Happy October everyone! The time when fall is beginning and the leaves
are turning or it may be even snowing in some parts of Canada. Or if you’re in
Uganda, it’s mild and sunny like it always is. It’s great to live in a place
where it’s nice all the time but we definitely miss the change in seasons. This
coming month also has some big events for our family. October 13 is Canadian
Thanksgiving and it’s our anniversary. I can’t believe we’ve been married 6
years already. I love you babe!
This past month saw a couple of big events as well. On the 12th
I (Jay) turned 31 and on the 22nd Nathaniel turned 4. It’s weird to
me that I have a 4 year old. Also, as I talked about in last month’s update, at
work I got to go on a project trip with EMI to DRC (Democratic Republic of the
Congo). The trip was great and I have talked a bit more about it below. Last,
we have started the construction of the building I am managing here in Kampala,
the new EMI and MAF (Missions Aviation Fellowship) office. We were doing work
on the site in August but now we have started with the building itself.
Here are some pictures of the kids from this past month:
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| Bethany & Nathaniel proud of a coloring project they completed with Mommy. |
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| Beth a bit dirty. The kids had a fun day with sidewalk chalk. |
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| Nate loving his bike! |
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| Nate holding his birthday cupcakes at school. |
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| Some of older kids from the Moms group that Becky hosts. |
Anyway as you may remember, I went on a trip to the DRC for 10 days in the
beginning of September. The trip went well and was such a great experience.
Over the past few days I have been wondering how I can convey how the trip was.
What I’ve come up with is that I will share a few pictures and a story. I could
give some statistics and information but you guys can look that up yourselves.
I want to try to tell about the great people I met in the DRC.
Our team of 8, made up of architects, engineers and construction
managers, made the trip to Beni, DRC to visit a university called The Christian
Bilingual University of the Congo (UCBC). A few years ago, they had started the
construction of a Community Centre which was a huge building (70,000 sf +/-) in
East African standards, that from the start had some design challenges. The idea
for this building was to have classrooms, a library, offices, a radio station, miscellaneous
rooms and most importantly, a huge auditorium. They really wanted this building
to be a symbol to the community, to Beni and to DRC of what Jesus is doing in DRC.
A part of their idea also was that they would manage the construction of this
building themselves while the architect (an American living in Wisconsin) came
over a couple times a year to check-in.
As a sidebar please know that in this story I am generalizing for the
sake of getting the story across.
Anyway, the plan was that UCBC would manage the construction themselves
and involve the community while doing it. Get some skin in the game if you
will. Well it worked. They had men and women from the community carrying
buckets of concrete up eucalyptus pole scaffolding and many other tasks. The
problem with this however, was that they ended up with a building that had some
huge structural issues concerning the concrete.
While we were there we met a man named Honorey who is the Academic
Administrator for the university. He is basically the #2 under the President
and he runs the university. He is a great man who is probably around 40 years
old, grew up in small town DRC, worked as a Bible translator for a while
translating the Old Testament into his local language, speaks 7 languages (I
think) and now has a huge heart to see DRC healed from all the wars and changed
for Jesus. One of the first days we were there, he told us that the
construction of this Community Centre had been such a success for the community
even though it was such a failure in terms of construction. As a leadership
team, they had wrestled with and come to terms with the fact that potentially
some or all of the Community Centre would need to be demolished. It was a hard
pill to swallow. It was hard for the leadership team to be looking at this
building that is so loved, is so huge and has such great potential but at the
same time that is so unsafe and messed up. The leadership realized that they
needed to pause and have an assessment done on the building: to see what can be
saved with some remediation and what needs to be demolished and built again.
Maybe this is a picture of DRC: such a huge country with such great potential
but years of war have really messed up the country. Well UCBC’s mission is to
help DRC change: to be a place where the leaders of tomorrow are changed by
education and Jesus so that they can help change DRC. I left UCBC with a real
burden for what they do and really looking forward to see how Jesus uses them.
I have attached a few pictures from my trip to DRC.
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| The Community Centre Building |
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| The EMI Project Team |
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| One of our architects presenting options to a university leadership group. The other man is Honorey doing some translation. |
Some prayer
requests for us this month:
- Pray for Becky as she continues teaching. She is
super busy (and at time stressed out) and at the same time loves teaching these
kids. She wants to teach but wants to be a good mom as well. Pray for good
management of the expectations of her job and energy to be the mom she wants to
be.
- Pray for me at EMI. For our Construction
Management team as we work together to accomplish why we are here. The men and
the buildings.
