The Work Side

Hello again,

In this blog I thought I’d talk more about the work side of this mission’s trip. You’ve all probably heard from me that I’m designing an orphanage home for this ministry, but that’s not entirely true – I just said orphanage to keep it simple. The real story is that we’re building a home for teenagers who have outgrown the orphanage and need a place to stay as they enroll in University. The ministry we’re serving provides education up to a high school level and graduates its older orphans. These kids can’t stay at the orphanage anymore, but since the ministry doesn’t want to leave them on the street, they’ve asked us to design a Transition Home in the city as a solution for orphans who are looking to continue to higher education. The ministry has bought a plot of land and asked us to build a 3-4 story house that acts like a dorm for up to 45 of them – a place to live but also to hang out as well.

The past two days have been pretty busy for our staff – we’ve conducted interviews through translation with local contractors, engineers, and I’ve been able to witness the process of building a building from preconception to close to the final design. We all work at the kitchen table, and the architects have spent a lot of time drafting out plans and models in AutoCAD and Google Sketchup, while me and the engineer wait for them to finish. I don’t know if you’ve ever had a moment where your nice, prestigious education gets put to shame, but I get so much crap from Leon and Ernesto (junior architect). My nickname here is Berkeley because they contest that people who study books all day can’t do anything else. They are smart though. They’ve approached this project with complete confidence and constantly talk about things that are way over my head. I convince myself that it’s due to the fact that they’ve been in industry..but they’re not that much older than me. I just try to fit in by nodding along when they banter about beam sizes and laughing when they joke about so-and-so cantilever design.

I haven’t been able to see the orphanage the past couple days because we’re staying in our home to work. At first, I thought this would negatively affect my missions experience because everyone else’s story is about playing with the kids and having their hearts broken by the orphans’ innocence and joy. But this comes with the work we’re doing. It’s not like teaching English or building a house, where you interact with the locals all day. We’ve generally spent more time scouting buildings than building relationships with the Cambodian people, and when we’re not doing that we’re sitting around the kitchen table of our house. Our team has spent a lot of time together, but I’ve really grown to appreciate them. These are all professionals who have used a large chunk of their vacation days to provide their skills for God and work night and day to prepare the best possible home for these orphan kids. Tonight I’m leading a team devotion study about how we all make up the body of Christ (1 Corinthians 12), and I’m glad I’m serving with a team of architects and engineers, because these are our gifts and this is how we can serve. No better than any other type of missions work, no worse.

So this missions trip is not turning out how I expected, but I’m still very much enjoying my time here.

Prayer Requests:
Allow me to find opportunities to be helpful, because I really don’t have much responsibility yet in this project
That I can develop deeper relationships with the team members and the locals

Brian
Mosquito Bite Count: 34

(Mom, I’m fine, you can stop sending emails to me and Greg)