La Finca

Young Life.  Most of us know these people.  Whether we have supported, volunteered, helped, or attended - I am amazed at how many people have been affected by this organization.  Their vision is simple:

Every adolescent will have the opportunity to meet Jesus Christ and follow Him

What I have recently learned is that this vision expands beyond the boarders of these United States.

This month, I have an opportunity to lead a project team to "La Finca" a ministry of Vida Joven (Young Life).  Since 1988, Young Life has been working in Nicaragua.

Nicaragua is a country that has experienced "underdevelopment" as a result of natural disasters, wars, and political instability.  One result of these influences is a median age of the population of 24.2 years.  This compares to the median age in the USA of 37.6 years.  In countries where the median population is younger, youth struggle with alcoholism, drug addiction, prostitution, gang involvement, and apathy regarding their future.  Without hope for a future, and without resources to overcome the desperation of their situation the youth of Nicaragua find themselves floundering.

While the overall situation in the country is overwhelming, Vida Joven seeks to provide an opportunity for the youth of Nicaragua to meet Jesus Christ, offering HOPE.

Vida Joven works in schools and communities building relationships with youth, inviting them to attend Club meetings where they have fun and encounter the wonderful message of the Gospel.  La Finca is an extension of that ministry.  Located in the mountains of Nicaragua and doubling as a working coffee farm, La Finca offers a unique opportunity for the Youth of Nicaragua where they can escape the struggles, heat, and desperation of the City and experience the beauty of God's creation, great food, extreme fun, adults who care for them as individuals, and the opportunity to meet Jesus Christ.
Many of us remember our summer camp experiences.  Imagine if along with all the other memories you have, you add the first time you saw a flush toilet, or the first time you had three meals a day?  This creates a wonderful opportunity for youth.

Here is a You Tube video about the camp:


The eMi design team will be supporting the ministry of La Finca by assisting with three specific technical issues they are facing.

1. A pedestrian bridge - the camp is split up by a lake
2. Drainage/sediment control - during the wet season, there is a large sediment load that fills up the lake.
3. Graphic design for the Camp Master Plan - As the camp looks to the future with their Master Plan, it will be helpful to have a three dimensional model.

We have a team of 12 of us who will travel to Nicaragua from the 21st to the 28th of February.  I will be trying to provide some blog updates as we move through the week, so keep an eye out for that!

I would really appreciate your prayers for our team as they seek to give of themselves, and learn more about what God is doing in Nicaragua.

EMI Orientation

Wanda and spent this last week at EMI orientation at The Hideaway near Monument, CO.  It was an awesome time that is honestly a little hard to explain.  It was a time to learn about ourselves, about Engineering Ministries International (EMI), about those around us, about experiencing different cultures, about poverty, about working as a team, and about a lot of things that I won't remember anyway.  EMI orientation week is done twice a year at the beginning of the fall and spring terms.  The main purpose is to welcome in and train new interns and new staff.

I was excited for the week for a few reasons - mainly getting to spend time with Wanda while my parents (God bless their giving spirits!) lived in our house and played mommy and daddy for our three wonderful kids.  I knew there would be things I learned as we looked at how our personalities, spiritual gifts and strengths worked together - and as we looked to learn more about living in different cultures, but I was impressed with a number of other things as well.

We spent a fair amount of time sharing our stories/testimonies.  In seven minutes we were to share the story of our lives.  For those of us over 30, there are a lot of things that have happened in our lives.  I could easily spend 7 minutes on dirty diaper stories, or stories from times I have seen the power of our creative God through nature, or stories of the times that our powerful God has seemingly saved my life and protected me, or stories of the times that our provider God has miraculously put food on the table and a roof over our heads, or the times that I have chosen to turn my back on God and walk my own way, or the times that those closest to me have shown grace and forgiveness, etc, etc.  So which stories do you share?

As 22 year old interns and 50 year old staff shared about their lives and God's movement through their lives, I was amazed at the openness, and at the brokenness of ... us.  We are broken, in so many ways by so many things.  Listening to the stories broke my heart.  To hear the pain that people have experienced, the broken relationships, the bad choices, the bad circumstances - And then to hear the beautifully rich stories of restoration, forgiveness, grace, and love.  It is good to remember that we are broken, and so is everyone around us.  But it is also good to remember that there is forgiveness and restoration.  That is the heart of God.  And I can't remember how many times during the sharing of stories that my heart filled up and my eyes overflowed with tears.

23 new staff and interns came together a week ago and played a silly name game, each wondering who these other 22 people were.  Today, Wanda and I said goodbye to 21 new friends.  Tomorrow, those friends will begin to spread themselves all over the world.  To Africa, Canada, UK, India, and the US.  Some back to work, some to partnership development, some to internships, all called by God.  Some of these new friends we will see soon, some we will see in the next few years, and some we will probably never see again. I am reminded of "The Four Loves" by C.S. Lewis:

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.”

Thank you fellow Orientation survivors for being vulnerable with us.

Final Reports

For the past couple months, I have been leaning heavily on our interns, and our volunteers to complete the report for the Promesa School in Cusco, Peru.  We are finally into the last few days of pulling things together and packaging them for the ministry.  I have been blessed in a few ways through these months.

First of all I have had wonderful interns to work with Josiah and So Hwan both came to EMI with completely different backgrounds, but their dedication to the work and integrity were very encouraging.  So Hwan is an Architect student who came from South Korea, and Josiah is a Mechanical Engineer.  I greatly enjoyed working with both of them!

Second was working with the volunteers.  We had a great team of Architects, Engineers, Surveyors, and Construction Managers that did a huge amount of work.  One of those volunteers is an Architect from Alaska who basically turned some of his staff over to us to work on some of the final renderings and a fly through of the proposed school.  Here is the video of the fly through.



Very cool stuff!  And here are a couple of the renderings.

As you come up the access road to the campus

Central stairway/plaza

Near the top of the campus looking back into the valley

Again, I was amazed at what the team produced.  Our hope is that the time and effort that was invested makes a difference in the lives of the kids in the Cusco area that will maybe someday get to walk these stairs and gain an education that gives them hope for a physical future, and that they can experience Christ and gain hope for a spiritual future.

New place - new job - new title - new ?????

It has been two and a half months now that I have been working at Engineering Ministries International (eMi).  If you don't know the story about how we got here, please feel free to wonder through the blog and learn a bit about our family.

A recurring theme these last few months is new.  We are in a new town, we have new grocery stores, our kids are in new schools,  we have new doctors and orthodontist, we have a new church, I have a new job, and to add to the mix - I have a new title.

I have recently been named the Director of the Latin America (América Latina) office for eMi.  This brings up about a million questions starting with "What does that mean?".



It also causes me to pause and think about new things.  When I first think of new things, it seems that my first thought is Christmas and Birthdays.  New things often are associated with gifts.  Some new things don't feel like gifts.  Sometimes a new thing is very hard.  Our daughter Joanna has been going to a new school.  If you were to ask her, she would clearly let you know that she is NOT enjoying this "gift" of a new school.

When I think of all the new things that sit in front of me, I have an overwhelming sense of not knowing, of certainly not having the answers, but also not know the questions.

As Christians we have also been given a new thing.  It is a new life.  It is a wonderful gift, but like my new title, it comes with questions "What does that mean?", and like Joanna's new school, it is not always an easy gift to receive.  Sometimes we would rather not have that gift.

It comes with instructions, so does my new job.  Sometimes I don't want to read the instructions.  Sometimes I don't want to ask those wise and willing mentors that have gone before me.  Sometimes I just want to work it out myself.  How many of us have opened those Christmas gifts and quickly started building - hardly taking time to throw the instructions to the side.

So what do we do with new things - the exciting, the hard, the sad, the painful?  I believe that there is a reason that God puts new things in our lives.  I find that I naturally focus on the gift that I have been given, but I wonder if I miss the point when I do that.  I think that God desires that we would keep our focus on Him, not His gifts.  That means that my response to His giving of a gift is not to rip into it and figure out how it works, but to go sit on His lap, kiss His cheek and hug His neck - and then thoroughly enjoy His gift.  Isn't that what we love about giving gifts to our children?

This is a good reminder for me as I begin this New thing in a New place with New people.  These are all wonderful gifts - sometimes they are hard gifts - and I need to spend time in my Fathers arms thanking Him, resting in Him, and enjoying Him.

It is OK.  He doesn't expect me to be able to instantly know what to do with these new gifts, but I do believe that He wants me to trust Him and enjoy these gifts.

Thank you Father, Thank you that you give good gifts everyday.....

Back home

It has been a few weeks now since I have returned home from Peru.  As I look back on my time in Peru, there are a few things that stand out:

• This was my first trip as co-lead.  I learned a lot about what goes into the balance between getting the project work done and ministering with the team.  While there, I spent a lot of my time on the survey crew, which was good for getting work done and moving forward, but there were relationships that I missed because of it.
• I was with the part of the team that spent nights with the missionary family.  This provided some great perspective on living in Latin America with a family.  Example was when Ruth (mom) sent her two little girls off to school on the public bus.  I could see the struggle in her of wanting to find that balance between safety and releasing our kids.
  
• I was impressed with the importance of language for communication .  One afternoon I found myself crammed with four other adults and two boys in the backseat of a five passenger small pickup.  None of them spoke a lick of English.   I was riding with the pastors' extended family and I so much wanted to hear their story and encourage them.  But all I could do is laugh with the kids and pass the time with very basic small talk.
• It was amazing to see the body of Christ displayed by 13 people who didn't know one another, but then challenging as to why we don't see that in our churches.

I experienced these things through the lens of the Latin America re-launch.  How do we launch an office while slowing down to disciple staff and volunteers?  What will the challenges look like for each of our families?  If we are truly going to be an office open to local design professionals, language is critical, how do we balance language with work? From the beginning, is there a way to build the culture of an office to encourage functioning as the body of Christ

I am well aware that I don't have the answers to any of these questions.  I do, however, feel that questions like these are the right ones for us to be asking.

It has been very good to be home.  For those of you who were praying for us, thank you.  

Now I am starting to prepare for the next trip.  In February, I will be leading a team to Nicaragua to help out a Young Life camp as they look to make improvements to their camp.

Presentation Day

Today was the first day since we have been here that I didn't bounce in the back seat of the 4-wheel drive vehicle to get to the new site for Promesa, it was the first time all week that I didn't climb up and down the sides of mountains over 11,500 feet in elevation, it was a day for pulling all the work that had been done in the past week together and preparing for a presentation to the Pastors of the local churches who are the leaders of Promesa.

The team of 13 architects, engineers, surveyors, and construction managers spent this day combining the information, challenging one another and supporting one another.  It was brought up a few times that these eMi trips become a wonderful example of the body of Christ.  We all come to the table with different backgrounds, different giftings, different interests and different ideas.  But we also come with a common calling.  We are all there because we know that Christ called us to this work.  And so we set aside all the things that separate us in the professional work world and we experience unity in the body.  Isn't that Christ vision of the Church?  Why do we have to travel halfway around the world and live with strangers for a week to experience this?

Hard at work - in the homestretch

Enjoying some pastries at a local
Panaderia

It has been a wonderful week with a wonderful group of men and women.


Here is one of the graphics that we used with the ministry this evening to show what the school could look like at build out.

Thank you for all of you who have been following this adventure and covering our team with prayer.  We have had a wonderful trip, and it has been awesome to get to spend a little bit of time with some of the Quechua kids.

Deep into Design

It seems like the days are getting longer each day that we are here in Peru.  Doesn't have to do with the season, but more a function of the amount of work to be done.

The site that we are Master Planning for a new school that at full build out will have a capacity of around 1,000 kids is a 35 acre site that is very steep with multiple valleys intersecting the site.

From the dirt road at the bottom of the picture above, we are working on laying out a new road that would provide access to the grove of trees that looks like it is kind of glowing.   That grove is about an acre in size and is about the flattest land on the whole site (18% slope!).

The access into the land and the slope of the land are the greatest design challenges that the team is tackling this week.

Today, we will wonder into an artisan market here in Cusco and enjoy some of the local excitement.  After that, we will be trying to get the design wrapped up so that we can present to the ministry Saturday night.

On Wednesday, some of our team visited Machu Picchu, and a handfull of us spent the day in Cusco.  Here are a couple pictures from that day.

in the Plaza de Armas

Yummy meat market!

Team members John Pillar and Anita Wong

Bill Tatum sharing some of the conceptual plan with the ministry.

Praises:  

• On going health and safety.  Our team continues to be healthy and safe!
• As the team works more and more together, great relationship are being built

Prayer requests:

• Today should be the final field day.  Pray that the survey equipment cooperates (we have had some issues) and that the field crew can collect the necessary information.
• The late nights and long work days are starting to wear on the team.  Pray for excellent sleep when it is time to sleep, and alertness when it is time to be awake.
• Pray that when it comes time to communicate the teams vision of the Master Plan to the ministry that we can clearly communicate through the language barrier.
• Pray for the family that we all left at home.  They have been missing their family for a week now.  Our families miss us and are ready for us to be home.  Pray for God's grace for our families.