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 :)