Saturday, October 7:
Chad, John and I, along with Amanda and Shanthi, left the eMi compound in Kampala and made the 30ish minute drive to Dave and Darlene Eby’s house in Zana. Amanda was instantly comforted that I would be taken care of after meeting Darlene and hearing her meal plans for the week. Later that night Chad, Darlene and I went to the Entebbe airport to pick our volunteers (“pick” is used here, not “pick up”).
Sunday, October 8:
The entire project team visited New City Bible Church (Amanda and I attend here) in the morning. While I wanted the team to hear Pastor Gerald since he is a Ugandan, our host Dave Eby preached a great sermon this morning. Two quick thoughts from the sermon on Romans 8:28-29: “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. For those he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he may be the firstborn among many brothers.” 1) The “good” which God is working for is for us “to be conformed to the likeness of his Son.” It seems that during difficult times it is easy to hope that the “good” will eventually be something that we deem good, something other than Christ-likeness. I can remember thinking during school that the difficulty of my courses would eventually pay off and that I would get a great job. Actually, and even more personally, I remember thinking that the difficulty of my courses would lead people to think, “Wow, isn’t he smart!” My messed up view in those situations saw “good” as something other than Christ-likeness. 2) Paul didn’t write “And we know that in most things…” or “And we know that in some things…” but rather “And we know that in all things…” God is at work in everything to sanctify us. We don’t have to guess at whether God is using an event to make us more like Christ. He is.After church the Eby’s hosted a lunch for the eMi team and Westminster Theological College (WTC) faculty. After people interacted a bit, Chad asked Emma to share his testimony and plans for WTC (incidentally, Emma is short for Emmanual).
Later that evening our eMi team took a while to share about God’s work in our lives. I was struck at the different ways God had pulled people to himself despite abuse, neglect and other forms of unlove some team members had endured. Another thing that I was excited to learn about was Kathryn’s foundation back in Ft. Meyers, Florida. A few years back she quit her job to start the Harlem Heights Foundation to provide for the spiritual, educational, recreational and physical needs of her community. What an amazing way to love people in her own neighborhood!
Monday, October 9:
Monday was the first real day of project work. Chad, Gene, Kathryn and I met with the faculty at WTC all day to discuss the architectural program. We discussed what buildings were needed first, how many would be needed at the completion of the campus, the number of current and eventual students, what type of feel the campus should have, which buildings should be in close proximity to each other and scores of other questions. Kevin and John went out to the project site to begin the survey.
Tuesday & Wednesday, October 10 & 11:
If my memory serves me correctly, Tuesday and Wednesday were pretty similar in that Kathryn, Gene and I all worked together on the site master plan. Tuesday began with the three of us working on one plan together. We weren’t completely satisfied after the preliminary sketches; it seemed too rigid—the buildings were all arranged perpendicularly like an old Western campus. That led to the development of a second plan, the meandering pathway, which was very random with no order at all. We decided this one wasn't right either, so from that point we each decided to develop one plan per person: Kathryn took the Western plan, Gene took the Meandering plan, and I developed a new one, which Gene affectionately called the Zulu plan. We spent the rest of Tuesday and Wednesday working on the different versions of our site plans so that we could have three distinct options to show the WTC faculty.The architecture team also toured African Bible College to see their newly developed campus. They have one of the nicest libraries in Uganda along with a functional radio station. Dr. Palmer Robertson gave us a tour and provided some information about what he thought helped and hindered the campus. I took note of something myself…Most people in Uganda do their laundry by hand sitting on the ground. I noticed that ABC provided an area for students to stand while doing their laundry. This initially seemed like a great idea to our team, but I was skeptical of whether this was an improvement since the students would be leaning over for at least 30 minutes. I asked several students “How do you feel after washing your laundry in these sinks?” in an effort to confirm or refute my skepticism. Each student said their back hurt after leaning over for so long…so yeah, we’re not including them in our design!
In addition to the site planning, the survey continued on despite some problems with the Total Station.
Thursday, October 12:
The faculty from WTC came over again for a meeting to review the three site plans we developed. Before we began, Chad said that he wanted them to feel comfortable telling us what they liked and didn’t like. I wanted to underscore the necessity of their candor so I planned out and said something similar to “It is very important to us that you share with us what you think because we want to create a campus that works well for you. At this point we’ve spent less than 100 hours as a team working on these designs, but we’ll easily spend hundreds of more hours finishing the report and drawings. If there’s something we’re doing that is making it difficult to share your opinion, would you please let us know?” Gotta love Advocate-Illustrate-Inquire.
The meeting did seem to go well. The faculty identified which aspects of the plans they liked and disliked. It seemed a bit personal when they pointed out things they didn’t like on my plan that I thought were marvelous, but I think that was really my own pride. Talking afterward, Gene and Kathryn seemed to handle the critiquing much better. Maybe it’s because they’re so used to it (as real architects) or they got so conditioned to it in college (in real architecture school).Friday, October 13:
Friday was more drafting, done primarily by the Gene and Kathryn. We talked for a bit about structural issues, but the highlight of the day was going to a great dinner at Lindsay Cottages. Amanda would have come except she was in charge of the Rain Festival (it's what Heritage has in place of a Fall Festival since we're in the rainy seaon now) at school that night. Gene and Kathryn treated the whole team…Thanks!
From left: Kathryn, John, Amil, Gene, Darlene, Ida, Dave, William, Chad, Joanna, me, KevinKevin also spent some time using Google Sketch Up to draw our site in 3D. The entrance to the site is along the lowest elevation.
Saturday, October 14:
The WTC faculty dropped by in the morning for a review of the totally new site plan. They were really excited about it but had a few suggestions, none of which were too difficult to work into the plan. Here’s the rendering:
Some things to keep in mind…the reddish/orangish roofs are for buildings constructed during Phase 1. The grey roofs are for buildings constructed in later phases. The little circles you see represent bandas. Think of them as concrete gazebos with thatched roofs.
The final site plan really incorporates aspects of each of our designs. The campus portion of WTS retains the order of the perpendicular buildings from Kathryn’s plan, the dorms are loosely arranged in the spirit of Gene’s plan, and the placement of the church near the entrance of the site, as opposed to the back, came from my design.
Sunday, October 15:
The highlight of my day was being able to play the Indelible Grace version of “And Can it Be” at Zana Community Presbyterian Church. A quick story…Amil is a Ugandan who lives with the Ebys and the worship leader at Zana. He was a Muslim but became a Christian in the 90s when the Ebys visited Uganda. Last Saturday I heard him singing the old version of “And Can it Be” and asked if he would like to learn a new tune. He said "Yes" and so I taught it to him. An hour and a half later I went to their Saturday afternoon practice and taught it to the choir (no CD!..yikes) and then we sang it together on Sunday. Perhaps the idea of putting old hymns to new music will catch on here--several of the choir folks said they liked it much better than the old tune.Later that afternoon our team presented the WTS plan to about 100 people. The crowd had a mixture of locals, current WTS students, and other Presbyterian Church in Uganda folks. After the presentation there was a time for questions, several people prayed for the project, and everyone had a soda while they talked.
That evening the Ebys invited people over to their house for a light dinner.
One quick note..."Darlene Eby, you rock!" I told her that and then we did the whole fist-punch thing that baseball players do when they go into the dug out after hitting a home run. Her hospitality was amazing the whole week and she was also great to talk to. My favorite quote of hers, in reference to a discussion our team had on Ephesians 5:22-33, was, "It's not old school, it's biblical!"
Well, I wanted to get some sort of description up here and I think this is where I’ll stop for now. We took Monday off as a “tourist day” which I’ll describe a little bit later. Also, I want to share a little bit more of what I learned on the trip and why I’m so excited about the work of Westminster, but that will have to wait for another day.
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