Team Aylard

Visit with the Fed's

2012-01-14T03:49:00.000-08:00

We had an excellent visit from our great friends the Feddersens to finish off the holidays. It was so nice to have some visitors from home to share a snap shot of our lives in Uganda with. We brought the new year in on an island in the middle of the Nile River, toured the back roads, City and our neighborhood and enjoyed many laughs. We also got to do something pretty cool for a Ugandan friend of ours while they were here. Since Melissa is such a great communicator I'm going to just link over to her blog from here so you can read her version of the story. http://melissafeddersen.com/2012/01/02/peanut-butter-on-toast/

Christmas Letter 2011

2011-12-09T11:37:00.001-08:00

HI-YA

2011-11-25T09:28:00.001-08:00

Cooper's first Tae kwan do demo.

Joy in Creation

2011-11-11T10:02:00.001-08:00

We took a break from Kampala a couple weekends ago and ventured out to eastern Uganda to the most beautiful African place we have seen so far. Sipi Falls is in the foothills of Mount Elgon, one of Africa's highest peaks (14,177ft) in a village setting with 3 massive waterfalls to hike to. We were in awe most of our time there and felt as gitty as school girls after labour day. We also finally discovered a place in Uganda that takes coffee seriously. We hiked through coffee plantations then headed back to camp where we sat around a fire, enjoyed the view, peeled coffee beans, ground, roasted and brewed fresh coffee. Amazing!

The happy hikers

For some reason the guides like to walk with Kara.......

Leah was a bit of a hand full on the first hike. It was pouring rain, muddy and slippery. Not ideal conditions for a delicate little girl.

You'll just have to turn your head

Jordan in his glory

We walked through some amazing gardens. This was about an acre of cabbages. All in neat rows and nicely weeded. So nice to see people taking a lot of pride in their farming!

The view from our cabin

Our little family on the last hike

No picture really does justice to the scenery. I could have stayed for a week and just stared at the view.

Gifts

2011-11-01T04:23:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the late blog entry but I wanted to share this with all of you. Sometime back our family and the Kansanga Resource Centre were able to be part of handing out Samaritan's Purse shoe boxes.
Our family have given a few of these boxes each year back in Kelowna and we have tried to explain to our kids how these simple gifts are our way of giving to those who have so little, who don't receive any gifts at christmas. This is a really hard concept for kids in general to grasp and especially for kids who live in a culture where excess and materialism is our middle name. It was really exciting for our family to see first hand the joy these gifts bring. Also, it was a great opportunity for the KRC to bless the kids who use our centre on a daily basis. Giving truly is better than receiving!!

Some of the happy recipients

Susan and Brenden handing out the gifts

It was a rainy day so we had to cram 113 kids in our 2 rooms at the centre.

These are the 9 and under group

This is the older group.

Just Add Water

2011-10-18T12:04:00.000-07:00

In case you haven't heard, there is a drought going on in the Horn of Africa right now that is affecting roughly 10 million people. The Horn of Africa is that part of the continent that sticks out like a horn on the east side of the continent including the countries of Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya. eMi has been called to action on many relief and development roles in the last few months and just recently I was called to scope out a potential development project in northern Kenya.

Flying into Lodwar

I flew into a dusty little airstrip in the town of Lodwar Kenya where goats and barefoot children wandered around the runway. The remnants of a plane engine lay wasting away next to the "terminal". The temperature was over 40 C day and night.

Crossroads Missions from Canada has teamed up with a local Kenyan mission Glory Outreach Ministries that hopes to implement an irrigation project that would water roughly 1,300 acres of land for the Tukana people. There is a river that runs though this dessert but moving the water inland to where its needed is no easy or inexpensive task.

My first view of the site looked pretty bleak

Benson runs Glory Outreach Ministries in Lodwar with his wife Jennica. He was nicknamed desert boy from his long walks across the desert evangelizing rural tribes across East Africa. He's gone on walks several hundred kilometers long. Sold out for J!

I got to see where irrigation is really working on a small scale. The catholic missionary that has lived in this region for over a decade has built a 3-acre garden of Eden in the dessert. He grows enough food to feed an orphanage down the road.

He was watering his crops with pumps run from wind and solar power.

I was told that the people here have been living on 1 meal a day provided through the world food program. When asked why they are not growing their own food, their answer is, "we just need water!" You might say, "why don't they just carry it from the river". I wondered that myself, until I was there and was kind of able to imagine that not working for everyone. The folks that are closest to the river have the advantage. But imagine working your but off everyday while receiving only one meal. We, the privileged don't understand what it means to be hungry.

Some past irrigation projects have been attempted but failed. This was the makings of a canal system that failed because the river changed course, leaving the canal high and dry.

This guy had simply dug a hole about 100m from the river, let the water build up in it and was using a treadle pump to irrigate a small garden. A treadle pump is like a stair master. You step, it pumps. Pretty low tech and cool! Chester is the other white guy and is an agricultural specialist with Crossroads Missions.

It was my privilege to fill a few jerry cans at the local well.

It rained one day in September but nobody could tell me when it had rained before that. Some said it has been years! It seems the area used to get to consistent rainy seasons up until about 15 years ago. The people farmed and lived off the land. Now they may see 1 rainfall a year at most. Still some smiles though.

I returned home to my green little refuge in Kampala, counted my blessings and tried to enjoy a Thanksgiving dinner. My heart aching for these Turkana people, knowing that so many are suffering through this drought. So what can I do? How can God use me to help these people? It can all seem so overwhelming and hopeless. "We, especially me are certainly not the answer to all their problems. But with soft hearts and able bodies we can answer the call God puts before us, take steps, have faith.

With all large projects, you have to start somewhere and eventually they just lead into a series of small details. I'm helping to mobilize a team of surveyors to map out the potential irrigation project in February. Then in May I plan to lead a team of irrigation and agricultural specialists back to Lodwar to design a plan to efficiently irrigate this land. From there, it will be up to the local people to construct the irrigation system, plant the farms and water the gardens transforming it from dessert to Eden. Seems pretty big, but so is my God.

Mission Aviation Fellowship

2011-10-01T03:51:00.000-07:00

I just finished another project trip in Uganda for another amazing group of people.
Mission Aviation Fellowship (MAF) was founded in 1945 by a group of WWII pilots who had a vision for how aviation could be used to help spread the Gospel.
MAF enables and maximizes evangelism and church nurture, medical assistance, disaster response, and community development, as well as the training and development of indigenous people.
Using aviation and technology, MAF shares the love of Jesus Christ by meeting the physical and spiritual needs of isolated people in 32 countries throughout Asia, Africa, Eurasia and Latin America. Dedicated missionary families raise their own ministry support to serve as the hands and feet of Christ to those in need.
MAF has an active program and fleet of 5 planes at a small airstrip just outside of Kampala. Its rare for MAF to actually own the land for an airstrip but in this case they do and its a beautiful piece of land called the Kijjansi Airfield! Since large areas of the property are not being used for anything, MAF requested the services of eMi to assist them in preparing a long term development plan for their property. Land values have increased considerably in the area and in order to be good stewards, MAF sees the importance of utilizing their land in a more effective way. Space for more airfield operators, offices, housing and community center areas were the focus of our work and after 2 weeks or learning, sketching and strategising, our team finally had a plan to move forward with. I'll be working on this project for the next 3 months in our Kampala office and am excited about helping such a valuable organization like MAF.

Architect John and MAF pilot Simon

A rural Uganda village

The River Nile from the air

Some fun on a boat

Surveying the Kijjansi Airfield

The eMi team

Sunrise at Kijjansi

I love a party!!

2011-09-09T08:15:00.000-07:00

The Ugandan school year is 3 terms long and goes with the Calendar year. The children just had a month off and now are returning for their last term of their school year. As you can image, the centre is buzzing during this time with the happy sounds of little ones all looking for something to do. Our lovely and hard-working Susan(who is in the centre full-time) and our very dedicated volunteers kept them quite busy over the break. There were writing competitions, soccer, art and bible study. Once I got back from Canada and saw all the great things that were going on I of course said "Let's have a party to celebrate!!"
So last Saturday thats what we did. We had a a few presentation's, ate biscuits, drank sun-sype and enjoyed a movie. Then at the end we presented each child with a exercise book to take to school. It was simple but fun.
My wonderful videographer of a husband put this together to highlight the day. Enjoy!!

http://youtu.be/g9u3K6kZFOM

Back to Routine

2011-08-27T01:09:00.000-07:00

Well we are finally back into the daily routine in Uganda. Jet lag is finished, school has started, Pat is back to work and Kara is now a teacher at home. Our first crop of sweet corn is almost ready and we eagerly await the day of introducing our Ugandan friends to something completely new to them.

Kara has had to deal with some tough staffing issues at the Niteo Center and Pat is getting ready for an extremenly busy September with new interns arriving, project trips and catching up on work missed over the summer. It's nice having the kids back in school. Jordan is now on the high school side in grade 7, crazy! Brenden is in grade 5 and is joining the swim team, Cooper is thrilled to be schooling at home in grade 2 and our little miss Leah has started kindergarten. Olivia our Ugandan boarding student is back in our home and is heading into grade 12.

First day of school

Leah's first day of school

Cooper is home schooling this year so I took him on a field trip to one of my project sites

Leah and Jeremiah have been pretty inseperable since we got back

Thank-you

2011-08-07T11:57:00.000-07:00

Our time in Canada has come to an end and we have started our roundabout journey back to Uganda. We flew to Colorado yesterday where we will spend the next week in Estes Park at the eMi world staff conference. This is something we have been looking forward to and are excited to reconnect with our eMi friends and meet many new ones.

We can't thank all our friends, family and supporters enough for the excellent summer break we have had back home. Willow Park Church has been great to us and we really appreciated the opportunity to share a bit of our story in 2 services. We managed to jam a lot in to a busy 6 weeks!

We have lost a couple of supporters due to the struggling economy and gained a few new ones this summer. We had a goal of raising our financial support by $700/month this summer. So far the increase has been $225/ month so we have a ways to go. If you were thinking of joining our support team but just haven't got around to it then you can follow the link here http://teamaylardsupport.blogspot.com/ and pick your prefered option. Thanks for your consideration!

Summer 2011

2011-07-18T11:00:00.000-07:00

Summer in BC has been busy but great so far. We have been splitting our time between Kelowna and Salmon Arm/Mara and are very grateful to our friend's the Fehr's for giving their house to us this last week. Our home church in Kelowna gave us the chance this weekend to tell a bit of our story over the last year. We had a great time catching up with some friends and were able to raise some money as well. Kara and I are looking forward to a couple of days away together this week. Brenden has spent a week at Gardom lake Bible Camp and Jordan left this moning for a week on the Ark camp in Osoyoos.

Leah and her good friend Owen at Mable Lake

Cooper turned loose on the quad on the farm

Fishing on Gardom Lake

Uganda Cranes vs Guinea Bissau

2011-06-16T01:01:00.000-07:00

We took in a very cultural experience last weekend. The Uganda national soccer team was playing a qualifing match to make it into the African Nations Cup next year, a big deal in these parts! We bought our tickets well in advance and thought that we were getting to the stadium plenty early. We had paid for good seats which were twice as much as the cheap seats, $13 instead of $7. Turned out that a stadium that is supposed to seat 40 thousand had sold 70,000 tickets. We couldn't even get into the stands it was so packed. Feeling realy bummed and ready to go home, we decided to hang around a lower gate and watch throught he cracks. After about 20 minutes into the first half a security guard let us through the gate on to the field level! We won 2-nil, the most amazing sporting event I have ever eperienced!

Trying to get there

Inside the stadium and on the field

Trying to get home. A 20 minute car ride took 2.5 hours!

Check out the video of vuvuzela man that Jocelyne captured

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-2FeUssyGE

Where has the last 10 years gone!

2011-05-22T11:31:00.000-07:00

10 years ago Kara and I were camping at Gardom Lake on the annual Baker/Aylard campout. Mark and Sue had just returned from being missionaries in Papua New Guinea, most of our friends were just married but not too many kids around yet. Kara was huge and ready to have Brenden. I had caught a really nice trout that day so was excited to try my luck again. She really didn't want to sleep in the tent that night and you just don't argue with a woman in that state so we stayed in Salmon Arm instead. We spent most of the night at the hospital and Brenden was born the next morning. Now 10 years later, Mark is the engineer and we are the missionaries. Here is a shot of Brenden's birthday party. We thought it was fitting to have a campfire and wienie roast.

UNREST

2011-04-30T14:05:00.000-07:00

There has been a bit of uprising going on in Kampala and other cities around Uganda for the last few weeks. The opposition leader has been trying to do some peaceful protests about the rising food and fuel costs. He gets arrested every time and then the people go all squirrely. The police move in and break things up so riots never last very long. One good thing is that he has said he will do peaceful protests every Monday and Thursday so it’s been fairly predictable......except for the one yesterday that flared up from his arrest on Thursday. This latest arrest is being spread around the world and he is attracting more international attention. We are fortunate to live on a quiet side of town that has not been affected. Our security officer at eMi keeps us very informed of what it going on before we venture out at all so we haven’t really felt threatened. We do need to pray for peace though as the people here are very annoyed with high inflation and low employment. When a leader steps up to protest, people are quick to join and the government is making a very strong statement that they will not put up with it.

Here is a link to a news clip ,xnnjmz http://youtu.be/hpzQ2_MrdqY

Easter Feast

2011-04-25T10:20:00.000-07:00

We threw a little Easter feast today which inlcuded butchering a goat and 5 chickens. The goat arrived in our compound last Monday and has been moving around all week. It was high time that it went to the grill and was enjoyed by many! We also kept up the tradition of the hunt (and Kara's deviled eggs).

Painting eggs

The main course

Stephen had that thing skinned and chopped in less than an hour! Jordan slaughtered his first chicken today, does that make him a man now?.....I'm going to spare the pictures though.

Not much goes to waste here. Our guards split the intestines and one even took the head. I got a funny look when I said to just bury the skin.

The main course

The hunt

Intern Kevin and Yokana's daughter's, Joanne and Lucky

Joseph and Stephen. What a fine looking fire and spread.

Phil and John cuttin it up

Monica is just waiting to knock Kara out in bump

Happy Easter!

2011-04-24T07:15:00.000-07:00

¹² Jesus said to them, “Come and have breakfast.” None of the disciples dared ask him, “Who are you?” They knew it was the Lord. ¹³ Jesus came, took the bread and gave it to them, and did the same with the fish. ¹⁴ This was now the third time Jesus appeared to his disciples after he was raised from the dead.

-John 21

Its more than bricks and mortar

2011-04-17T12:15:00.000-07:00

eMi in East Africa has been working steadily on its construction management program for several years now. It's one thing to design buildings but seeing them get built mostly according to plan is a whole other challenge. An even bigger challenge is to get involved in the lives with the guys that are swinging the hammer or mixing the concrete. These guys often get left in the shadow of the school or clinic that they are building. It's easy to concentrate on all the great stuff that's going to come from a building and forget about the tradesmen and laborers that made it happen.
Steve Hoyte and his site foreman Richard have been managing construction sites with eMi in Uganda for the last 4 years. He does things a little differently than the normal construction boss. He holds weekly chapel and builds relationships with his workers while trying to mentor them, showing them the love of Christ in a genuine and authentic way. Here is a video Building in Uganda

Niteo Kansanga Resource Centre

2011-04-01T11:04:00.000-07:00

Our first month in Uganda was spent in a very small apartment on the edge of a very poor neighborhood. The local kids were immediately interested in these new white people that had moved in and would come to our gate daily to ask if they could come play. How could we say no! So they routinely came and still do. Sometimes way too many at a time, sometimes at a time when we just can't handle having any more people around. We never would have imagined that simple act of letting some grubby little kids through our gate to play with our kids toys would lead to.

Kara spent the first few months wracking her brain what she was going to do with her time in Uganda. I had my thing with eMi but what was she to do? The idea that we both hold on to is that sometimes we just need to start things without knowing where they are going. So Kara started something. She and Jocelyne decided to start a simple after school program for the kids in the neighborhood. Some of you probably remember those blogs from last August/Sept where over a 100 kids would show up a couple times a week to play Lego, be read to, build a puzzle, play soccer or just see what these crazy white people were doing. Sometimes just a little attention goes a long way. The 2 of them knew that they could not keep this up though. It was a lot of work and very draining. So they took it a giant step further......

In December they took possession (rented) of a house right in this poor neighborhood. They hired plumbers and electricians and carpenters and masons and it was crazy. How did they know how to do any of this? They didn't but they learned by just starting, making mistakes and diligently following through on things. They hired Uganda staff, developed schedules, met with local schools started taking donations. Can you tell that I'm proud of them?!!

On Monday the Niteo Kansanga Resource Centre held a grand opening and open house. It was amazing. 11 local schools visited the centre, groups of cultural dancers performed, a Kampala newspaper interviewed them and the local chairlady (neighborhood politician) gave a speech that really expressed her appreciation and approval of the centre. I wish you could have been there, but here are some pics.

Bombo Children's Orphanage

There have been a lot of discussions like this one

Kara at the mic

Breakdance Project Uganda

Burundi

2011-03-21T04:56:00.000-07:00

I just returned home to Kampala after leading another eMi project trip. I had the privilege of traveling to Burundi to serve an amazing ministry called Sister Connection. Burundi is a small country just south of Rwanda and Uganda. Sister Connection exists to help impoverished Burundian widows and their families. Burundi has been left with thousands of widows since the Hutu/Tutsi war ended in 2007. Widows are not treated very well and many have been left homeless, jobless and extremely poor. The culture in Burundi has children living at home until they are married. This can make raising a family very difficult without a man of the house present. We heard the phrase, “I didn’t go to school because I was too hungry” a lot. Kids end up quitting their education to farm or find small work to survive.

Our mission with eMi was to masterplan a 20-acre property with a vocational school and retreat centre/youth camp. It's to be a place where widows sponsored by Sister Connection can come for week long training/healing/counseling/worship and kids can come and enjoy a summer camp atmosphere in a safe place. The vocational school will mostly serve children of widows and will teach skills in carpentry, metal working, mechanics and other small trades. Kids that cannot go the academic route in school or were unable to attend school at all are often just left to slip through the cracks, which makes vocational schools so important.
The site was near the town of Gitega which is right in the middle of the country in a very mountainous region. Very beautiful and very amazing the kind of slopes the people are able to garden on.

The most excellent eMi Team

Road to Gitega from Bujumbura

Check out the farming plots on the hillside

Each truck heading up the hill had some guys attached to it. Pretty sketchy.

This is why they don't want to peddle

Tea fields

Another beautiful valley in the Burundi highlands outside Gitega

Construction workers working on the dorm building at the Sister Connection site

Sewing shop at Sister Connection

Fetching water from a spring about a mile from the Sister Connection site. The spring was way down in a valley. A couple of us carried some jerry cans out and realized how hard of a job that is. Can't imagine making that trip several times a day everyday.

Different size jerry cans for different size kids. The sad reality is that those kids will probably be carrying water from that spring for the rest of their lives. As they get older the jerry can gets larger.

View from the top of the Sister Connection site.

We got to visit a previous eMi project in the area that has been built out. The homes are orphan housing for 8 kids and their new parents.

A bus load of Bzungu (white folks)attracts a bit of attention in the remote villages

This is Jacqueline and her kids. A Burundian widow living in a remote village. One of the things that Sister Connection does for widows is provide simple housing. Jacqueline was overjoyed with her house that has a roof that doesn't leak and room for her children. 300 sq. ft house for 4 is actaully a lot more space than we have seen elsewhere.

First Methodist church built in the 1930's at the Muyebe Mission Station. This church was used occupied by rebel forces at times during the Hutu/Tutsi conflict from 1992 to 2007. Denise and Joy from Sister Connection grew up at this station so it was pretty cool to attend church where Sister Connection had some roots and history.

Some very colorful ladies outside of church. Hands like leather but such a feeling of warmth when they greet you.

I had some heavy hitters on my team that were a great addition.Chad Gamble former director of eMi East Africa and Steve Ulrich former director of eMi Canada. It was great to spend some time with those guys!

We produced a pretty nice plan in the end but were rocked by the joy in the singing and dancing from the widows we got to spend time with. We have lots to learn on contentment, joy and worship!

We stayed at a resort on Lake Tanganika on the last night. So nice to be able to lake swim and not worry about anything.....except the potential of hippo's.

Leah integrating and some other stuff

2011-03-04T09:40:00.000-08:00

Leah with Semei and Monica. Monica and Leah just shared a birthday.

Yokana playing with Leah and one of her best buds Jeremiah

Leah and Oliva. Oliva lives with us while she is going to the same shool as our kids. She is becoming part of the family

Leah and Jeremiah taking a Ugandan style bucket bath. Jeremiah's parents and sister live on our compound in the back house. We really enjoy having them here!

Baby Kevin is pretty irresistible. Kevin is also a girls name in Uganda. She is Jeremiah's sister.

Making the pinata for Leah's birthday party this weekend

Patrick and I with our attempt at a solar fruit dryer. Needs a bit of work still but makes delicious dried pineapple

The eggs you buy in the store are white. Our 4 hens give us a yellow egg each per day!

Eagles Wings

2011-02-21T10:31:00.000-08:00

Here is a video that Wes from my last project trip put together. It's pretty cool!

http://bit.ly/eK7kSB

Just Stop and Think

2011-02-17T23:18:00.000-08:00

eMi Trip 5

2011-02-16T11:52:00.000-08:00

I just got back from another 9 days in the bush on a project trip. Another amazing experience. Here is the photo story.

Bill and Anne Peckham from Gilbert Plains Manitoba retired from teaching and took a trip to Uganda 8 years ago. After visiting many villages around Masaka and witnessing the tragedy of so many orphaned children they decided not to go back to Manitoba. They've lived in Uganda ever since and started Eagles Wings Children's Village a few years ago. They currently care for 72 orphans and provide schooling for over

200 kids in the surrounding community. They are inspiring example of christianity!

Our eMi Team

Team leader structural engineer Phil Greene from Kampala, intern architect Daniel from Florida, landscape architect Erica Watts from Colorado, Structual engineer Henry Watts from Colorado, civil engineer Jamie from Manitoba, surveyor Patrick from Kamloops, architect Wes from Kansas, intern civil engineer K2 from California, civil guy me from Kampala, civil engineer Joyce from Vancouver, videographer Tyler from California. We don't usually have a videographer but Tyler runs a real cool NGO that produces videos for missionary organizations. Can't wait to see what he produces for eMi EA and for Eagles Wings!

I don't fit in Matatus

We were greeted at the site by the Eagles Wings social worker Allan. Allan is very passionate about his job. He knows every child by name and what their story is. He has a long list of orphaned kids wants to still bring to Eagles Wings. He loves Jesus, people(especially kids) and really loves to sing.

We stayed at the Eagles Wings Hospitality Center in Masaka. This lovely couple were our hosts. Christopher and Harriot gave us great model of service and loving marriage. We love them.

My friend Henry from eMi in Colorado. We had a little hoeing competition. He might of been quicker but I think my row was straighter.

Kids at church

Nobody likes to use the word orphanage anymore. The preferable name is children's village. At Eagles Wings the children become part of a family. There are 24 orphaned kids in a family which also has a mom and a dad. The families live in clusters on the property. A family cluster consists of a parents house, 2 boys huts, 2 girls huts, a dining hut and a kitchen hut. There are 3 families so far but part of our work was to plan out 7 more family clusters.

Kids after school. Eagles Wings has built a primary school on the site for the kids from the families on site as well as 230 kids from the surrounding community.

Bath time at Family 2

Blowing bubbles for the kids with my friend Patrick Cochrane from Kamloops. Patrick is in Uganda for a month to help us with a bunch of surveying work all over the country. He's a gem.

My buddy and co-worker Phil Greene in the middle was the team leader. Henry Watts is a 20 trip eMi veteran that brought a lot of knowledge to Phil and I.

The biggest pots I have ever seen. Eagles Wings serves beans and posho(a rubbery cereal made from maize flour) to all the kids that come to church on Sundays from the surrounding community.

Posho and beans

First time eMi volunteer Architect Wes Morgan and Henry Watts. It was a really hot week!

nuf said

Top and bottom half of the awesome hand drawn masterplan done by Erica Watts, Henry's wife and landscape architect extraordinaire. Our scope was to survey the entire 70 acre site, plan out a secondary school, kitchen, church, staff housing, 7 more family clusters while keeping as much land as possible for agriculture.

Architect Wes and little Elisha. Bill and Ann took in Elisha when he was so skinny and malnurished they didn't know if he would make it. He's now a happy, chubby little boy and was a thrill to spend time with.

After the project our team spent a day on one of the Islands on Lake Victoria. An excellent game of beach volleyball and a swim in the rain.

Random photos

2011-02-09T11:59:00.000-08:00

Pat and I looking "smart" for our first Ugandan Wedding.

Our guard actually said "thank-you for looking smart" I guess we should take the hint.

Our first Movie Night at the Kansanga Resource Centre.

Thanks to Joel and Melissa and whoever else helped make it happen!!

Soccer season has started. Jordan and Brenden are playing on the under 11 team and Cooper is playing on the under 7. They are all having a great time!!

Cooper is a great little goal keeper

Jordan, Brenden and a few friends after their first win.

Mommy and her little helper making some cookies

Kansanga Resource Centre

2011-02-02T23:52:00.000-08:00

Its official as of January 1st we (Kara and Jocelyne Baker) have opened our doors at niteo’s: Kansanga Resource Centre. I know that was a whole month ago but it has been a busy month...sorry for the delay

For those of you who have no idea what I am talking about I will back up a little. Since I have gotten here my prayer has been for God to use me to help the children in our neighbourhood. The Ugandan kids who live with sooo much less than we do. Well he answered my prayer in a BIG way.

In November Jocelyne Baker and I partnered with a Kelowna based Organization called Niteo. They have a resource centre in the opposite side of the city. A safe place where children can come to read, study get tutoring and partake in after school activites. All the things that we see as a need for our children to do well in school but is not a reality here. We love niteo's model and wanted to copy it in our neighbourhood....so we did!!

We started hunting for a place and took possession of it December 1st. It needed a lot of reno’s inside and out so we were busy coordinating, yard crews, brick layers, electricians, plumbers and carpenters to get it all done. Plus, shopping for bookshelves and other furnishings. We are almost there!! It hasn’t seemed to bother the kids though since the beginning of January we opened our doors to the public and averaged about 40 kids a day and they just played around the piles of rubble and did’t mind that we don’t have many resources yet.

Now that the kids are back at school, Ugandan school year goes from February to November, we have partnered with the schools around us to help educate the future leaders of Uganda. We have a lovely Ugandan lady named Susan who is our centre coordinator. She has approached the schools and they are all very excited about what we are doing for their children. They can bring their classes to our centre to use our resources or the kids can come after school for activites or during the day on their own time for studying.

Some of our kids( the mzungu's are jocelynes)

We have some educational toys. The lego is a real hit!

Rhinto, one of our yard crew, busy planting some shrubs
Check out the niteo website for more info or if you would like to donate. Just put "Kansanga Resource centre" in the memo line. http://www.niteoafrica.org/

Child Soldiers Restored

2011-01-15T05:00:00.000-08:00

I've been helping with a project for Watoto in Gulu. Gulu is a place in northern Uganda where Joseph Koney, the leader of the Lord's resistence army (LRA) reaked a lot of havoc up until just a few years ago. Koney would take children from their homes and turn them into killing machines in his army and make them do all sorts of horrific things. The LRA was a rebel group that had a goal of overthrowing the government. Mostly just a wierd power struggle lead by a very twisted man.
Watoto has been very involved in the restoration efforts in Gulu through their childrens village, women's training center and babies home. Kara and I attended the Watoto restore drama in Kampala before I headed out and it was quite amazing. To see teenagers get up in front of several hundred people and say that they forgive themselves for killing and forgive others for killing their families was a pretty powerful message. We took a good friend of ours that works for eMi and in our home that remembers running from the rebels as they attacked her village. It was crazy. So much damage done but so much redemption through faith in Jesus to bring the love required to allow healing and forgiveness. http://www.watoto.com/projects/project-gulu
Our project involves a planning and designing new agricultural college on a 435 acre property way out in the bush west of Gulu. The college and farm will be a place for former child soldiers and people affected by the war to learn a skill and work the farm that will feed the Watoto village.I got a chance to travel there this week to walk the land and figure out how we are going to survey it. It was pretty earie knowing that just a few years ago Koney was right there, killing, mutilating, hating. It's an honor for us to be involved in this work.

Acholi kids

Watoto home under construction

Watoto childrens village in Gulu

Walking the property for the Ag. College

After walking for 6 kilometers the Ugandan guide sat down and said, "we are now halfway". It was 33 degrees and the jungle was very thick. The halfway statement was a bit deflating.

Project Work

2011-01-04T03:39:00.000-08:00

I get the question of "what are you doing these days?" quite a bit from folks back home. After I lead a project to some faraway land we take all our work we figured out while on the site with the project team and spend the next 2-3 months in the office finishing the design. The design includes construction drawings for the Ministry to build all the stuff they want to do, design drawings for buildings, water, sewer and electrical systems as well as colorful site renderings that they can present to donors and supporters to give them a picture of how the final product will look. Since the drawings themselves are quite boring to look at unless you are a contractor, engineer or achitect I thought I would show the pretty pictures to give you a sesnse of what we present on a typical design. There are tones of details that get sorted to ensure things will work out so the pictures below are just a small part of the work that took 3 months to complete.

Road Trip

2010-12-29T23:04:00.000-08:00

We went on a big tour of Uganda this week with our friends the Bakers and Sauders. Started out with a campout at a Kluges Guest Farm in Fort Portal. The kids played frisbee and football and swam in the pool while the sun was shining. We went for a long walk through the eucalyptus forest and watched the monkeys playing over our heads. Sleeping in a tent is pretty good when someone else sets it up along with a thick mattress. It poured rain when it was time to leave so leaving the tent behind was even better. We headed off in a new direction towards Kasase and Queen Elizabeth National Park with no real goal or destination in mind. I guess over Christmas it's better to book ahead of time because our options were pretty limited. We drove through the most beautiful country we have seen so far in Uganda. Lush hills, mountains, rivers, lakes, savanna, wild animals, we saw it all. We ended up in Lake Mburo National Park where we went on a safari to saw tonnes of game. We got back into dirty Kampala just in time to hit the traffic jam which is a lousy way to end a long drive with anxious kids. Here is our Christmas photo album http://picasaweb.google.com/paylard/Christmas201002?feat=directlink

The Grinch

2010-12-14T05:39:00.000-08:00

The school the kids go to performed the Grinch this year for Christmas. Brenden was a very enthusiastic dancer, singer and narrator. Jordan made his reggae debut. Here is a video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVrsEYyaxvA

Christmas apathy

2010-12-07T22:20:00.000-08:00

We are finding it really hard to get into the Christmas spirit this year. The lack of season changes to prepare, really missing family and friends and all the traditions we've grown used to over the years are hindering us from getting into it. We have a small fake charley brown tree but our one string of lights doesn't work. Sure missing that trip up the mountain with the Feds and others to cut down a real charley brown! One of our interns made this video yesterday, it's good for a laugh.

http://elfyourself.jibjab.com/view/xEXytWWSQJ29amtkvMnN

Visitors are most welcome

2010-12-03T06:19:00.000-08:00

Some long time friends Mark and Tamera came to visit us recently and it was a real treat. It was great to speak our language and have someone “understand” for a few days. I don’t mean English. I put Mark to work one day digging some perc holes, Tamera got to see some of the stuff Kara is into with the neighbourhood kids and local babies home. We got caught in a traffic jam, approached by a guy with a very typical sob story, ate some rolex, listened to Kara try to convince a traffic cop into giving Jocelyne a ticket instead of just requesting a bribe and drove on some rough roads. We also took them to Jinja which is a town much smaller and nicer than Kampala. Its kind of our getaway town that has clean air and the beautiful river Nile. We sat by the pool and ate some pretty bad food. I think it was a good introduction to Uganda. All visitors are most welcome!

These are all the pictures I have. All the pictures with Kara and Tamera were on M &T's camera.

Uganda accident protocal

2010-11-13T02:25:00.000-08:00

Kara and I were driving down the road just minding our own business when this taxi pulls right out in front of us. They do that a lot and usually you can just pass by but this one left me nowhere to go so I had to stop short. The next part was pure chaos. Boda Boda man behind me was following a little too close and he crashed right into the back end of our car. I looked in my mirror to see him bounce off my bumper, kick sideways and fall over into the opposing lane. Boda man behind the first boda man was also following too close. He ran into the motorbike that had waxed and waxed himself. The car going the other way ran right over the boda that had just run into me, narrowly missing the 4 people sprawled all over the road. Both Boda drivers and their passengers were on the pavement, the first boda was mangled from getting run over and the traffic behind me had come to a full stop. I took one more glance in my mirror, saw that boda guys were getting up, and just headed for home. This is Africa.

Ggabba Road furniture strip. If you look close, there is a city in all that smog. Totally unrelated to the story.

Mamma Janet

2010-11-04T09:02:00.000-07:00

Watoto Suubi village is one of those places in Africa that is a great picture of success. I'm sure many of you have seen the Watoto kids choir come and sing and dance at a church somewhere in Canada. This is how they tell the wrold their story, raise awareness and sponsorship. http://www.watoto.com/home The village is made up of clusters of houses with 8-12 kids and a house mom in each. There are 9 houses in a cluster and many clusters in the village giving a sense of close community and a relationship with something larger. I think 1700 people in the whole village. All the kids and moms are picked from hopeless situations and are placed in a place of refuge where that can have a sense of family, belonging and safety. Sometimes there are siblings with their birth mothers in a house but mostly it's just a group of orphans turned into a family. The kids go to a nice school and from what I witnessed are very well taken care of. I've done a fews days of work for Watota at Suubi Village and have already made some friends there. My mom sponsors a mom that is a house mom for 8 boys at Suubi and we had the privelage of meeting her yesterday. We took her some sugar, flour and oil and it was like we had bought her a new car! "Thank-you for loving me, praise God for you" is what she kept saying. It was pretty special.

Mamma Janet and one of her boys

Pictures of Life in Uganda

2010-10-16T04:54:00.000-07:00

eMi family potluck.....good times dinner and dancing

One of our guard's is Joseph. This is his family with Evelyn, Jeremiah and new baby Kevin.

Baby Kevin

The kids at Florence's nursary school. Kara has been helping out there with teaching the kids to read.

The kids are so cute they deserve another picture.

Guard Wilson with some gnarly carrots from our garden

My fishing excursion on Lake Victoria, I was skunked.

My friend Shawn with an enourmous Talapia

eMi Project Trip

2010-09-28T03:04:00.000-07:00

I've just returned from my recent eMi project trip to northern Uganda. It was a great week far from the hustle bustle of Kampala! Our team was able to accomplish a lot in a week and it was very rewarding being a part of what Safe Harbor International is doing in and around Midigo. We ate freshly slaughtered meat everydayl, laughed a lot, worked really long hours, made a bunch of new friends and experienced more of God's amazing creation.

Once again I was thrown into somethings I knew little or nothing about. The project involved designing a flour mill and chicken farm for 5000 chickens! When it comes down to the nitty gritty though, we were designing buildings and spaces for things that we can easily learn about when building on the concepts that become routine. Our team was strong and it was a privilage to lead a group that were accepting of the task and willing to put their experience and talents towards this project. I'm doing this blog a little different this time......The internet is really lousy here and it's been a struggle to load photos to the web. I managed to load a youtube video with the photos contained in a slideshow. Enjoy, questions are encouraged!

Slideshow Video

Dance Party

2010-09-10T03:06:00.000-07:00

eMi has 10 Ugandan staff that we are really getting to know and love. Stella is one of the cleaners that spends a good bit of time at our house during the week. She has a quick wit to her and loves to tease and stir the pot. Stella is married to a teacher and has 5 kids, all girls. She spends about 2 hours each day traveling on the taxi to get to work and another 2 going home. We figured it was about time to get out and see where she lives and meet her family. You could fit her whole house in the living room of ours. There weren't any boxes of toys, piles of laundry, video games or excess. But there was a stereo and plenty of joy. So after our family was served so much lunch that we couldn't move we did what Stella's family loves to do, we had a dance party!

Sharing

2010-08-29T22:23:00.000-07:00

We have soooo much how can we not share with these little ones? These little ones with their dirty ripped shirts who I see picking through garbage and playing with their one and only toy....a tire tube. We started letting some of them come to our compound to enjoy the bikes and scooters that sit idle most of the time because of all the choices out children have when its playtime. My heart has been drawn to them since we got here and now my friend Jocelyne and I have started an after school program for them. It was an easy “yes” for us to take some of our kids books, lego, building blocks and coloring stuff to share. To take just 3 hours out of our week to watch the smiles on their faces and hear the giggles when they make a lego creation or when they show you their coloring sheet. We are doing it a local village school just down the road.

Our first day we had a 120.........it was crazy fun!!

Brenden helping with registration

Parachute games

teaching Duck Duck Goose with a Lugandan translator

We have 4 Ugandan helpers who are great with the kids

The classroom we have our toys, books and coloring in

We all need water!

2010-08-14T02:34:00.000-07:00

I went on a field trip recently to a couple of different sites outside of Kampala. I lave getting out to the rural areas of Uganda. Life seems simpler, hard but simple. African culture puts great emphasis on community and helping your neighbour. Since nobody really has anything in the village, nobody ever really get ahead or falls behind. If one family’s crop yields a lot more than someone else’s then they are expected to help the needy ones. It’s a hard concept to wrap your brain around coming from our “me first” centered North American culture. There is an age old proverb that says it takes a village to raise a child and I’ve realized that the meaning is much more literal than I thought. We have a lot to share and teach these people on the technical side of things but we also have a lot to learn on the relationship side.

The first village we visited was in a predominantly Muslim community called Jjokelera. We went with an NGO called the “Uganda Water Project” ( UWP) these guys find water projects needed and match donors to the project and see that they get built. It can be as simple as a plastic tank and gutter system to collect rain water off a roof. In Jjokelera the closest Christian church was 5 miles away. A local pastor started a church and doubled it as a school for primary kids since there was no school in the community. The church now has 80 members and the school has a healthy mix of Muslim and Christian kids attending. The church/school roof added collection area for rain and the tank holds water that is accessible to the whole village. The kids were so happy to see us and put on a performance of 3 or 4 songs in Luganda. The teachers did the drumming and it was rocking! We were able to fix up their rain water collection to increase the collection and offer our eMi services for the future building designs they are planning to expand the school.

Happy songs at Jjokelera

The kids lined up to get their balloon, candy and toothbrush

Jjokelera Kids

The next site was a little more sad. We visited a boarding school that was a beautiful facility perched on a mountain top that is able to hold 550 students. It was obviously planned out, engineered and built well but was lacking a major ingredient for success. There was no water! The school has been trucking in water from Kampala at a ridiculous price and on top of that running out before then next truck arrived. They had a system of tanks that would supply each building by gravity and a series of rain water collection. The rain water collection is great for rainy season but cannot be relied on in dry times. We found out that the kids in the school were allotted 1 Ugandan (500ml) of water per day for drinking and 2 cups per day for bathing. A recent visit from a medical team revealed to the school leaders that the kids were dehydrated.

What should be1 day of water storage for the boarding school is spread out for a whole week

Charcoal stoves and some serious pots! One was full of beans....like 20gallons worth

A room full of triple decker bunk beds. Each kid gets a bed and a small lock box.

Rain water collection tank and tap

Unfortunately there was no easy solution to this place. They had drilled a well in the valley 1.5km away but the well does not produce enough water to adequately meet their needs. It will help but will be an expensive fix compared to what it will do for them. We were able to design a pump system for them to at least give them an option other than trucking.

Planning at the front end of these projects is so important. Great intentions can turn into disastrous wastes of money if the right steps are not taken in the proper order. I’m not saying that eMi has all the answers but I hope that the projects we work on will provide the planning required to meet these basic needs.

"We don't do these things so that we can preach the gospel, this is the gospel" ( James from UWP)

Lake Bunyonyi

2010-08-11T12:19:00.000-07:00

Well after 3 months in Kampala we decided it was time to go on a road trip and escape the city for a weekend. We picked a doozy for our first one and drove for 8 hours to the south west corner of the country near the Rwanda border. We heard there was a beautiful lake there to swim in and since it's August long weekend in BC and we kind of have a tradition of doing something on the lake on August long this was the logical choice.

We got to see a lot of different country while driving this far. Kampala is quite lush because of the microclimate that Lake Victoria creates. We went through tropical areas to scrub brush to massive banana plantations to rolling green hills and finally arrived a beatiful place called Lake Bunyonyi. We even saw some zebras on the way! After the 8 hour drive we opted for the 15 minute motorboat ride instead of an hour long canoe ride to the resort on Itambira Island.

It was so nice to escape the dust, barking dogs, roosters, traffic, noise and electronics for a few days. We swam, relaxed, ate, made circles in a canoe, played cards and sat around. Everything a holiday should have.

Here is the photo album

Good Times

2010-07-21T11:38:00.000-07:00

July has brought a busier household with 4 little Baker kids and Jocelyne staying with us until they move into their new place about 5 minutes away. It was great having Audrey here too but I think she was happy to get home. Our large dining room table has been full with the 12 of us.

We went on a little road trip to Masaka last weekend. We stuffed 14 of us in a Matatu including our kids and Jocelyne’s kids. I was amazed at how well the kids traveled on the hot dusty road.

We went to a place called the Timothy Centre which was an eMi design project last October. This NGO is actually based out of Vancouver and all the white folks we met there were from Vancouver. It was great to see their accomplishments so far. It usually takes people quite a long time to get the right funding, people and resources to build the schools, clinics and other stuff that goes into these kinds of sites. These guys looked very organized and were building at a great pace. Very encouraging.

On the way back we stopped at the Equator landmark, the center of the earth!! The boys and I have been talking about playing a game of catch over the equator for quite some time and we finally got to do it. They had to wear their Rutland Minor Baseball hats to make it look at little more official.

Boda Boda shoe store

On Saturday we joined 2 of the eMi interns as they did their last “reading to the kids” session in Bukasa (a neighbourhood nearby) before heading home. These interns have finished their 6 month session at eMi and are headed out yesterday. Josh has been going to a small trading center and reading to a group of kids on Saturday mornings since he got here in January. We hope to keep the tradition going. Our kids and Jocelyne’s kids also took turns reading to the others. The Ugandan kids managed to stay focused for about an hour, which is pretty good for any little kid.

Buvu Island

2010-07-05T07:54:00.000-07:00

I went on a pretty cool trip this week out to an island on Lake Victoria. Buvu Island is part of many islands in a cluster called the Sesse islands. Most of them are populated to some degree but they are very rustic and much more of an African Village setting.

There is opportunity to work on all sorts of small projects around the area with eMi and this was one of those projects that had my name all over it. Missionary Aviation Fellowship(MAF) has been trying to build an airstrip within the Sesse Islands for a few years now and they finally secured a land agreement with a man and his son who own 640 acres (roughly half the island) on Buvu Island. Peter the dad and Joshua the son came along since they now live in Kampala and were very supportive of the idea of an airstrip on their land. This airstrip will change an ordinarily hectic long boat ride into a quick 10 minute flight to bring Aid workers and supplies to the Islands.

Our trip started out with our taxi running out of gas at 6:00am. The driver got out and flagged down another taxi though so we really didn’t lose much time....just one of those TIA things. We hopped on a boat near Entebbe that was actually fibreglass instead of leaky wood planks and it had a 40hp outboard that seemed to purr along quite nicely.

On the way over there was another island that was quite amazing. It was very small, maybe a couple of acres, but it was full of houses that sat about a meter above the water line. I guess it was called a fishing village....but not really sure.

We were greeted on the beach at Buvu by a happy drunk guy that was very keen to carry our stuff, so we let him. Since we were working for MAF we were following their lead and the first order of business was to hold a meeting with the villagers to explain what a boat load or white folks were doing on their island. It was a pretty standard meeting, speeches from a few people, chickens, goats, pigs and kids standing by, important leader guys addressing the crowd wearing dress pants and white rubber boots, stuff like that.

When it was finally time to set out to do our surveying for the airstrip we had gathered quite the entourage. Another guy offered to be our manager and told me I needed a picture with an African.

Overall it was a very successful day. We surveyed over a kilometre of land for the airstrip, made some new friends and got a good sunburn.

Odds and Ends

2010-06-26T02:22:00.000-07:00

There are a few things that are becoming quite normal the longer we are here. Here are some random examples

Stairs are rarely uniform. These ones are at our house

Furniture is created and sold on the side of the road

DVD's are purchased from a guy outside the gas station. He does a great job of making the cases look legit. We are about 50/50 on buying ones that were filmed by a bad camcorder in a movie theater.

Bicycles and bodas are used to carry anything and everything. Unfortunately its really hard to capture. I plan on posting a feature of this on it's own.

We love meat. Charcoal barbeque is a great way to cook it, it just seems right. That's Venessio in the background.

Abandoned Babies

2010-06-12T11:18:00.000-07:00

We went to visit a babies home today, there are 14 in total. All the babies were abandoned and are waiting to be adopted. We only heard a few stories, and they were pretty gut wrenching. Things like "this one was found in a bag in a field". It was great to see them getting such great care in the mean time and they all smelled so good.

Tanzania

2010-06-05T11:54:00.000-07:00

I just returned from my 3rd amazing project trip with eMi. Our 9 team members traveled by van from Kampala through Kenya to the “bush” in Tanzania. Africans call any place outside a city the “bush”. We were at about 6000 feet elevation and for the first time since I’ve been here I felt cold. Thankfully the cold was only for a brief time in the mornings. 13 hours on the road feels like an eternity with the start stops and slowdowns for potholes, busses that take full ownership of both lanes and policemen pulling you over every few kms. We had a delay at the Tanzania border because the border guys wanted a photocopy of something to do with the van. The power wasn’t working at the border office so our awesome driver Fauruq had to find a photocopier somewhere else where there was also power. This took about an hour. It’s really amazing this was even doable. When we turned off the main highway towards the village of Ntgatcha where our work site was, the scenery definitely changed. A van full of Mzungus is a real highlight to the villagers. Lots of waving, cheering and running after the van. It was like they were expecting us and excited that we had finally arrived.

The Ministry we were serving on this trip is called Teamwork City of Hope. Team work ministries have been at work planting churches and bible schools in Kenya for many years. The City of Hope that they started in Tanzania has quite a story. The leader of the Ministry is Dr. Cha Cha. He was born in the village where our site was but moved to the US to attend a Mennonite college. He said he was the first African to ever attend and has lived in the US ever since. The site is on the divide between 2 clans that have a long history of fighting each other. Until just a few years ago, gun shots were routinely heard at night along with screaming and fighting. Dr. Cha Cha longed to return to his home village and provide some positive change and hope to the area. He started a primary school and dorm and took in 50 kids from the village that were left orphaned or abandoned from the fighting, aids and other stuff. They also built a mission center for teams from the US and Canada to come and stay and help out on projects. The site is about 40 acres with 22 acres planted with crops to feed the kids. The most recent addition was a clinic that is about 80% built. Our task was quite large because Dr. Cha Cha is dreaming large. I thank God for visionary people, they are exciting to be around and give the detailed people lots of work.

Programming meeting with the Cha Cha's

When we arrived for the project we thought that our scope of work was to design a primary school since the kids were having school in their dorm rooms. We thought we might be designing staff housing for the clinic along with water and septic for the clinic buildings. Then Dr. Cha Cha started unfolding his vision and our scope of work greatly increased. He knew that his vision would not fit on the 40 acre site and he would need to buy more surrounding land to meet all the needs. Once all those needs were met, he knew he would have to buy about another 500 acres in order to feed all the people at the City of Hope. A full scale hospital serving 600 people a day, a nursing school for 300 students, a secondary school for 700 students, primary school for 800 students a vocational center, and lots more farming. To top it off, he wants to replicate this model all over East Africa!! I guess we will see what actually gets accomplished but he seems to be a very influential and connected Tanzanian American. He has a picture of the president of Tanzania on the site to officially open it. Pretty cool.

Rain water collection at childrens center

The kids in the orphanage began each day by going for a run. This would start just outside my bedroom window at 6:00am with the same song sung in Swahili. It never got old. These kids could sing and loved to sing and we all loved to listen.

We went on a tour of a hospital Tarime (the main town nearby). It was a very depressing site of overloaded and unclean spaces. We have it so good in North America, there is absolutely nothing to complain about. This place had 1 doctor and about 200 out patients each day. The bathrooms were a hole in the floor that blasted you with flies and a potent urine smell as soon the door was opened.

The highlight of the week was turning on the lights in the orphanage. These kids have been living without any power. They get up at 5 every morning to do their chores in the dark, have a bowl of porridge in the dark then go for a run at dawn before school. You can hear the happiness through the songs and can see the love in their smiles so I know life is good for them. Dr. Cha Cha had purchased a generator for them but they didn’t have any lights or wires. A guy on our team was delegated the task of wiring the dorm with lights. On Friday night we all walked down the dorm to listen to the kids sing. They were gathered around a couple of kerosene lamps and belting out the Swahili songs. When Scott fired up the generator and flicked the switch for the lights it was like Sydney Crosby had just scored the goal medal goal in OT. The place erupted. Now they can do their chores and have breakfast in the light in the morning and can read in the evening. It was life changing.

After 6 days on an eMi project the goal is to have enough work done to give a presentation to the ministry. The room was packed out with about 25 people from the ministry and village. It was really good to get to that point and show Dr. Cha Cha’s vision of the City of Hope on paper (and on a projected screen) They were very pleased and excited to get started with construction. Over the next 6 weeks we will finalize designs and provide the engineering and architectural drawings and specs for their first phase of the project. It was hard to scale that part down to something that we can complete in 6 weeks. They are already asking us to come back.

The "end of the week" pretty picture

Dr. Cha Cha asked if someone from our eMi team would preach at church on Sunday. When asked this, it’s not really an option of preaching or not it’s more like who is going to do it. We all sat there not making eye contact, hoping someone from the team would take the plunge. I decided to give it a go. Then I found out that I was supposed to preach for half an hour to an hour and I got a little nervous. It was the church that all the kids go to so I figured they didn’t want an hour long message anyway. I spoke on 1 John 4:7-21 and with a translator; it only took about 20 minutes. I could already sense the kids getting restless. After that they sang for another hour.

The end of our trip included a safari in the Serengeti. It was supposed to take 3 hours to get there but after taking a “shortcut” it only took 6. Seeing the African wildlife in their natural habitat has always been a dream of mine. We saw wildebeest, zebra, ostrich, impala, gazelle, giraffe, baboon, monkey, elephant, water buffalo, hippo, crocodile, warthog, hyena and lots of birds. No cats this time had to save something for the family safari later on.

Overall a great trip and learning experience. It was great to get “home” to Kampala though and give Kara and the kids a big hug. My next project trip will be one that I am leading to Northern Uganda. A different spot sharing that same kind of struggles. Here is the link, http://emiea.org/projects/projectprofile_9104.shtm We have finally moved into our house here. It was a great day!! The kids have spent a lot of time in the yard. There is one guard that really likes playing soccer with them which they love. We are getting more confident in our driving skills and venturing out further all the time. Transition is going well.

I can't seem to load anymore photos on this blog. Its stuck. I'll make an album on facebook instead.

Friendly Monkeys and Beautiful People

2010-05-29T10:12:00.000-07:00

Pats been away for a week now so I guess I better get my post done before he gets back on Tuesday.......I guess its my turn
For Brendens birthday (May 20) we went to Entebbe about 1 hour away to the Botanical Gardens to see the monkeys. The kids have been excited to see monkeys since we talked about moving here. Everyone told us that the monkeys come right up to you and take food right out of your hands but I really didn't believe them because the last time Pat and I were here we went to these gardens and only saw a few monkeys way up in the trees. Well was I ever wrong, as soon as we got to the gardens there were probably about 10 monkeys right in front of our vehicle. As soon as we got out a tour guide came over,saw how excited we were to see monkeys so close and said we could feed them, they were very friendly. So we brought out our bunch of bananas and sure enough instantly we were surrounded by monkeys. They took the bananas right out of our hands.............the boys loved it, Leah not so much she stayed in Pats arms the whole time. I on the other hand was just imagining my children getting Rabies from one of these things, so you could say I was a little on edge. I was trying to keep track of them all but here must of been about 20 now all around us. The guide could tell I was a little on edge because he just kept saying "Its alright, they are very friendly" Then one decided it wanted Jordans bag of cookies and was having a tug-o-war with him over the bag. Jordan was laughing saying "look he wants the cookies" and I was yelling at him "just give him the bag" and once again the guide calmly said "don't worry they are very friendly". Yeah sure they were friendly but that wasn't my issue with the things. Needless to say after that I gave those bananas out as quick as I could and then we carried on to see the beautiful gardens. We saw, a glue tree, a cola tree, a cinnamon tree, a nutmeg tree and many more that were all brought in by the British in the early 1900's.

Everyone here is very friendly and love the kids. At first people just give you a blank stare but all we have to do is say hello and they get a big beautiful smile on their face and say "hello, how are you". For some this may be the only English they know. Its a little intimidating at first but it doesn't take long to figure out the process. This lady named Erin, where I buy my veggies, has one of these infectious smiles. She always asks how the children are and is constantly smiling. After I bought stuff from her last time she told me she loved me and don't know if she meant to beause she doesn't know much English but it sure made my day. I guess I'm supposed to barter for veggies and fruit but if she wants to charge me $0.75 for a big delicious pineapple instead of $0.50 I'm alright with that and I know that $0.25 will be put to good use.

The other day this lovely lady came to my door selling jewerly that looked like it came from Bead For Life. I guess she was friends with the other eMi couple that lived here before we moved in. Lucy is her name and she shared a little bit of her story wth me. 8 years ago Lucy and her husband moved to Kampala from a little village in Tororo, 4 hours East of Kampala. They have 7 children and she brought 5 more with her from her village who either had not parents or the one surviving parent they had couldn't provide for them. She wanted to give these children hope for a future when no one else could. She went through the Bead for Life program and is recently out on her own selling her jewlery to provide for her family. Taking care of 12 children wasn't enough to fill up Lucy's big heart. She had felt a big burden on her heart to provide a school for the children in her village in Tororo. She said that the children didn't go to school because the parents didn't have enough money and it was to far of a walk so they just hungout in the fields with their parents. She never went to school but has always wanted to provide one for the other children from her village. So this last year her dream came true. She and 4 other ladies started there first semester for 40 children aged 3-13. She invited me to visit it one day.......its now on my to do list.

Crossing paths like these makes me realize that there is much work for us to do here in the next 2 years.....so I better get busy!!!

Rolex and Longhorns

2010-05-17T12:54:00.000-07:00

Sorry for lack of stories folks, the internet has not been good and I'm about ready to give up on blogspot, there has got to be something better.....any suggestions anyone. I heard wordpress was good.

We have had some fun in the last week. I went for a walk to find a lemon the other night and I ame across a few kids playing game of throwing coins against a wall. I asked i I could play, but didn't really have a clue what they were doing. The kid that was in charge kept telling me it was my turn then after a half hour he told me I owed him 200 shillings. I paid up and went on my way. I see the kid everyday now. His name is Jonah. he helped find some more chipate today so I bought him a mango.

After church on Sunday, Brenden and I took a little walk to find some Rolex. Rolex is very cheap Ugandan meal made from rolling an omelet between 2 chipates. Chipates are like a heavy more greasy tortilla. They are quite tasty and filling and only cost about $0.50 each so you can't go wrong (unless it gives you the runs). We walked quite a ways before finding a couple guys that were making rolex. I tried to barter but I guess the price was set, or I just really suck at bartering. I orderded 4 but he made me 5 and charged me for 5. Brenden and I were almost home when we heard a strange grunting noise behind us. I turned around to see a very large cow with very long horns running towards us. I grabbed Brenden and we jumped of the road behind a tree and watched the cow run on by. It turned into the next driveway and stopped. I guess it was home. The 2 Ugandans that were watching us thought it was quite funny but our hearts were pounding.

Rolex and chipate stand

Typical frut and veggie stand. We are loving the fresh tropical fruit!!

I took a trip out to Entebbe to see an eMi project that is almost built out. Its a private boarding school called Msic of the Heart right on the banks of Lake Victoria. It was cool to see the local building practices and lots of locals employed by this project. They built a workshop and were making their own doors, window frames and other wooden accents from scratch.

This wheelbarrow had seen better days.

A local lifesaver for the Mzungus (white people) aroud here is the ARA(American Recreation Association). Its a complex that has an outdoor pool, restaurant, tennis courts and playground. The kids get so cooped up that when we get the chance to go there, they just take off and can run free and swim and have fun while we can relax. Its a place that as parents we don't have to keep saying "no" to everything. Saying no gets very old. We have met a lot of people there already from Canada, US, Australia and UK. We never realized how valuable is is to meet other missionaries that have been here a while and have learned how to live here. We've learned some great info at the ARA and are starting to make some new friends. Many of the people we've met work with Watoto and have offered to take us on tours of the Watoto villages. Something that we really look forward to!!

I had the privilage of checking this very athletic Ugandan in basketball last week. He made me look quite silly a number of times. We play on an outdoor court where you really need to watch your step. A highlight of the week though.

Kara and I have a busy week ahead, please pray that we will continue to transition well, have wisdom to make decisions, stay healthy and have soft hearts that reach out to the people around us. Leah is still quite scared of most things and people and we hope that she will get over this. The Ugandan's seem to really like her.

Random Pictures

2010-05-17T05:43:00.000-07:00

Sorry its been so long since our last blog.

Little girl dancing for us

waiting outside a clinic, we had to find a doctor

to sign our drivers license application

A nasty stork bird

The kids room

Trip to the City

2010-05-14T05:46:00.000-07:00

We woke up to heavy rains on Sunday morning which lasted several hours. We planned on taking public transport downtown for church but the rain made things more difficult. The eMi interns hired a driver and matatu (taxi van) to pick us up instead. They say that Sunday is the "quiet" day in Kampala. It's a very busy place. If you ever have time just type Kampala into google earth and have a look at the streets and layout of the city and it will give you a little better idea of what I'm talking about.

The ride downtown was fine, we made it to Calvary Chapel church and enjoyed the African singing. After church the interns wanted to go for lunch so they we walked a few blocks up the streets to a coffee shop. intern Josh explained on the way that Kampala is all on a series of hills. The higher up on the hills the nicer things get. The lower, the more dirty and crowded it gets. The Taxi Park is at the lowest. This is where all the taxis converge in one place. There are guys walking around asking where you want to go and will point you in the right direction of a matatu thats heading that way.

It had been raining for several hours and the City was quite a mess. When sidewalks exist they are quite poor. Lots of broken concrete, obstacles, potholes (filled with water from the rain), vendors, bodas, you name it. I don't think a blind person could make it 5 feet in Kampala before spraining an ankle. You really need to focus on what you are doing just to get from Point A to B.......This is alright if you are just looking after yourself, but try adding 4 kids who have no idea how to act in a big city, let alone an African one. It was a stressfull walk.

After lunch we headed down to the taxi park to find a ride home. The kids got to see some pretty ugly scenes of poverty. There was one street that was lined with beggars that were suffering from some sort of deformity. How would you pick which one to give something to?

We had what I guess is a typical matatu ride home. The van started out without any empty seats (it seats 14) As we went along, more people kept piling in. I think at one time I counted 19. Just when you think there is no way the driver will stop to pick up another he will, then another one will pile in after him. The kids kept their composure for the most part though.

Somewhat normal

2010-05-08T08:55:00.000-07:00

The eMi staff have been bringing us dinner every night since we arrived but tonight was our first night on our own. We heard there was a pizza place somewhere close so I set off to find it. You don't have to walk very far before a boda (motorcycle taxi) offers a ride. The scenario plays out quite nicely. I little eye contact or slight move of the hand is all it takes to peak the interest of a boda driver. After you get the attention of one driver there is usually another close behind thinking that you will like his bike better and ditch the first guy.

So I asked the boda driver if he knew where the pizza was. He wanted to take me to Cafe Roma....I knew that wasn't the one but I couldn't remember the name of the one that was recommended, After some fast talking Luganda between the boda drivers at the "stage", my driver was convinced he knew where the pizza was. So I hopped on and we off we went on down the road. There it was, the Palm Cafe Pizzeria, right across from the Italian Market. I paid my 500 shillings (about $0.25) and walked up the path to the Palm Cafe.

It was really a delightfull place. Overlooking parts of the City and on a busy corner of Tank Hill Road where there was plenty of action to watch. Since I knew I would probably be taking a boda back, I asked the server how big the pizzas were. I'm a rookie on the boda and lack the confidence of hanging on plus carrying pizzas. We are also a family of 6 so how many pizzas did I need? After stumbling through the conversation for a bit it seemed as though the pizzas were about 8" in diameter and that they could aslo deliver them.....but I will wait.....thinking that I would just get a ride with the delivery guy.

So I ordered a Ugandan "Bell Lager" and sat back to take in the goings on along the road. It almost felt homey, having a brew, waiting for my food. There were 4 guys working the outdoor kitchen. A guy rolling out the doe, one cutting fresh pinnaple, another cutting fixings and another assembling. Then one of the guys brought out the boxes. There were much to large for an 8" pie, more like a 12". I realized that I had ordered way too much but oh well. Finally I was presented with a big Ugandan smile and 4 12" pizzas. I asked him if he could deliver. He told me "yes please, you call next time and we deliver" and handed me the pizzas. Well alright, I guess I'll find another way home. Sure enough, there was a boda just in time.....then another.

I'm not sure why the boda driver that took me to the Palm Cafe drove much slower than the guy that drove me home, while I was hanging on to 4 hot boxes of pizza. I'm also not sure why I had to pay twice the amount going home as I did on the way there. I guess maybe I'll learn though. The pizza was excellent!!

Sorry no pictures, I forgot the camera.

Welcome to disorientation

2010-05-06T11:35:00.000-07:00

Another day closer to being over jet lag. We forced ourselves to go to bed later last night. Most of us made it until 7. Leah quietly slipped off her chair at supper and fell asleep on the concrete floor, Cooper wasn't far behind. There was all sorts of comotion outside our compound from 1-2am which was right around the time the party died off down the road. So we managed to stay in bed until about 4am. Hopefully tomorrow gets even better.

Some of the eMi folks took Kara and I on a tour today to the frequent shopping destinations in the City and our neighborhood. We realized that you can buy just about anything here but are told that just because something is expensive doesn't mean it is better quality. A brand new pair of nikes might sell for 200,000UGX (about $100....something else that takes getting used to) but that doesn't mean they are quality, most likely knock offs that will fall apart in a couple months. It was good for us to see though and Kara got to experience the routine of going to 3 or 4 stores for the weekly groceries.

The troubling part is that we were completely disoriented throughout most of the drive. There are maps avalaible, even a detailed version of google maps of Kampala on my iphone, full of all the main roads and side roads and names and numbers.....the problem is there are no signs!! Brad explained a few rules of the road while driving and stated quite plainly that you will get pulled over by the police a lot for making mistakes. The more experience you get in this the better you become in talking your way out tickets and bribes. They drive on the left and sometimes everything looks left. Potholes, boda's (motorbikes), pedestrians, people on bikes carrying things that aught not to be carried on bikes.....these all need to be dodged while keeping up with traffic. We are not looking forward to driving but know that it is a necessary part of life over here.....so we will begin looking for a car right away.

We have been trying to post some video on You tube but it hasn't worked yet......hopefully tomorrow.

We're there!!

2010-05-04T10:20:00.000-07:00

We made it!! This will be a short post cause I can hardly keep my eyes open. 3 out of 4 kids were puking the day and night before we left so Kara and I have not had much sleep in the last 3 days/nights whatever we are in right now. Kampala is 11 hours ahead of pacific time so we are a little turned around.

The trip went really well. We had a nice visit with my sister Cathy and her girls in Calgary before heading to London. We had a 9 hour layover in London, what do you do with that? Well what we did, we probably wouldn't do again. We walked for what seemed like a mile through the Hethrow airport to the train station. We were told that Piccidilly Circus, downtown London was cool so thats where we headed. It was cool, but not too much fun with 4 tired and grumpy kids. So we took a picture and got back on the train for the hour long ride back to Hethrow.

When we got off the plane in Nairobi, Kenya, we knew that things were different. We got off the plane and walked across the tarmack (is that righ Rob?) to the one open door in the terminal. Everyone was heading that way we guessed that was the right way.

Arriving in Entebbe, Uganda went really smooth. We got our passorts stamped right away and all of our luggage showed up!! Brad and John were waiting for us at the front door, so we loaded up and headed to Kampala.

I'm not sure if the kids brains were functioning at all to take in all the sites in the hour drive from Entebbe to Kampala. I remember on my frst trip to Uganda at how overwhelmed I was with all that was going on along side the road. It really is crazy and hard to explain with words.

We got to the guesthouse we will be staying in around 11, everyone is beat!!

3 days to go!!

2010-04-29T12:01:00.000-07:00

It's been a hectic couple of weeks. We are officially out of our house, the renters are in, all 18 of our bags are packed, weighed and measured, visas are in, the volcano is settling down, kids are out of school, Jordan and Brenden played their first and last baseball game of the season, many goodbyes have taken place.....lots has happened in the last 2 weeks!! I think we are ready....bring on the tears.

We are in the eMi connected news letter this month, here is the link http://emicanada.org/documents/eMiCspring10.pdf

Family Fun Day

2010-04-13T12:36:00.000-07:00

We are throwing a family fun day at Willow Park Church on HWY 33 on Sunday April 18th from 2:00 to 4:30. There will be kids carnival games, old school sportsday games, prizes, cotton candy, popcorn, good times. By donation with the proceeds to go to the Team Aylard Uganda fund. hope to see you there!!

Garage Sale Success

2010-04-13T12:29:00.000-07:00

The garage sale in Salmon Arm over the weekend was a great success!! I measure garage sale success on the amount of stuff you can get rid of during the sale. Between Jocelyn and us there was only one load to the thrift store and one to the dump. Thats pretty good considering the mountain of stuff we started with. We did make some good money as well, about $1800 each!! Thanks to our families, especally aunt Della and uncle Sal, aunt Carol and Edna for coming all the way to Salmon Arm to help out and contribute some great treasures!! Also to the Bakers, Graham and Annette, Jodi, Wayne and Janette. These things take a lot of effort, and its much appreciated!!

Its always nice to get rid of a dirty old futon

Garage Sale

2010-04-05T08:28:00.000-07:00

Big garage sale Saturday April 10, 9-4 at the Gathering Place in Salmon Arm. All proceeds will go towards the Baker/Aylard Uganda fund. Yup its final. Jocelyn's bought her tickets and is heading over to Kampala as well. We are very excited for her and the kids and to have them come stay with us. Come support the families by picking up something you don't really need. There will be cotton candy as well!!

Moving Forward

2010-03-23T23:20:00.000-07:00

As things progress towards the move to Africa, a few exciting details are falling into place. We finally made it out to to Calgary for a visit with family and the eMi Canada office to go over some particulars and spend an evening with the eMi Canada family. Lots of driving but well worth it.
We arrive in Uganda on May 4 and will be moving around a bit until the house we will renting is available on June 8. Our friends, the Crawfords who have been with eMi in Uganda for 2.5 years are moving back to the USA in June so we are excited to have a month with them and get the house they have been in. Its going to be a great house for us and is walking distance from the office and school. They are selling us their furniture as well which should make transition much easier.

Another exciting piece of news is that my first project while in Uganda is set for May 24, just 3 weeks after we arrive! The project is in Tanzania which is the country to the south of Uganda.
The NGO we are serving is called Teamwork City of Hope (TCOH) They currently run a childrens home for 75 kids that have been abandoned or orphaned due to aids, poverty and the multitude of problems faced in the developing world. They are working a farm and on building a medical center and have a vision to expand with a school, dormitory,cafeteria and much more that I will learn about later. eMi is going to provide site survey, site planning, water, sewer, irrigation for crops, power and building designs. My part of this project will be as a civil engineer which could include designing much of the water, sewer and irrigation components. I will also be a shadow leader to try and learn the ropes from seasoned leader Janet Strike. This is a step towards leading my own team so I'm pumped about that!! If you wish to read a little more about the project, here is the link http://emiea.org/projects/projectprofile_9102.shtm

Thanks Friends and Family

2010-03-15T21:02:00.000-07:00

If you never made it to the dinner and dance on Friday night then you missed a doozie!! From the Straight Ahead Experiment (Live Jazz) to the great food that people donated, cooked, prepared to the silent auction items that were donated and purchased for more than their value, Sue's amazing fiddle tunes, Glendon's fantastic sock hop moves, MC Carrie, DJ Steve, Photographer Melissa, bar tenders Linda and Kevin, meat cutter dads, potato Jan, the many people who came out to spend money and support us and have some fun. Thanks a bunch, we raised $3000 and had a lot of fun doing it!! Here is a link to some photos http://gallery.me.com/melissafed#100098

We are booked!

2010-02-28T20:59:00.000-08:00

Friday was a huge day!! We booked 6 one way tickets to Uganda for May 2. These next 2 months are going to fly by. We've now raised 80% of our support so it's getting close. The Watoto Children's Choir from Uganda was at Willow Park this weekend and experiencing those kids gave us a new burst of enthusiasm to get back to Uganda.

We still have tickets to the Dinner and Dance at Ellison Hall on March 12. Check out the poster below for more details.

Party!!

2010-02-11T10:08:00.000-08:00

We are thowing a fundraising party on March 12th at the Ellison Hall. Dinner, live music, cash bar, dancing, snacks, games, big time fun!! RSVP to Pat or Kara at teamaylard@gmail.com or 250-765-2400. We can deliver tickets if thats more convenient.

Great week!

2010-01-30T13:10:00.000-08:00

We had a very encouraging week of support raising this week. $700 in monthly commitments!! I was able to catch up with some old friends and tell our story as well. We are constantly amazed at how things seem to be falling into place. I'm the furthest thing from a flashy marketer and hate asking people for money so it's really encouraing to see people just believe in what we are doing and want to help. We are 3 months from our goal to leave for Uganda!! As long as everyone who has said they will donate fills out the forms and starts the process we are sitting at 70% our support budget goal!! Thank-you for stepping up for the team!!

If you would like to donate a one time gift or join our monthly support team then please follow this link for credit card donations. http://www.canadahelps.org/CharityProfilePage.aspx?CharityID=s94838
The start date can be right away and the end date is June 2012. Please type " for the ministry of the Aylards" in the message box.

And this one is for bank account withdrawls. http://www.emicanada.org/documents/EFT-EMIC.pdf
Print and fill out the form and send it to eMi in Calgary. The address is at the bottom of the form. The start date can be right away.

We took the double decker bus down to City Park to take in the otrch ceremony and join the olympic hype. Riding a city bus was a real novelty for he kids. Who knew??

Kelowna's Olympic torch ceremony with our Jamaican friends Leon and Leon Jr.

Team Aylard is Immunized

2010-01-19T20:05:00.000-08:00

The day we were dreading is over! 4 kids, 12 needles, 2 hours, $1000 and whole bunch of tears. The boys were very brave and tough about the whole ordeal but Leah was far from it. Poor little thing.

Brenden - Post Yellow Fever...."wasn't that bad"

eMi and Haiti

2010-01-17T17:15:00.000-08:00

Its hard to think about fundrasing with the devastation happening in Haiti right now. I got a letter from eMi that told what action they are taking. eMi is involved in disaster relief and has teams that are trained to enter situations like Haiti to help out. They generally get involved with providing clean water, sanitation and structual evaluations of builings. They are sending 2 teams to Haiti to work with Samaritans Purse in the relief effort.

Team Aylard is gearing up for a few more events over the next 3 months. We're planning a family swim night at H2O, Quiz night at Willow Park Church, neighborhood garage sale and we hope to finish off with a Party/dance/barbeque at the Ellison Hall. Watch for the dates on the blog and hope to see you all there!!

Halfway There

2010-01-08T20:38:00.000-08:00

probably won't see the Ugandan flag

at this Olympics

We are just over the halfway point of our monthy support goal! We also recently found some great flights to Uganda right from Kelowna thanks to our friendly Rutland traval agent at Light Travel. Flying out of Kelowna usually adds a good bit to the price of each ticket but in this case the prices are cheaper from Kelowna than out of Seattle!! Who knew?? The catch is the seats aren't going to last and the deal is until June. We have been thinking and praying lots about whether to try and leave in April or August. Of course we can't go until our support is together but maybe with a little more of a push this could happen by April. This would allow Pat to catch the eMi project in May and have a part in planning the trip. It would also give us a couple months with the current eMiE office director and his family before they move back to the USA on June 1. It just so happens that their house and all the furnishings will be available for us as well. This house would work out very well for us and is walking distance from the office and school. April means a bit of home school to finish off the year for Jordan and Brenden but its starting to make more sense on many other levels. I guess we will see.....Anyone have any ideas for fundraisers?

Just before Christmas I got an email from one of the girls at come, lets dance, the eMi project I went on last October to Uganda. This is the one where they wanted to start a farm and farm training centre. The 20 acres had not been cleared and were thick with vegetation. It seemed like it would be an incredible amount of work to get this farm actually producing but they are well on their way. Come, Lets Dance runs a children's home for about a 80 orphaned kids and the first intention of the farm was to have a better means of feeding them. My part in the project was to come up with a farm layout, balance of crops, projected yields, irrigation, and animals on the farmable acres that would be sustainable. I've posted the email below. Its a long read, but a pretty cool one!

Hello EMI Friends!

You wouldn’t believe how many times a week the term “EMI” comes into conversation! So we decided we should try to get in touch with as many as we can to give a little update! Jeremy and I are here in Uganda now, and Shane is in America this fall running everything from that end — over the summer ‘Farm, Farm, Farm’ has been our motto... So you can imagine how heavily we have been leaning on your designs!

Since you left beautiful Uganda last year, a lot has been happening on ground in Mwera. We have a full time Farm Manager and his Assistant living out there and overseeing everything that is going on. Since March of 2009 we have harvested about an acre of Tomatoes, a quarter acre of Green Pepper, a quarter acre of Egg Plant, and about a half an acre of Cabbage. Also, small plots of Onion, Carrots, Broccoli, Cauliflower, Sukuma Wiki(collard greens) and other local types of Greens and Spinach have been harvested. As of October 2 acres Corn has been planted while the ground is being prepared for 1 acre of Beens, 1 acre Potatoes, and 2 half acres of Sweet Potatoes and Peas this month (November).

So far it’s been the ultimate JOY to deliver all the fresh vegetables directly to the Children's Home as they’re harvested – seeing things come full circle after so many prayers and the efforts of so many people is really a True Blessing, wish you were here to watch the kids pile as many Egg Plants into the fronts of their shirts after taking entire truck loads of vegetables to the house!

In August our Taxi Micro Business expanded! We are currently running Taxi #3 solely to support the Farm operations budget. Just like all of our 4 Taxi’s the profit generated every month is spit in half: half going into a Saving Account and half toward a ministry budget (Medical, Food, Farm). This $350 (US) per month is seriously helping us to do things like pay Osbert (our new farm manager) and his workers, as well as the monthly food budget at the Farm – Praise the Lord!
Our most recent accomplishment (as of last week) was the completion of planting Live Fence around the entire perimeter. We had been having issues with renegade termites and thieves (stealing eucalyptus trees and fire wood) destroying the fence. So this ‘Live Fence’, locally named Ciapo, will take around 1 year to become a thorny hedge and about two years to become an 8-foot tall natural barrier. It took us 9 working days to plant 8,000 little seedlings, but a lot of effort definitely will pay off in the end.

This summer we had over 60 volunteers come and work with us on the Farm. While utilizing their hard work and resources we finished our first stage of the piggery, which defers a bit from the manual you guys gave us: it is pushed about fifty yards further away from the road to deter theft and remain in the shade of the eucalyptus grove. The pig facility constructed consists of 3 half-walled cement paddocks and a raised roof. Currently we have 1 male and 1 female pig, and plan on adding 2 female pigs this month (Nov) which will fully utilize the piggery facility once they have litters. We’re projecting that by March/April of 2010 the 3 litters of piglets will arrive! Because of MUCH research and advise over the last 2 years we eager to follow the “Pig Raising Time Table” once the animals are produced to breed/harvest.

We believe that the Pig Project will expand easily in 2010, the only ‘start up money’ anticipated would be to build/expand the Pig Facility. We’re excited that this projects will kick off our Animal Husbandry budget, we found pigs have the largest/quickest turnover rate :) Every time we are at the farm we get to dream of the day the kids will have their first pork party!!
Along with our pigs, we purchased 2 goats that help keep the grass down near the Bunk House and by the end of the year it’s planned that we’ll have 6 goats altogether. We’re pleasantly surprised by how ‘low maintenance’ the goats are and after they have lived a long and fruitful life, they will be useful for meat. Last month the first birth in the history of Farm took place on my (Julies) birthday, it is very exciting to start seeing growth at our farm in such a small way!

Looking ahead is very exciting as we are coming out of Phase 1 and starting to check off objectives inside Phase 2. Here are the Priorities for the Farm in the year 2010:

Building a facility for several Dairy Cows and buying at least one to get started. The research done tells us that we can get up to 25 liters of milk per day for kids and extra to sell.
A Chicken Coop to be built and first round of 500 Chickens as suggested in the EMI Designs.

Solar Power has been the most talked about with our Farm Manager, Osbert. As you know, there is no way to access power of any kind making simple things like keeping your phone charged a challenge. Since there are no power lines near the property and because our vision is self-sustainibility, we’re holding true to your Farm Design, just organizing the funds!

An Irrigation System – We’ve already endured one season of growing crops without an Irrigation System and even with dozens of volunteers carrying water to the crops, they still suffered. The volume of crops being planted currently have multiplying greatly as we continue to execute the layout EMI designed for the crops. Therefore a professional Irrigation System is needing to be installed for the future success of the Farm, rather than expanding or upgrading the system over the years. As we’ve experienced in many African projects – without sufficient clean water a project and it’s people can’t move forward. Lots of research and options have already been done by EMI, so we’re eager to get something implemented next year!

A Guard House - We believe the Farm will quicker approach sustainability as soon as the Pigs start having litters, Chickens start producing eggs, and Cow(s) start producing milk, BUT all of these things need to be monitored by a guard in order to be successful, which is why a GUARD HOUSE will be in demand simultaneously.

Storage/Grainary Facility – as the volume of crops grow a place to keep and store them is priority. Crops such as Corn, Sweet Potatoes, Irish Potatoes, and Casava especially will need to be stored properly in a Grainary/Storage Building, many of them are already in the ground! Even though the volume being harvested currently is small, every month we are expanding the acreage being planted.

Orchard - In the next 4-5 months we have plans of starting the Orchard. Thanks to the efforts of a current team the funds have been raised to buy about 200 fruit trees- Mango, Avocado, Oranges, and Papya. It’s projected in the Farm Designs that the property can accommodate even double that amount.

Because the vision behind everything CLD is a part of is Empowerment toward Self-Sustainibility, we’re constantly evaluating what it would take before the need for outside aid and even the taxi cab is no longer needed. We foresee the Farm animals as the first way of making money that can be generated back into the Farm expenses, ie: Animal Feed, Repairs & Maintenance, Salaries, Tools, ect... Surplus crops are the next product we hope to generate income with. Of course the Childrens Home needs come first, and because those needs are so great and things like drought and flooding disturb the crops - it’s difficult to project how much income the crops will bring to help offset the operating expenses around the Farm

It would seem impossible that all of these projects are up and running by the end of 2010, which is why most people involved anticipate that over the next 2 years at least these things mentioned above will be established and generating income in order to grow/expand if the opportunity presents itself.

We’re not forgetting our vision of a Vocational Center and all the constructing that goes with that, though it’s agreed that the above projects are priority before a ‘school’ is possible.

Meanwhile we’ve already empowered several community leaders/friends to come and work at the Farm full time. Because of the labor needed to for all the crops we’ve been able to reach out to those who were desperate, as well as involve house parents and some of the older kids from the Children's Home on a weekly basis to come and help out! It’s truly a community effort and a privilege to be part of.

As we move into Phase 3 know we still have far to go, but it’s so encouraging to look back with you and take everything in stride. THANK YOU for helping this story of ‘Holistic Community Development’ take shape and become a REALITY! You each brought a little piece of heaven onto this earth.

Huge Blessing to you all!
Julie, Jeremy, Shane and the entire Nansana community

The Quest for Perfect Ice

2009-12-19T11:57:00.000-08:00

We kept up the tradition of Christmas tree day with our friends the Feds and Wiebes again this year. It was a beautiful sunny day with lots of fresh snow, hot fire, delicous hot dogs and much less than perfect trees. Brenden asked me if e could see the saw for a sec....the next thing I knew he came trudging out of the bush with a tree he cut down himself. Excellent!!

I just can't help myself. This years version of the Aylard front yard rink had to be better than last years. There is always ways to improve plus Kara didn't want to park on the road for an entire winter again. So here it is.....we welcome the cold back.

A homemade zamoni is a must...mine is still a work in progress

I take great joy in watching our kids and the neighorhood kids playing on the rink. I will gladly tie skates if it means getting the kids outside in sub-zero temperatures instead of them play Wii or watching another movie. My back has been screwed up for 2 weeks now from building the rink but its all worth it!

Uganda Countdown!

2009-12-01T12:22:00.000-08:00

Uganda Countdown was a huge success!! Around 100 adults and too many kids to count came out to support Team Aylard and our first fundraising event. Hunger banquet, trivia, great desserts, coffee and music by special guest and friend singer songwriter Tom Longman. Kara and I had the stage for a short stint to tell our story of how in the world we've come to the place of wanting to move to Africa.

The generosity is truly amazing! Close to one third of our monthly support goal was raised in just one night!! There were also enough one time gifts to provide 1 full month of support!

Thank-you friends and family for coming out, helping out, bringing snacks and getting involved in what we're doing. Thanks to the youth that served, looked after kids, helped set-up and take down. Thanks to Pastor Gary for setting up, cleaning up and making the Abby available to mess up. Thanks to Joel for being a fantastic MC and Melissa for her creativity.

Our next fundraising events are the shopping night at Ten Thousand Villages December 7, 5:30 to 7:30 or contact Kara kaylard@telus.net for a voucher for the rest of that week if you can't make it that night. 10% of all sales will go towards the Team Aylard's eMi support account.

On December 12th, Glendon Wiebe is hosting a friendly poker tournament at his house. Contact Pat for more details. paylard@telus.net

Uganda Countdown!

2009-11-12T08:14:00.000-08:00

We are very excited to have our first official fundraising event. Friday November 27th at 7:00pm at the Abby - 228 Valley Road, Kelowna. We will provide the bevies and appies and a portion of the party fun. Come out and support Team Ayard!!

Invisible Children

2009-11-08T11:21:00.000-08:00

The fourth annual Gulu walk took place in Kelowna on the weekend. The walk is to raise awareness and money for the atrocities in northern Uganda and southern Sudan. Gulu is a town in Northern Uganda where children of the Acholi tibe were would walk up to 13km every night to avoid being abducted by the rebel army and forced to fight. They would walk to safer places during the night to sleep. If you haven't seen the video Invisible Children, then watch it. It's a heart wrenching documentry put together by 3 US guys in their early 20's. They travelled to southern Sudan in 2003 to find the story and did an amazing job of raising awareness of the horrific conditions in northern Uganda. The fighting as not ended, there are thousands of displaced, wounded and hurting Acholi people. The LRA continues to be a threat to the people of Sudan and has moved in the DR Congo. Click the link to read more Peace and Conflict updates. Watch the video, it's something everyone should see.

Points to Ponder

2009-10-31T10:00:00.000-07:00

Kara found a really cool video this morning from Compassion International on the definition of poverty and the way to beat it. Check it out. What is poverty

I think one of the most staggering stats on poverty I've heard is that 16% of the world's population consumes 80% of the world's resources. poverty-facts-and-stats The developed western world is the 16%. The Halloween and Christmas consumer push use a staggering amount of these resources in order to fill the store shelves.

This year at Christmas why not buy the farm (literally), and give something with a lot more meaning.Living gifts MCC also has some great ideas MCC Christmas

My first trip to Uganda with eMi was to help design a farm vocational center. Uganda has huge potential in farming. It gets me fired up!! Come on!!

Mama Victoria working her garden beside the Come Lets Dance Vocational Training Center (eMi Project 9072) Mwera Uganda.

2009-10-25T12:59:00.000-07:00

Team Aylard is Pat, Kara, Jordan, Brenden, Cooper and Leah. We are working towards moving to Uganda, Africa to work with Engineering Ministries International (eMi) eMi is a non-profit Christian organization comprised of architects, engineers, surveyors, building techs and others that donate their skills to help the poor and needy around the world. The mission of eMi is to mobilize design professionals to minister to the less fortunate in developing nations. They proclaim the gospel of Jesus by helping others change the world through the development of hospitals, schools, orphanages, water supplies, bridges, electricity and more.

Many people are asking, "when are you leaving". The short answer is we don't know. We have gone through all the stuff we needed to with eMi in order to leave for Uganda. The last hurdle is the support raising. eMi requires us to have 3 months of our monthly budget in our eMi account prior to leaving. We also need to have our monthly budget met with committments from supporters. This is what we are finding very hard to do. We hate asking for money but if you would like to support us we are asking you to start now instead of later. The sooner our account comes together the sooner we can leave. We are hoping for sometime in the spring.

Another aspect of our support team is the committment from people to pray. There are many days when we feel like we are losing a battle and need constant prayer to press on. We know that the timing of this trip is in Gods hands but seek the wisdom to make good decisions. If you are reading this blog then please click the link on the side of the page to become a follower. I don't really know if I'm just writing messages to myself if if anyone is actaully out there reading this....... I will leave you with 6 things you can do to help, if you can do any or all of the 6 then we greatly appreciate it!!

Pray
Become a follower of the blog so we know you're out there
Post a link to our video on your facebook page
Join our facebook group "Team Aylard to Uganda" http://www.facebook.com/home.php?ref=home#/group.php?gid=158195403136
Join our support team. Follow the "how to donate/join our support team" link on the side of the page.
Please ask questions, give us a call, email or stop by for coffee anytime

Support Raising has started!

2009-09-10T12:35:00.000-07:00

Holy Cow, where did the summer go!! We had a fun season of baseball with Jordan and Brenden. Jordan played on the allstar team and developed into a fine little pitcher. I was a very proud papa! We managed to do a little boating and get a couple of camping trips in to Marble Point on the Shuswap and to Kettle River. Brenden is now playing tackle football and geeze loueeze is he cute in all that gear.

Our home church (Willow Park Church) in Kelowna has now accepted us to be missionaries with eMi in Uganda. This was a hurdle we wanted to get over before really getting into the support raising end of our adventure. We felt that it was very important to have our home church behind us all the way and thought that would be the best way to start out.

Kara and I went to Colorado Springs in August which is the world headquaters for eMi. It was a great time, hanging out with all 30 or so fresh interns heading out to the various offices around the world. It was very encouraging and fun to meet so many people that have a heart for the poor and are willing and passionate to use their educations in engineering and architecture to design projects in developing world for free!! It was a week of training to get ready for life overseas and to discover some of our personalty traits and gifts that make us indiviuals. There was also some great tream building times and site seeing. Kara and I both got to try some rock climbing and decided that we would rather hike......coming down was pretty fun though. We made some new friends and are excited to see what God has in store in this next chapter of life.

This generation has a lot of work to do in spreading the good news. The wholistic approach to preaching the gospel is what gets us pumped about eMi. We get to spread the love of Jesus by using our skills, talents and experience by improving peoples quality of life. So cool to be able to do what you do well and know that its what you were created for!!

Kara and I are spending our evenings creating and assembling support raising materials. We hope to get our first mailout going in the next week. We are planning some get togethers and events to really get the ball rolling. I've uploaded a video to You Tube. Look for the link at the side of the page. If all goes well, we hope to leave for Uganda in the spring of 2010. So Much To DO!!

Team Aylard

2009-06-06T22:40:00.000-07:00

Pat, Kara, Brenden, Cooper, Jordan and Leah and working towards moving to Kampala, Uganda, Africa to work with Engineering Ministries International (eMi).

eMi is a non-profit Christian organization comprised of architects, engineers, surveyors, building techs and others who donate their skills to serve the poor and needy around the world. The mission of eMi is to mobilize design professionals to minister to the less fortunate in developing nations. They proclaim the gospel of Jesus by helping others change their world through the development of hospitals, schools, bridges, orphanages, water supplies, electricity and more.

Well we have finally decided to take this move to Uganda to the next level. Thanks to our friend Melissa for taking a hundred photos of the fam. the other night and dubbing the name "Team Aylard". Thats what we'll be. Much more to come. Check out the links and the March project trip story for now..... . We are currently working on our support raising materials and hope to load some more stuff on the Team Aylard site in the near future.

Pat and Kara's Uganda trip with eMi March, 2009

2009-04-02T21:41:00.000-07:00

As we drove down the road leading to our house we reflected on the fact there were no potholes, speed bumps, dust or masses of people nearly getting run over by passing traffic. After a very long journey we were finally home. I ran my tooth brush under the tap and took a long drink from its clean icy waters. It was nice to be home. Two weeks in Africa will make you appreciate the little things that we often take for granted in North America. Good roads, good drivers, pavement, cross walks, safe water and clean air are just a few of those things. Although it was great to enjoy temperatures that never dipped below 23 degrees even at night the cool refreshing March air was a treat to fall asleep to.

Kara and I had an amazing experience together in Uganda. Our trip got bumped up a day which gave us an extra day in Kampala before leaving for the project site. This gave us a day for the project team to meet each other at the eMiEA (Engineering Missions International East Africa) office and spend a bit of time seeing how day to day work goes on in that office. A bunch of us jumped in a Matatu (Ugandan taxi van that seats 14) later on that day and headed downtownKampala to exchange some money. We had to walk 10 blocks from where the taxi dropped us off to where the bank was. Walking in Kampala is something I wish everyone could experience. If you have ever played the video game Frogger then you might get a bit of a sense of what I’m talking about. There’s scads of traffic and no crosswalks or traffic lights so it’s every man for himself.

The project trip was about 100kms from Kampala but due to some nasty roads it took about 4 hours to get there. The Ministry we were designing for is called New Hope

Uganda

and they had recently purchased 700 acres of lakeshore property on Lake Victoria. It was beautiful. The land varied from sandy beach to thick jungle to rolling grasslands with groves of trees. I loaded some pictures on facebook for those who are my facebook friends. We found out on the way out to the site that we would be sleeping in tents. I have to admit I was a bit nervous (probably not as much as Kara) but knew that we wouldn’t ever be in any real danger so was looking forward to the adventure. Other than a Green Mamba being chased out of the outhouse and the odd gecko in our tent the stay was very nice. The food was amazing and I never had to do the dishes.

we had the little tent

The decapitated green mamba.....the gecko that came out of its body never made it...poor little fella!!

This is New Hope's third site for doing Ministry in

Uganda

. The first one started in 1988 when a crazy family from the

felt God was calling them to

Uganda

to help with the orphan crisis left from

Uganda

’s civil war and Aids pandemic. They moved over with very little funding and no clue of what they were doing. 22 years later they have helped over 1000 orphaned children through developing the Kasana Children’s Center. The second site they run is called Kobwin. This ministry is dedicated to helping rehabilitate boys that have been forced into fighting in wars. It’s a disgusting thing that we as North Americans will probably never understand. These boys have had all that is innocent in a child robbed from their lives and are left to live with the horrible acts that they were forced into.

A young couple from the

named Syd and Andrea moved to the site about a month before we got there to start pioneering New Hopes vision of Camps for men, women, youth and families. The vision is quite an ambitious one that will take many years to build out so our eMi team of architects and engineers only concentrated on a small portion of the property (about 100 acres) this time around. The initial camp that New Hope wants to start is for young men. The leaders of New Hope have a passion and really see a need for young men to be mentored and discipled in what in what it means to be a true “man of God”. This will involve typical camp activities, vocational training in carpentry, mechanics, agriculture and solid biblical teaching. We also worked on designs for a family camp and some guest housing on the property. Since they have so much property each camp will be its own entity with all its own facilities run under one administration. A very cool concept.

We didn't have as much interaction with the locals as we thought we might but the bit we had was really fun. There is a fishing village of about 200 Ugandans on the beach of the project site. The people are "squatting" on the property and the seller is supposed to be re-locating them. Since they all know that they are supposed to move because the white man has moved in, there was some anticipated tension and Syd and Andrea wanted to handle the situation carefully. The village pastor ended up inviting us to church on Sunday which was really cool. Our team leader Brad was asked to preach and did a fine job through an interpreter. The kids are always anxcious to play so after the service we did a lot of playing. We also got to take a boat ride out to an island on Lake Victoria. We had organized for a local to take us out at around 2:00. I think we found him around 3:00 then watched him bale water out of his leaky boat for half an hour and were finally off by 4:00 with a boat driver and baling bucket operator. Typical African time.

Kara and I had 3 days in Kampala at the end of the project trip to get a little grasp of what its like for North Americans to live there. We got 3 different perspectives from 3 different families. We were given some great tours of what Kampala has to offer and even got to visit the Bead for Life headquarters(which is where our interest in Uganda came from) We came away really appreciating the commitment that missionaries make to serving God in situations much less comfortable then we have back home. The dedication that we saw in people that are using their God given skills and talents to preach the gospel through serving the poor was very encouraging and uplifting. We have much to think about and consider………