YWAM Base, Costa Rica

At the beginning of March, I (Dan) once again had the opportunity to support another great ministry by helping them realize the dream God has given them for a new facility to make and train disciples.

This time the team served Youth With A Mission (YWAM) in Guanacaste, Costa Rica. The ministry is led by Diego and Salla and their team currently includes Kimo and Laura and some other DTS students. From their base in the remote town of Corral de Piedra (go ahead, try to find it on a map), they conduct Discipleship Training Schools (DTS) to equip participants with skills in a particular area of Biblical concern (for example, justice and mercy) and to prepare them for cross-cultural ministry.  They engage with the rural community to improve the quality of life there, work with young, single mothers to teach them not only to care for their little ones, but to care for themselves by restoring their dignity in Christ, and also strive to strengthen family relationships in a place where infidelity is very common. They host teams from the United States to help with a Bible distribution program to hand out Bibles to every household in the entire province of Guanacaste! Everyone at the YWAM base in Guanacaste instilled in me as a project leader an excitement to be a part of what God is doing through them and also great anticipation for what more He may do with the new facility we designed.




Kimo and Laura on the left with their little ones, two DTS students in the center with Diego and Salla on the right.

Last November, Sarah, the kiddos, and I had the opportunity to meet Diego and Salla at the YWAM base since it is here in Costa Rica. When we arrived at the site, we talked a while about the history of the vision they have had for this site. They had recently purchased a 5-acre site only about 100 yards from their existing base. Their desire is to develop it to include a multipurpose building for up to 200 people, DTS classroom space, a preschool, and student, team, and staff housing, along with all the necessary support spaces for these functions. They told us about the previous professionals they had hired to provide a design, but who didn’t really listen to their needs. They explained how the nonbelieving architect didn’t understand the spaces or the relationships required for a Christian ministry. They told us how this single professional attempted to design all of the infrastructure needs for the site that would normally take multiple specialized designers. In the end, all of the investment they made in these previous designs was wasted. I was able to respond by describing our team which would have at least 8 specialized volunteers, and that our architect and planner are both principles in their respective consulting firms. They would all be dedicated Christians who understand the exacting requirements of Christian ministries. As I listed all the expertise that the EMI team would offer, the look of amazement slowly grew on Salla’s face until at last she said, "That is exactly what we need."


Out team of professional, specialized, volunteer designers and engineers working together to develop the Master Plan

For example, the missionaries requested a "prayer room." However, even they didn’t know exactly what it would look like. Through the master planning design process, the "prayer room" evolved into a "prayer area" located at the heart of the site. It was placed where everyone needing to move from one part of the site to another would have to pass through it. This emphasizes the central place of prayer in all that YWAM does and will do on that site. This is a prime example of how Christian professionals who understand the functions of ministries can provide compelling design solutions to the glory of the Lord. Here are some preliminary renderings of the idea.

Conceptual rendering of the prayer area located at the center of the site.

Apart from the master plan, we provided a design for the multipurpose building which will be the first they will build. It will be one of the busiest buildings on the site. YWAM will use it as everything from a dining hall to a concert hall, from a gymnasium to a sanctuary, from a café to a conference center. They even wanted some classrooms for their DTS and other ministry training. Additionally, it will be used both by the people on the site as well as the entire community. Therefore, Diego and Sala wanted it to be open and welcoming to the community. I am really excited about this design.


Volunteer architect, Jim, working on the design of the multipurpose building

I am also excited about how EMI will be able to support Diego and Salla through this building process. This was the first full project I’ve done in Costa Rica and the proximity promises to allow us to do even more than usual to help YWAM realize their vision. For example, during the trip, I could confidently tell Diego and Salla that this project trip was just the beginning of a long-term relationship to which we are committed, not only until they are occupying this building, but until they can completely develop their entire site according to the calling and vision that God has given them. This is something we have never really been able to do before, but we hope to capitalize on the proximity of the ministry in order to provide the most comprehensive professional services possible.
 

The team taking a much deserved coffee break from their hard work

Missionaries are good at missions. They aren’t always as good at implementing building projects. But almost every missionary encounters himself in the midst of a building project that could potentially distract them from their ministry. I don’t want that to happen to Diego and Salla. I want them to be able to focus on their ministry using the gifts God has given them while we focus on realizing their vision for the ministry base using the gifts God has given us.

For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. We have different gifts, according to the grace given to each of us. If your gift is prophesying, then prophesy in accordance with your faith; if it is serving, then serve; if it is teaching, then teach; if it is to encourage, then give encouragement; if it is giving, then give generously; if it is to lead, do it diligently; if it is to show mercy, do it cheerfully. Romans 12:4-8

Since I am so proud of our team, I want to include some of our final renderings.  We produce these to give to the ministry in order to help them raise support for the construction costs of the project. In fact, we were able to personally put some of these renderings into the Diego's hands just a couple of weeks ago. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do:

This is the Master Plan with the Multipurpose Building shown in the lower left (North is up).

Here is another view of the Master Plan from the North

Here is a view of the Multipurpose Building from the entry road.

This is a view of the Bonfire Amphitheater at the back of the Multipurpose Building.

We hope to be able to update you soon on the progress towards starting this exciting building project!  Please pray for YWAM Guanacaste as they raise the funds to make these plans a reality!

Nazerene District Center, Panama

My (Dan's) project this term was to serve the Nazarene church of Panama.  The Church of the Nazarene in Panama has 34 established churches with an additional 25 developing churches.  As the church has grown, it has become necessary to provide a place that all the Nazarene churches in the country can use for pastor training, youth camps, and other country-wide programs.  The church in Tocumen, Panama only occupies about one quarter of the land they have, so the administration decided to use the additional land for these country-wide facilities.  Twelve volunteers and interns traveled with me to Panama for a week to start the design.




Architect's rendering of the final Master Plan

I know that, as I write about my projects, I often write about the Lord’s provision.  I have now led my 6^th project trip, and the Lord has provided in amazing ways each time.  He has consistently been faithful to provide in surprising ways in each of my trips.  At the risk of being redundant, I want to share again about His provision.

Some of the project team working at the site

There was a very real possibility that we may not have had a single architect (the most critical volunteer) on the team until the fifth day of the trip.  God provided.  The volunteer usually responsible for determining the soil bearing capacity didn’t know how to do it.  God provided.  Another volunteer didn’t complete his responsibilities after the trip.  God provided.  It is always so amazing to see how God provides for the completion of all of the necessary parts of every project.  It happens every time, but it never ceases to bring me to my knees in dependence and praise.

It was the rainy season, but everyone had a great attitude.

Another aspect of our ministry that I haven't shared much about before now is our ministry to the volunteers of a project team.  Although my main focus in leading projects is providing a design for a ministry that enables them to better reach the poor for Christ, I also try to take advantage of the time I have with the volunteers.  Throughout the project week, we do several things to keep our focus on God as the one we are ultimately serving.

One form of doing this is by sharing testimonies.  Each evening after dinner, a couple of the volunteers take about 15 minutes to share the story about how they came to Christ.  I have heard many stories throughout my project trips about how the testimony of one volunteer touched the life of another.  This project was no exception.

Another activity is a daily devotional followed by a time of worship in song.  On several nights of the trip, this time of worship through song extended for hours after dinner.  Once, I decided to open my computer to go back to work while everyone else continued singing.  It was a joy to sit there serving Him while singing praises to Him who gave me the skills to it.

Then, at the end of the week, we have a meeting when I ask the volunteers to think about what the Lord may be challenging them to change in their lives.  During this time of sharing, one of the volunteers on this trip committed to get more involved in his church, and specifically in one of the Bible Studies.  His name is Suhendi; he is from Indonesia, but he works for an engineering firm in Florida.  He had come to the Lord through the ministry and prayers of his wife who is from Hong Kong.  Through the testimonies and devotionals during the trip, the Lord convicted him that he needed to be involved in studying the Bible.  You can imagine how pleased I was when one of his recent emails contained the following note (as he wrote it):

“Thank for the great life changing experience, I know Jesus a lot more now than before the trip.  My testimony to you is that I read Bible everyday now and I join Bible study at my church every Thursday night, as what I promised on our last devotion session.”

Sunhedi and me on the tour of the Panama Canal

Praise the Lord for His work in the hearts of His children!

La Palabra de Vida Camp, Ecuador



Dan, high above the
city of Quito, Ecuador

I (Dan) returned from my most recent project trip way back at the beginning of March, but I am only just now getting the opportunity to write just a little about what the trip was like.
The project was located about an hour northwest of Quito, Ecuador.  The ministry we were serving was called Word of Life, or Palabra de Vida in Spanish.  They are an international organization based in New York State that specializes in reaching youth for Christ through camps and Bible institutes throughout the world.  This particular project consisted of two principal objectives.  First, we needed to develop a master plan for a recently acquired property.  Secondly, we needed to provide a detailed design for a multipurpose cafeteria building that would be the centerpiece of the camp.



Dan and the mountains of
the Ecuadorian rainforest

One of the challenges an EMI project leader faces is the fact that our designers are volunteers, combined with the fact that it is impossible for those volunteers to complete their designs during the project trip.  After they return from the trip, they have been away from their families and from their work for over a week so they have a lot to attend to.  This sometimes means that it takes the volunteers some time to catch up to the point that they can complete their design.
The reason I haven’t had time to write is because I have had the opposite problem!  I have received so much information from my volunteers so quickly and they have been so responsive that I’ve been swamped with work.  This devotion is also indicative of the project trip itself.


The project team in downtown Quito, Ecuador

Even before I left, I was worried about several challenges:

• We were going to the Ecuadorian rainforest during the rainy season!   Were we crazy? 
• We had only three days to survey a 60 acre site on the side of a mountain and surveyors can’t work in the rain.  How will we do it? 
• We had to design a multipurpose cafeteria and complete the design so that they can start construction and enclose the building before the beginning of the next rainy season.  Is that even possible?

Providentially, God assembled the perfect team to meet these challenges:

• The team was experienced.  Between the nine volunteers on the trip, only one had never done an EMI trip before; the total EMI trip experience of the team totaled over 40 project trips!
• There were two surveyors.  As the team was being recruited, no surveyors could commit to the trip, so we kept in contact with two in case one fell through.  In the end, they were both able to make the trip.
• The team was dedicated.  For example, one surveyor, along with Brad the intern as a rodman, consistently woke up at first light in order to take advantage of the morning when it was less likely to rain.

early morning surveying

However, despite all this, three days into the trip, I was even more worried.  Because of scheduling requirements, travel, and other delays, we were still working on programming on Monday afternoon.  Typically, I like to have programming complete by the end of the day Sunday!  (Programming is the time we meet with the client ministry to discover exactly what they need and want from our design, and we can’t even begin the design until this is complete.)  We were almost a day behind when we were already under a tight time crunch.  I was more and more worried about how this project would get completed.
But that would be the end of my worries.  Beginning on Tuesday morning, the talents and gifts that God had given the team that He assembled shone through like the sun piercing the thick mist of the Ecuadorian mountain rainforest.

The sun rises over the misty rainforest mountains

• Because of their experience, the volunteers knew exactly what data they needed and how to find them.
• The two surveyors were able to divide the site between them, and even though it did rain quite a bit, they were able to complete the survey of the most important, developable areas.  In fact, the rain gave them the much needed time to coordinate their work.
• Through the dedication of Fred, the architect, and Kevin, another intern who would spend the sunny hours as a rodman for a surveyor and the rainy hours assisting Fred, the basic architectural design was completed by the end of the day Wednesday!

Showing the ministry the design for the first time

Finalizing the design back in Quito

Moreover, this level of commitment has continued to today.  Just days after the team returned home, we started receiving design information from the volunteers, and it hasn't stopped yet.  Today, we are still sorting through the emails and comments that have continued to arrive from the volunteers.  As a result, we have already sent preliminary documents to the ministry for construction estimates.  This will likely end up as one of the most successful project trips I have been a part of.  Thank you for your passion and dedication, team, and thank You, Lord, for always providing exactly what we need.

 

Master Plan



Multipurpose Cafeteria, Exterior Rendering

Proyecto Manuelito

September, 2010 Project Trip:

School Campus

Talanga, Honduras

The other day, I (Dan) posted a summary of my February project trip.  Now it is time to summarize my September trip to Honduras.

The Ministry

Project team at the transition house

We went to serve Proyecto Manuelito, a very special ministry run entirely by Hondurans that finds kids on the streets of Tegucigalpa and gives them a stable and loving home where they have the opportunity to escape the cycle of poverty that landed them on the streets.

I was so impressed by this ministry and the amazing people involved with it that I would like to share a little more about it.

The ministry has two stages.  First, there is a transition house where children stay for up to a year before moving to the complex in Talanga, a rural town about an hour north of Tegucigalpa.  In the transition house, the children go through a form of detox both physically and emotionally. 

Many of the kids on the streets of Tegucigalpa are addicted to sniffing glue.  The addiction starts because the fumes of the glue take away their hunger pangs, and the chemicals in the glue ensure they remain addicted.  This physical detoxification is where the ministry of Proyecto Manuelito begins.

It continues with an emotional detoxification where the people of Proyecto Manuelito attempt to instill values in these children who have lived an “us against the world” life before entering the project.



Proyecto Manuelito in Talanga, Honduras

Then, when there has been success in these two areas, the children graduate to the Talanga campus where they have the opportunity to receive stability, love, and an education in order to develop into productive members of society.

While the staff of Proyecto Manuelito invest their lives in these children, their hope is that the children will recognize Christ in them as they pour themselves out just as He did.

The Project

This is where EMI comes in.  As a result of the glue use, many of the children have some sort of permanent learning disability, and the public schools in the small town of Talanga are not equipped to accommodate these students.

Volunteer architect working on the school design

The ministry now has a vision to build an educational campus and contacted EMI about providing the design.  EMI has served Proyecto Manuelito several times in the past so this project built on an already existing great relationship.

The school will serve not only the special needs children of the project, but also those of the surrounding community.  The ministry gave us the example of a typical Honduran public school that has one special assistance classroom for about one thousand students.  The ministry asked us to include three of them in the complex designed for two hundred.  What a blessing it will be to those children to receive the education they need to “step out of poverty and into a world of hope.”

Final school complex plan

The Team

Project team

There were a couple of odd statistics regarding my team for this project.  First of all, it was the first project I’ve led with a team of all men.  Next, all of the team was quite a bit older than me.  As the project leader, I was worried about these dynamics before the trip, but each member of the team was flexible, had a servant’s heart, and exhibited a humility that made my job enjoyable.

I would like to share an example of their hearts and of God’s sovereignty in the timing of our project trip.  When we arrived at the site, the ministry informed us that the water was out.  It was a two-fold problem with the city supply and with the ministry’s water storage tank and pressure pump that began just before we arrived.

As a result, for the first two days of the trip, only some of the luckier team members were able to shower, but that wasn’t the extent of the problem.  The entire campus had no water.  That means that the children couldn’t shower, the staff couldn’t clean the floors, nor the cooks wash dishes.

So, one evening, after dinner, our team volunteered to cart buckets of water from the spigot at the entrance of the site (where there was water) through the mud to the kitchen so that the cooks could wash up.

Finally, when we realized that the city water problem had been fixed and that the only problem was now on the ministry’s site, our water and plumbing engineers took a day away from their intense project trip schedule to dedicate themselves to solving it.

Project team after a short soccer break

They used their own expertise and a simple pressure gauge that we brought with us to isolate the problem: a leaky pipe in a little used branch of the system.  They closed off the branch, the tank filled, the pump delivered water to the site, and we all got showers that night.

I don’t think it was coincidence that our team arrived the day after all of these water issues began.  I don’t think it was coincidence that our electrical engineer also does plumbing design or that the pressure gauge (which can be easily forgotten) made it into the bin to come on the trip.

This team didn’t forget that our first priority on a project trip is always to serve the ministry.  That is usually by providing professional designs, but it can also mean carrying water through the mud or trying to solve a perplexing challenge. 



Dan digging a percolation test hole



La Palabra de Vida

February 2010 Project Trip:

Entryway & Multi-Purpose Facility

Belen, Costa Rica

It has been a long time since my first project trip of 2010 back in February, but I (Dan) feel like it is important to write about it anyway.  Better late than never, right?

This project was unique before it ever even started.  I always say to teams during the trip that I believe that God assembles the team of volunteers for every project.  Sure, there is a lot of work finding and recruiting the volunteers, but it is ultimately God who prompts professionals to take a week away from work and families and provides them the ability to volunteer on an EMI trip.  Never before has that truth been more clear to me than on this trip.

The project team out to dinner

Initially, I was assigned to lead a project to design a new sanctuary for a church in Pavas, Costa Rica.  I recruited a small team of three volunteers for that design.  The architect also asked if his wife could come on the project with him.  I had coordinated and purchased all of their flights and assigned each of them their responsibilities for the church design when the pastor of the church told me just two weeks before the trip that he could not meet the requirements to host our team!

Now I have four people with airfare purchased to come to Costa Rica to do an EMI project trip, but I had no project. 

But God provided…

It turned out that just a few weeks before, we had received a request to provide two simple designs for a Christian school in Belen, Costa Rica.  They needed a design for a new entryway to keep students safe from cars as they walk to and from school and a preliminary design for a multi-purpose room the school can use for daily chapel services and other special events.

They were in a hurry for the design, and we already had a full slate of projects for that term so we did not think we could provide the design for them.  But with my previous project falling through,  it seemed like a perfect opportunity that God had given us to provide the design for this ministry!

Volunteers working hard

I would like to use the story of Barbara, the wife of the architect, as an example of God’s sovereignty working all things out beforehand for this change in project.
She is a Spanish teacher, and was excited to help us as a translator as we worked with the Spanish-speaking church ministry, but the missionaries who run the school were Americans so we wouldn’t need any translation.  By faith, she arrived in Costa Rica not knowing what she would do all week.
Then, during the first meeting with the missionaries, as they told us about the history and vision of their ministry, it came up that they had hundreds of books that had been donated to the school for their library, but there was no one who knew how to catalogue and organize them (or the rest of the library for that matter).  Barbara piped up saying that she also had a degree in library science!
She spent the rest of the week holed up on the school library cataloguing and developing a simple system the ministry could use after she left to catalogue their books.

The entryway design in progress

It was a similar story with the design volunteers as well.  I could see how each of their individual experience, talents, and personalities fit so well with the new project requirements as we were able to provide the ministry with the completed designs in time to complete construction of the entryway before the rainy season.  It was evident how God put this team together to serve La Palabra de Vida school even when they had thought they would serve an entirely different ministry.

At the risk of making this even longer, I would like to share one more thing that made this project trip special.  Sarah was able to join me and the team for our final weekend.  She was able to listen as the team shared about their experiences on the trip and what God had taught and shown them.  It was a great experience for her to experience first hand the effects of my ministry to the volunteers as a project leader.

architect's rendering of the multi-purpose building

Evangelization Campus in Haiti

Fall 2009 Project Trip:

Evangelization Campus

Arachaie, Haiti

At the end of September, I spent another week in Haiti for a project trip. We went to design a master plan for a ministry that supports various churches north of Port-au-Prince. They had purchased about two acres of land to construct a base for their ministry in Haiti, including a church building for the local church in that area that currently meets in a thatch-roofed space.

The church building will be the first building built on the two acre site. It will be followed shortly by a basketball court.  Then will come a home for the missionaries that also includes team housing.  As the ministry grows, they hope to build a Bible college in order to train pastors, and, finally, some small homes for Haitian pastors who may need them. 

The week started with attending church with the congregation that will benefit from our design. What a blessing to meet the pastor, the people, and especially the children of this small, very poor community! There was a joyous contentment among all of them that challenged me and that which is so engrained in me as important in life. These kids may not have even had shoes, but they were content. Their bright teeth smiling out of their beautiful dark faces proved a fitting analogy for their bright and happy souls in the midst of such a dark place.

The week continued with hot days in the sun surveying and doing other site assessments. After that, it was hunkering down in the heat of the missionaries’ home to tune out the roar of the generator and to do the design. The classic EMI image of a group of people clustered around a small table that holds more computers than people was a common one. But it was often interrupted with jokes, or an odd mix of voices singing (some in English and others in Creole), and even an all-out totally-drenching water fight one night. Despite the distractions and the heat, the team accomplished a lot in such a small time, and by the end of the week, we had a mostly complete design to present to the missionaries.

Haiti is a difficult place to be and a challenging place to minister. Therefore, I have great respect for every missionary who has the endurance to serve the Lord there. In this case, it was Bill and Marylin Fair. They began their life together as central Missouri farmers. Then they took a short term mission trip to Haiti, and ever since, they have devoted their lives to follow God’s call there. They have several churches in different cities that they support in various ways. They do everything from training leaders and providing financial assistance, down to physically building the benches for the churches. Their work there and the joy with which they do it left me (and the rest of the team) with a great excitement for this project.

One team member I would like to spotlight is Jean-Claudy Lamontagne Junior (or just Junior for short). Junior is a Haitian civil engineer whose wife introduced him to EMI, and when he found out about our project, he was excited to sign up for it. He took a week without his family and without work (and thus without pay) to help us on our trip. And while he was a great asset as an engineer both to Mike, our environmental engineer, and to Micah, our structural engineer, his greatest value came to the whole team as a guide to Haitian culture. He spent hours and hours talking with us as a group and me individually, patiently enduring our incredulous looks as he explained the culture of Haiti, its spiritual climate, the challenges and blessings of being a Christian there, some of the language, and much more. There are a few people I have met in my life of whom I think back and think, “it was a special blessing to know him or her.” Junior is one of those.

Haitian Children’s Home

Summer 2009 Project Trip:

Haitian Children’s Home

Jacmel, Haiti

It has been a long time in coming, but I (Dan) wanted to blog about the project trip I took to Haiti at the end of May. It was a great trip and I always seem to be amazed by the ministries that we serve and the volunteers who give so much to be a part of what God is doing around the world.

HCH raises orphaned and abandoned Haitian children in a Christian environment so that, as adults, they will be thoroughly equipped to live out their faith as leaders in their communities. It was truly a great blessing to help them continue that vision by developing their new property to better serve their needs as they serve the Lord.

Danny Pye, the director of the ministry told us that, “Haiti is about 80% Catholic, 20% Protestant, and 100% Voodoo.” That is obviously not true because there are a significant number of true believers that are setting aside their pagan roots, but his point is clear. Voodoo undergirds almost everything in Haiti. HCH is trying to break that cycle by raising up godly Haitians to be the leaders in their communities.

We arrived to help develop a plot of about 15 acres on the southern coast of Haiti. HCH’s vision for the property is, “to create a ‘cul-de-sac’ of 8 homes, each with a family of 20 orphaned and abandoned children living with a house family. In addition this land will have a primary school, a secondary school, a trade school, a clinic, a church, a soccer field, farm land, and a water-treatment facility to support the homes and serve the surrounding community.” This is a big vision, and we started with a master plan for the entire site to include these features:

From there, we focused on the children’s homes. The home is designed to house 20 orphans and a house family:

This will be the only building we design in detail for this trip. In the future, we hope to return to HCH to continue to design the other buildings that we laid out on the master plan.

I came away from the trip feeling blessed and encouraged by what Danny is doing at HCH, but even more impressed with what God is doing in Haiti.

With that, I am excited to return again at the end of this month to design a church for a local ministry in Arachaie. Stay tuned for the update from that trip (hopefully more prompt than this one was).