the Mayor of Siguatepeque (a town of about 100,000 – up to 200,000 counting outlying areas). The city actually owned the land we’re working with, until what seems like a divinely inspired incident occurred involving the mayor’s infant son helped build a relationship between him and Andy. After that, the mayor found out about Andy’s vision for bringing medical care to the community of San Francisco (a neighborhood of around 4000 within the town of Siguatepeque) and he decided to essentially gift Andy’s ministry the land (they paid a nominal, ‘symbolic’ fee). Having dinner with the team and the Mayor. A few years ago, the mayor’s infant son was very ill. Andy happene...