Friday, March 18, 2011

Grace’s Mission and Our Mission


It was hard to resist the feelings of hopelessness that crept in as we drove around Haiti, but the people and mission of Grace Intl was inspiring.  Their vision is to bring opportunity to the Haitian’s and in doing that empower the people.  One of the ways they are trying to do this is by building communities, not just homes.  In the tent village that Grace runs, we saw that they were applying expectations to the people who lived there and enforcing strict consequences.  It seems simple, but I think this is a huge value to the Haitian people.

Part of the tent village at Grace


Soccer game in Grace village


Our mission was to provide Grace with a master plan for a new community.  We achieved that, but could not give as much detail as will be needed in the future for this site.  EMI has worked with Grace for several years.  It is very likely that this partnership will continue and we will be involved in helping them realize this long-term vision for the community at Lafiteau.

Our EMI team


The beautiful planning work or Dan Ford.


Our presentation at the end of the week to Grace

Be Flexible. Really.

The EMI staff really meant it when they said expect things to go awry and that we must be flexible.  Our trip required a lot more flexibility that most.   

First, it was a surprise that we would be riding back from the airport with another group (Fuller Center) that was there to help the same ministry we were, Grace International.  The result was this –


35 people plus their luggage


Upon arriving at Grace Village we found out that their other vehicle was broken down.  So that meant our team and the Fuller group had to coordinate transportation the whole week between our respective schedules.  The bus became known to the EMI team as “the cage.”




All those people came out of the cage

That first night we found out that the Mardi Gras celebrations would mean roads through Port au Prince would be blocked off.  Sunday and Monday we could not drive through past 3-4 pm and on Tuesday we could not drive through at all.  This meant we had to push our visit to our work site back to later in the week.

EMI was involved with Grace Intl on a previous project in the fall and that site (Lambi) is fairly close to our new site (Lafiteau).   Our team had planned to go to Lambi and do some survey stakes at that property.  Because we could not get to Lafiteau, we went to Lambi at the beginning of the week (we did not have to travel through Port au Prince to get there.) 

Yes, that is a large pig next to the surveyors


In a way I think this was a blessing in disguise for a few reasons:

There was a big rain event the night before our visit to the Lambi site and this helped the engineers and our client, Grace Intl, to see that drainage at this site was a bigger problem than first realized.  Basically it’s a flood plain and not a good site to build on. 

Construction on the first house at Lambi started a few weeks before our arrival and when we got out there, we saw that it was not located according to the plans we gave them.  It was enough off to knock out space for several homes.

Because of these two things, some of our team spent half the week re-designing the Lambi site…not what we had intended to do during the week.





Another little surprise at Lambi.  We spent a whole day putting stakes with flags in the ground to mark out the road and some drainage ditches.  That night we found out that some kids had gone around and pulled them out of the ground…we think mostly because they wanted to play with flags.


 Later in the week, on Lafiteau, some of the guys that went out to walk the perimeter of the site were met with men with guns and they were not happy that we were there.  That night the team found out that the site was 13 acres.  We were told it was going to be 105.  The next day it turned out that we actually did have the whole 105 acres.  But this information on how much property we had was not a promise.  Grace is currently working on securing the property. 

Beginning stages of planning


At Lafiteau



Meeting with Grace to talk about the site


Friday, January 28, 2011

First weeks with eMi

After the long drive from Virginia, I arrived in Colorado Springs to begin my internship with Engineering 
Ministries International (eMi).  I spent the first week in orientation with the 25 other interns and some of
the eMi staff.  It was a week full or praying, learning, and team building...and not a lot of sleep.  I have loved hearing people’s stories and what God has done in their life to bring them to this time and place.  





At the end of the week, many of the interns dispersed to their overseas offices for their term with eMi.  Nine of us are staying here in Colorado Springs, one of eMi’s sending offices.  We will all be going on project trips during our term and 5 of the interns already left this week for Kenya, Uganda, and Nicaragua.  
This past week was the first week in the office here in Colorado.  We spent the first three days doing civil engineering seminar, AutoCad training, and general office orientation.  The rest of the week was spent with my project leader and making preparations for our team’s trip to Haiti in about a month.  I am looking forward to the work that I will get to help with!  More to come.