The End of the Beginning

So my last post update pretty much ended at the evening of Wednesday the 8th.  After that, time in Ghana was spent on three things-the final presentation of our work to the ministry, closing time with our team, and then time in Accra with John, Nick, and Becca after the rest of our team left.  Without boring you with too many details, I'm going to try to recap all of these a little bit.  Part of me feels kind of silly going back and writing about all this stuff since so much time has already past, but at the same time, I'm so thankful to have so many people walking with me this summer, supporting me with prayers and love and I want to be able to share this experience, so I hope you enjoy!  Also, if you want to hear a little different perspective from the trip, here is a link to Becca's blog too!  I loved getting to know this girl over the last couple weeks and I think she's pretty great :) Plus, she's a teacher, so she's definitely a little better with words than me!

Anyway, the end of last week was all about wrapping up the details of the beginning of our project trip well so that when we left we would leave the Jesse Brooks Foundation with a great vision for the future and that we would leave in such a way that set our team up to go home and finish the project well.  Thursday was definitely crunch tome for everyone, but especially the architects.  Their portion of the project is really what captures the dream of the ministry and casts a vision for the potential of the project as they lay out the master plan for the land, so by Thursday evening everyone joined the architects' team :) Before we left the States, Bob, one of our project leaders, told us that he thought that the best way to communicate the architects vision for the master plan would be to make a scale model of the site.  To be honest, I was pretty skeptical of this idea when I heard it, the only experience I have with architect models is the movie One Fine Day, and if you've seen that movie, you know might be able to imagine why the idea didn't really seem practical (for those of you missing the allusion, Michelle Pfieffer's character drops a model and it breaks all over).  But luckily, I was not the one calling the shots and Bob's experience paid off! But I'm getting a little ahead of myself.

Before we presented the model, we obviously had to build it, which took most of Thursday afternoon and a majority of the night as well.  I forgot to mention also that we were trying to do this as a surprise for Chris and Tammy, they had no idea we were building the model, which was a little bit of an adventure trying to figure out how to work without them seeing us :) Building the model with the whole group was a lot of fun.  Like I said, I had never done that before and the concept is even a little foreign to me, but it was so cool.  As we cut chipboard and glued little houses together and placed everything on the site as close to perfect as we could, the project really started to become a reality for me.  Also, staying up til 2:30 with our group, trying to stay sane while working together efficiently and having a little fun at the same time was pretty amusing!  Becca had been sipping iced coffee all night and was wired, which was great, and so many fun stories kept the evening interesting!  Here's a picture of the finished product:

The next morning we were up early again to get ready to present the model and the master plan.  On most EMI trips this presentation is a lot like a business meeting, the ministry leaders sit down with the team and get to see what the team came up with and see the plan for continuing work back in the states, but our presentation was more of a celebration with the community.  We had the ground breaking (or "sod-cutting" in Ghana) ceremony on the new land.  All the kids from the children's home came and so did lots of community leaders and even the king came!  It was definitely an interesting new cultural experience.  First off, we were starting on Africa time for sure, 10:00 was the start time on the invite and by 11:30 everyone was finally sitting down to start the ceremony and then the king rolled in around 1ish as one of the community officials was speaking. He definitely stole the show with his entrance.  But aside from that stuff, it was cool to see a celebration with the community and just get to participate in the blessing of the land and see the excitement of everyone involved.  Also, most of us were sporting sweet Ghanaian outfits that we had Pastor Osmund make for us earlier in the week!

The best part of the day was definitely when we presented a board with the drawing and renderings of the new site and buildings to the kids and then presented the model to Chris and Tammy.  The emotion and excitement from both of those things truly captured what God has been working in the hearts of everyone involved in this project! 

One thing that seemed to hit most of our team during the sod-cutting ceremony was seeing the kids on the land as we presented to them the foundation of plans for what can be their new home so soon!  I don't think that I've really shared with you what the home the kids are living in now is like. Obviously we're putting together plans for them to relocate, but the situation is much more than just needing more space.  The current home is located on the outskirts of Aflao, it's surrounded on either side by a swamp which causes flooding during the rainy season and as you drive up to the home you have to go through the town landfill and a cemetery that's in pretty rough shape itself.  Every time we drove up to the home we would see people digging through the landfill and wild pigs and goats running around snacking on trash.  For me, that experience really made it clear to me that as we served the children at the home, we were walking alongside "the least of these."  Getting to see the contrast between that and the hope on the new land was pretty awesome, just another continuation of this new life story God is crafting with this project :)

This is a picture from the road leading up to the children's home taken probably 100 ft from it's entrance.

Once the ceremony ended, like 3:30 (long for us Americans to be sitting, but no time at all for an African celebration) we went back to the hotel, napped for a little while, and then spent the evening debriefing, basically just sharing with everyone what God did in our hearts over the week.  It was amazing again to see how God had worked just a little differently in everyone's hearts throughout the trip.  We all had completely unique experiences and feelings that God crafted perfectly for everyone.  Sitting back, I could hardly believe that I had only known everyone in the circle for just over a week!  The next day it was back to Accra for one last night of debriefing at a hotel on the beach and then the next day our teammates made their way to the airport to head back home.  Like I said before, Nick, John, Becca, and I stayed for a few more days, I'll recap those in the next post.

Home Again, Home Again

Nick, Becca, John, and I made it back to Cololrado safe and sounds this afternoon.  I was hoping to take the afternoon/evening to blog updates from the week, but I ended up hanging out with the interns, grabbing our first dinner together since our second day of orientation, May 24th.  I'm starting to hit a wall and need to grab some sleep.  But I promise PROMISE to blog tomorrow afternoon!  There have been so many amazing experiences that I haven't had the chance to share, I can't wait to fill you all in!

Call Me Boss

We’ve gotten so much work done on the project since Sunday night!  Bob and I were just working on entering the survey data into CAD and now we’ve got the basically the whole Topo map of the site finished.  There are still some small details to take care of back in the states, but hopefully I’m done with it for this week! 

The architects have been working so hard on the master plan and are making great progress!  There are still a bunch of details like drawing up the final sketches for our presentation and adding color to them and stuff, which hopefully we will all be able to help them with.  The plan that they have out together looks great!  They’ve really been able to look at all the needs and the dreams for the future of the children’s home and plan well. The plan includes two phases, the first being the actual children’s home which is actually multiple home units so that the kids are all in smaller “family” settings with adults and siblings in each units, boys and girls restroom units, a utility/kitchen area, and a multipurpose building (really just a roof and open sides like they have at the existing home) that will be used for a school and church gatherings.  The second phase is a bigger school meant to serve the whole community, a real church building, and an admin building to serve to the whole site.   To be honest, before this trip I didn’t realize there was so much that architects did outside of making stuff look nice (yes I am a typical civil engineer…) but it’s been cool to work alongside them and get to see another discipline close up.

The rest of our civil team has gotten all the water test done.  We found the both the wells that a couple families who live near the land are drawing out of are really clean, which is great! Both the wells are open so we were worried that there would probably be bacteria or E-coli growing in them, but they are both clean!  That’s really encouraging because we know then that the well that the children’s home will dig isn’t tapping into contaminated groundwater! It does look like designing some parts of the water system could get tough because there is a lot of clay on the site, but hopefully when we get back to the states, Josh and the team can figure out a good design for the soil type.

It’s been really sweet to get to see the hearts of Chris and Tammy Brooks as we work alongside them to plan this children’s home site.  God has been using the image of bringing life from death so much this week as we talk with them.  They started this foundation nine years ago when their daughter, Jesse, was killed on her first missions trip in a car wreck and they are so legit! They’ve allowed God to use them to bring life to so many kids instead of being swallowed up by the sorrow that comes with death on this earth. A really clear picture of this for me was yesterday when we took some time off of working to go to the children’s home and hang out.  We had been over there Sunday to just play with them so yesterday we wanted to do something for them, so we decided to take some songs to sing with them and brought Becca’s children’s Bible with us again.  Becca, Nick, and I taught the kids a combination of camp songs and worship songs with lots of motions and the kids even sang some songs to us, which was cool!  For those of you requiring proof that I actually was allowed to lead singing-video is coming when we get back to the states :) After we sang for a while we read them a story from Becca’s Bible and had some fruit roll-ups with them, it was a blast! 

But, the really reason for this tangent, was to say that this was the first opportunity I had to see all the kids from the home gathered together at the same time.  Whenever we’ve been there before everyone has been kind of all over doing their own thing.  While we were all together singing I realized for myself what I had heard before, that most of the kids in the home are over 12.  Really there are only a few little guys running around.  Living in reality, most of the kids probably won’t be adopted out of the home, but will leave the home when the “grow up” and set out in Aflao ready to live the rest of life.  I realized as we were belting out worship songs that these kids have the potential to be the next community, church, and national leaders in Ghana.  As Chris and Tammy work with local pastors to find quality people to raise up these kids in the Lord and send them out as adults, not only are they bringing life to the kids themselves, there is potential to reach so many more as they go on to lead lives of action in a world that needs Christ! 

Over the course of the last couple of weeks we have also gotten to know all the pastors in the area who are involved in this ministry.  There are a bunch of churches and pastors all working with Chris and Tammy to bring the children’s home into reality.  It’s been really awesome to have time to just sit down and talk with them and to have to opportunity to see the same God that I know back in the States walking with them in Africa.  Even though we live worlds away and our lives look really different, God is the same God, teaching us many of the same things.  Also, thanks to Pastor Samson, they all call me Boss now, which is fun.  Honestly not quite sure how that happened, one day Pastor Samson just started to call me that as a joke and now they all do, it makes me smile-hence to title of this post :) 

Playing Catch Up

Hey All,

I can’t believe it’s been over a week since I last posted! Last week we hit grind time with the project details and I just never had a chance to sit down and blog.  I’m going to try to put up a few different posts for every couple days. Thanks for bearing with me and being patient.

Quick outlook for the next couple days-John, Becca, and I are hanging in Accra for the next couple days. John has some meetings with different people in Accra over the next couple days to discuss some future projects and details about the possibility of launching the next EMI office in West Africa. Today Nick is going with John to his meetings and Becca and I are going to a school in Accra to help out.  She’ll be in her teaching element, hopefully, I don’t get in the way too much :S

George, the Ghanaian from our team, is really going to be helping us out over the next couple days; in fact, we are at his office right now using the net.  I’m so thankful to have him here!

Becca and I have to leave soon, so the next post is one I wrote earlier this week and I don’t really have time to go through it and edit, so no criticism if it isn’t perfect haha

My Ghanaian Weekend

Hello from Ghana! 
Yesterday was a big work day for out teams!  It’s cool to have such a big team because so much gets done!  Yesterday we had 4 groups going in different directions-surveyors, civils, architects, and another group that went to the children’s home to read and play with the kids there.

I woke up early (6AM!) with the survey and civil teams and went out to the site so that we could get some site work done before it got too hot. It was a beautiful morning-tons of sun, no clouds, a little breeze, and not even too hot until it hit 11 :) luckily we were done by noonish.  I had a blast, honestly, I think surveying is kinda fun (you’re allowed to call me a nerd).  Also, I stood out in the sun turning regularly for 6 hours, you can imagine the wicked tan I got!  Seriously, no burning and I rolled up my sleeves so my lines aren’t even that bad, except or on my feet because I was wearing shoes so I have half Chaco line from the states half sock tan which translates to ugly foot tan!

Because EMI mostly does design work on trips, all of the site work is assessment and not really implementation work, so while we surveyed our civil engineering team evaluated the soil types around the site, found some area water sources and took water samples.  The architects spent another day in meetings with the ministry leaders presenting ideas and honing in the “master plan” for the site.  The master plan is really just a big overall plan that encompasses the full vision that the ministry has for their future development.  The goal is to get this plan completely ironed out by the end of this week and gather all the details of the area, the site, and the construction resources available.  Then when we get back to the states we will put together the design for the first phase of the plan. 

Once we got back to the site we had lunch and then wrapped up the site research.  We took the water samples and started the tests that will take two days to process.  Then the work for the day was pretty much wrapped up but there was still a lot of daylight left, so a bunch of us went back over to the children’s home to hang out.  That was really cool because I haven’t really had the chance to interact with the kids yet.  Becca brought the children’s Bible that she had earlier in the day and the kids loved it, so we read with them for a while. Quick side note: I love the kid’s Bible that Becca brought.  It covers most of the “big” Bible stories from the Old and New Testament, but it’s so cool because it presents all of the stories in the scope of Christ and the Gospel.  Here’s a link to it!

After we read with the kids we played football with them (AKA soccer)-SO FUN! I’m not much for soccer, but I had a blast!  I didn’t get pictures, but Josh did, so look for them sometime early next week! Then when we got home we had the night off.  I played cards with a couple of our other teammates and learned a new game that I’ll be bringing home!  Think the luck of up and down the river with the strategy of setting other people in screwed up rummy AKA some fun family game nights in the future.

Today was church!  We all split up between five different churches.  Nick, Greg, and I went to church on the coast and thought we would each have to say a few words before the sermon, but turns out we got there are were on the bulletin to preach!  We each tried to stretch what we had prepared as long as we could, not a shining moment for me, but Nick and Greg both rocked it and redeemed it luckily :)

Other than that, today has been pretty chill.  Becca, Sarah, and I have been chilling together and working on blogs while everyone else naps.  Tonight is another work night, Bob and I are entering all the survey data into AutoCAD and tomorrow I’m doing perc tests (water flow in dirt) tomorrow and who knows what else.  Can’t wait to tell you all about it soon :)

Praise God for:
--Safe travels to Accra and Aflao
--The health of our team so far
--The free communication that has been happening between our team and the ministry
--Guidance of the Holy Spirit in our plans so far
--Relationships that have begun to be built on our team

Please be Praying for:
--Continued health of our team
--Continued guidance of the Spirit in planning
--That God would start readying our hearts to come home and bring our new hearts and lessons with us

This pic is from the roof of our hotel, I haven't really been able to take any of people, but they're coming soon hopefully.

Here's the Skinny

Hey All,

I only have a couple minutes before I have to head to bed, but I wanted to give you a quick update.  We don't have internet at the guest house we are staying in like we were told we would, so we're working off John's SIMcard in a flash drive thing when we can, sorry I haven't been able to post more.

Quick update:
--We made it to Aflao yesterday :) right after we got in to the city and had our bags unloaded we had to go present outselves to the king of Aflao-TRUE STORY.  He's a realy king, his dad was king and so was his and so on, he get's to rule the government in Aflao, mainly settling disputes and deciding land zoning and ownership, but I'm still not quite sure how he relates to the national government....pretty cool though right?!
--After that we got to go to the children's home and see the site where the children are living now.  Our project is to design a new facilty for them on another piece of land becasue this one floods.  That's a pretty long story, good one, quite thought provoking, hopefully I can write about it later.
--Today we spent most of the morning at the new site and started the surveying process.  We walked boundary lines and measured them, then in the afternoon the architects had meetings with out team leader and the leaders of the local ministry to start getting a vision for the project on paper.  Even though I'm not an architect I sat in on this, it was amazing to hear the dreams for the land!
--Tomorrow I'm going back to the site with the other civil engineers and the survey team, we're leaving at 6AM so I have to get to bed soon, but that means we'll probably be done a little early, so hopefully I can write a post on my computer that's a little more fun and less business and the upload it tomorrow night.

Check back tomorrow night, of at whatever time this is for you (afternoon I'm thinking?)