The Engineers visit CISA

Joshua, Brad, Steph, and Ali

We met a group of four young people at the school in Tuis before our trip to the beach. They are engineers and if I remember correctly, three of them are civil engineers and the fourth is a ???? engineer. They spent two weeks at CISA in an intensive Spanish curriculum. Each of them is volunteering 6 months of their time in a valuable ministry called EMI. We were only able to spend a short period of time with them, but we enjoyed it. Joshua was kind enough to provide some information about their organization and the projects that they are currently involved in.

Message from Joshua:

EMI is a non-profit Christian design firm that provides architectural and engineering services for other Christian ministries around the globe. Most of our work consists of designing schools, churches, orphanages, and medical clinics in third world countries. EMI’s headquarters is located in Colorado Springs, with international offices in India, Uganda, and Costa Rica as well as a second sending office in Calgary, Canada. The purpose of our international offices is to intentionally invest in the region, network with other Christian ministries and potential clients, and become experts in local design practices. The Costa Rica office is brand new, having moved from Guatemala City last fall. Right now we have two staff engineers and four interns, with two or three more families set to join us within a year. You can read more about EMI at www.emiworld.org.

This spring we are working on two projects – both of which are located in Guatemala. In late January through early February, we recruited two teams of volunteers and spent a week at each project – surveying the sites, meeting with the ministry directors, and developing our design.

Our first project was a training and development center for Agros International (www.agros.org). Agros is a Christian ministry that is working to break the cycle of poverty in indigenous communities by helping people acquire land, providing basic services, offering education and training, and coordinating economic development. Much of their work is focused on the Ixil region in northwestern Guatemala – a region still recovering from a brutal civil war which ended 12 years ago. In order to effectively serve these communities, Agros is in the process of building a center for training and development outside the town of Nebaj. Agros requested EMI’s services to review their master plan and design a carpentry workshop. When our team arrived, we found that Agros had purchased a beautiful piece of land; however, it was very hilly, leaving little flat space to build on. Our challenge was to use our engineering sense to locate all of the proposed buildings within their difficult site.

Our second project trip was at Casa Bernabé (www.casabernabe.org), an orphanage just outside Guatemala City that houses approximately 160 kids. Due to problems of corruption, the country of Guatemala has recently changed their adoption procedures, effectively stopping any adoptions out of the country, and creating a higher demand on orphanages. Many of the children at this orphanage are not necessarily orphans, but have been either abandoned or abused by their parents. At Casa Bernabé, the kids live with house parents in eight different homes, separated by age and gender. Since 1996, Casa Bernabé has provided the children with education at an on-site Christian elementary school. However, the current facility is inadequate to handle all the kids at the orphanage. Our project was to design a remodeled school building with a new second floor, as well as update their site plan and provide recommendations for their wastewater treatment system.

Now that we’re back at the office in Atenas, Costa Rica, our job will be to complete the design of these two projects, including construction plans and a design report. It is an incredible blessing to have this opportunity to use our engineering training to help all of the incredible ministries in this region.