The Second Quarter

The second quarter of the trip was equally as good as the first quarter but in a different way.  We spent the rest of this week working on the details of the project in Rama.  One of the common ties between all EMI projects is the communication between the project team and the ministry.  Often times words don't mean the same thing to the ministry as they do to the project team.  Overcoming this "language barrier" or different perspectives on things is always a challenge.  This project was no different.  Many hours were spent with the ministry trying to figure out if what the ministry was saying was what we as the project team were hearing.  One of the ways that we did that was to "draw" what they were saying.  We talk with the ministry and then show them the drawings a few hours or maybe a day later.  The conversation after that is normally where we figure out how far we were off the mark.  The more iterations that we can go through of creating drawings and then discussing them with the ministry the more likely that the building is what the ministry needs.  
It's becoming more and more common to bring several laptops on these project trips.  The advantage of having computers there is that they often save time in creating these drawings in country.  Also it saves time once back in the State because the interns don't have to recreate drawings that would have otherwise been drawn by hand.  It has been a huge blessing having the computers on site to aid in drawing creation.  Often times the project team will set up a make shift office.  Here is a picture of our office.  During this week there was always lots of activity in this room.

On a side note, there were four former interns on this project team: Joanne, myself, Matt, and Lauren.  The man in the middle, Billy, happened to be up in the office when this picture was taken.  It was a huge blessing having other interns there because they knew what had to happen to see this project through to the end.