Monday, November 23, 2009
A Double Marathon Day
The Ministry of Surveying
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
A Journey To The Land Before Time...
Saturday, October 24, 2009
Babies...and What Am I Doing Here?
Sunday, October 11, 2009
A Little James 1:27
This weekend, me and the other Kampala interns took a visit to Jinja (about an hour and a half away) to visit the interns there. Their work consists more of managing construction of projects that eMi has designed in the past, mainly with a group called Arise Africa. Some of them work out in the bush during the week on a site, which always leads to some great stories. But anyway, we went to visit this weekend. Friday we got to have a Uganda-wide intern hangout time, and then Saturday morning we got some coffee at an excellent place in downtown Jinja. If you're ever in Jinja, go to The Source cafe for coffee, and then grab a cinnamon roll from Ozzie's across the street. Amazing. But after than Saturday, we got to go visit the orphanage across the street from where the Jinja guys live. The Jinja interns have established a relationship with the owner of the orphanage, so they've been helping out over there. They spend time hanging out with the kids, playing soccer, and helping build a tree house there. The tree house is really more like a fort. The plan for it was already pretty big, and when you get 4 construction management guys involved, you can imagine what happens. But it's a great ministry there, and some of the kids who started out their lives being abandoned in the bottom of pit latrines are now followers of Jesus. At least one I know of is going around preaching at other orphanages now. Amazing.
So Saturday afternoon we just spend some time playing soccer and building the tree house with some of the orphans. One of the interns likes likes baking cookies and giving them to people (his cooking baking ministry, as he calls it), so he did that for the kids. We had a great time, and it was great to just spend some time around the kids and just love them. For kids that had such a rough past, they seemed really joyful, and it was cool to see how they interacted with some of the Jinja guys. The whole thing kind of made me think of the concept of adoption, and what that looks like both spiritually and physically. I've considered adopting (possibly internationally) later in life, but that was only part of what I saw. At one point before I left, the pastor at my home church in Mobile preached on spiritual and physical adoption and how God has adopted us as his children. He used his own experience of adopting two kids from Russia to show how God brings us in as His own. Really cool, and it led me a lesson I've been learning a lot lately: that salvation belongs to God alone. We don't do anything we obtain forgiveness of sins, it's all God working to draw us to Him. In the same way that a adopting parent comes to a child and chooses them as their own, God chooses us as His own. I'm not going to get into the election/free will deal, I'm just saying that it shows God's glory even more in the fact that He is the one that does everything in salvation, and that we are too sinful and fallen to really come to Him, so He comes to us.
So enough theology for now. Overall we had a great time at the orphanage, and I wished we could have stayed longer. Hopefully I'll get to go back, and maybe I can find something similar to help out with here in Kampala. We'll see.
On a side note, this past Friday was Uganda independence day! Uganda is 47 years old as an independent country. Pray that God continues to work here in the coming years. There's a lot going on here, and a lot of things will be happening in the near future with elections and such. Pray that God will just work in the hearts of the leaders here so that innocent people won't have to die and that more people will come to know Christ in this country.
As far as eMi work goes, things are coming along. I should have the grading plan for the school finished by Monday afternoon, and I'll begin work on the water and wastewater systems. A lot of that has been thought out by the civil volunteers, but there's some fine-tuning and rethinking to be done, plus I have to make it all fancy by drawing it out on the computer.
Well, I hope you're all doing well! I'm sure fall is on its way now, so enjoy it. That's my favorite season, but I'll suffer for the mission by being here and missing it ; ) Honestly, I'm okay, it's not like I haven't experiences 22 falls already or anything. Ok, well until next time!
PS: If you notice, I've started a list to the right of my updates that I'm calling my "Post-Africa Resolutions." These are just things that I want to put into practice in life based off of what I've learned here. Maybe you all can hold me accountable to these things once I get back.
PSS: Also, if you have any kinds of questions about Uganda or anything I'm doing here, feel free to shoot me an e-mail. If you don't have it, it's kylestevenbryant@gmail.com
My Own LOST Experience
Well here I am again trying to fit weeks of experiences into a few paragraphs. I'll do my best. But overall, I think I need to say this: you had to be there. It's hard for me to really relate to you how things have been here in Uganda. But here we go.
This is the boat we took to the island, not too bad!
The village where we had the meeting
So the trip itself was really interesting. We left from a dock in Entebbe (where the airport in Uganda is, which is right on the lake) around 7. The boat we took was a safari ski boat, which is apparently a lot better than the inflatable boat that was used for the last trip they took. The boat took about an hour to reach the island, where we the met the leaders of the local village. The last trip out there MAF met with leaders of another village on the island (I think there's 3 total) to explain some things. We did the same thing this time basically. Apparently in the past mzungus (what white people get called here, it's not derogatory, it's just what they say) have bought smaller islands on the lake and then kicked off all of the Ugandans and made it their own private resort. Awful, I know. Well we wanted to make sure the locals understand what we're doing, so we had a village meeting. These are interesting. Introductions are a big thing here, so about 30 minutes of the meeting consisted of just that. Once we were all introduced, the meeting itself went smoothly, and we were done in about an hour and a half (not too long, I guess). After that we went out to the field of the proposed airstrip, and started looking for survey markers that we had been told were there. After a brief scare of not finding them, we found them and got to work, which ended up with us getting a decent line. After this, we had to walk a total of a few miles through tall grass to plant bamboo poles to mark the line. Praise God for His protection from snakes, we didn't see any! There were plenty of locals with us to help, so we had fun trying to speak a little Luganda (their language) with them. They thought mzungus speaking Luganda was hilarious. So after we finished the line, the MAF guys with us had already staked out where they wanted to strip based on the property line. We did some simple soil tests to see if the ground was appropriate for airplanes to land on (it'll work) and then the locals got to work on clearing the land. The cool thing about the strip is that it will be completely owned by the community, and MAF will just use it. That way it can be used for all types of community development. So after some clearing, it was time for us to go. Overall, it was a great experience. I see some great ministry going on in the island villages in the future.Some boats on the shore of the island.
Well, I think I'll keep this update at that. I'll be updating soon about some other recent occurrences. I hope you're doing great wherever you are, and thank you again for your prayers and support!
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Adventures of a Lifetime...(now with pictures!)
So in my last update I mentioned that I was about to go on my project trip. Well that’s exactly what I did and it was great. Just to fill you in, eMi’s main deal is their project trips. The way those work is that a group of volunteers from around the world (mostly the states, but also the UK, Canada, Australia, South Africa, and so on) joins some eMi staff and interns on a trip to a developing area to do some engineering and architecture work for a ministry that needs it. Trips last around 7-10 days and range from really rural areas to areas that are a little more developed, but still need help. I think the best way for you to understand is if I just describe my trip.
So the team arrived on Tuesday (Sep 15) night. It consisted of 2 civil engineers from Georgia (oh yeah! close enough to Alabama, even though they went to Auburn), an architect from New Zealand, an architect from California, and a surveyor from Pennsylvania. The eMi staff was me (civil intern), an architecture intern, a structural engineering intern, and our project leader, Janet. The ministry we were working for in Masaka, Uganda morning picked us up Wednesday morning. We were working for a group called Pacific Academy Outreach Society. They’re an extension of a Christian school in Canada. PAOS opened up a school in Kibaale (in Uganda) a few years ago and has around 1000 kids going there now during the day. They bring in all kinds of kids from well off to impoverished and provide great Biblical education. They also offer sponsorships for kids as well (see here). Great ministry. Anyways, they want to expand to a new location to offer education to senior secondary school girls (about 11th and 12th grade in the US). The new school will be in Masaka and will be a boarding school that will also have a teacher training center as well as some agricultural training. So we arrived on site the first to some rain, but soon cleared up and we started surveying the first day! Quick start. At first I thought I would be working with the civil engineers for the work, but things changed and I ended up running the instrument for the week. At first I was a little let down, but I soon began to really enjoy surveying on the trip, so no regrets. The remainder of the week consisted of surveying all day, dinner at the hotel or PAOS staff house at night, then devotion time with the team and then bed. I should mention that PASO spoiled us all week by putting us up in a super nice hotel. I felt like I was on vacation ; ) But by the end of the week we had surveyed all the necessary points and generated a topo map (elevations and such) of the area. That was our part. The engineers worked on water supply and wastewater disposal all week, and the architects got the master plan and building designs together. In the end things looked great and the ministry seemed really blessed by the services we donated to them.
At the end of the trip, we spent some time at Lake Nabugabu besides lake Victoria. Great place. We just spend one afternoon and morning there as a time of processing over the trip and sharing. We also got to take a boat ride on the lake which was interesting, especially since the driver had to keep bailing water out of the boat. We had a safe boat ride, though. Nice and relaxing.
After the project trip, I came straight back and left for a safari! It was so much fun, and will definitely be a lifetime experience. We saw so many animals (lions, hippos, giraffes, etc.) and had a great time. We stayed in tents and had warthogs and hippos hanging around the camp at night, so it was really cool. We also got to see some rhinos up close and personal (about 50 ft away!) and ended up getting caught up in a rhino fight! Pretty crazy really, and it involved some running and hiding in trees. Sounds dangerous I know (probably was) but the tour guided acted like it happens a lot and thought it was kind of funny. Who know really. Not sure if that would have been ok in the states, though. Hey, it’s Africa, right?
After all that excitement, we arrived back in Kampala to get back to normal work. I’m excited to start getting plugged into the community here now, and I’m looking forward to doing some engineering, too (don’t worry I’m not just surveying all semester).
Thanks for all your prayers, and keep praying that God will use me here for whatever He desires, that He would teach me and grow me, and that He would work here in Uganda. Also pray for the team volunteers that are back home now, that God would use their time here to grow them and give them opportunities for the gospel and encouraging others.
Ok, well until next time!
Kyle
PS: So as I write this I just finished an exciting day on an island in Lake Victoria. Yes an ISLAND! Did some survey (kind of) work down there for a group called Mission Aviation Fellowship. Crazy time. I’ll blog about it very soon!