Happy 2011! We hope that you had a wonderful Christmas and a great New Year. It was wonderful for us to celebrate Christmas in our new house and to be close to family again. Unfortunately, Chad's grandmother passed away about a week before Christmas and that made for a somber mood that hung over the holiday season. We were so grateful that we had been back in the US for just over a year and had her over for dinner almost every week during that time. It was another reminder that we returned to the US at the right time and for the right reasons.
When we left Uganda, our hearts were set on returning overseas at some point in the future and we have kept the door open to that since we have returned. God has caused some interesting things to happen these last few months. As a result, I will be volunteering on an EMI project trip in March to Burundi! I will leave in early March and will be gone for just about 3 weeks. This trip is the culmination of a lot of my past experiences and hopefully future working opportunities as well. My new engineering firm, KPFF, is really supportive of my international travel and projects. They have agreed to pay for me to spend an additional week in Uganda exploring possibilities of engineering projects in that part of the world. We don't know where it will lead at this point, but our ideal situation would be to continue living here, while traveling and working on projects overseas.
The EMI portion of this trip will be to serve a ministry called Sister Connection which is a Widows' Vocational Training Center. They have recently received 10 acres of land that they will use as a center for vocational training, micro-enterprise, sustainable agriculture and housing. The EMI team will master plan the site, design the infrastructure and make agricultural recommendations. Burundi is a county where 68% of the people live on less than $1 per day and the life expectancy is 43 years old! The center that we design would be used to further educate widows so that they could provide schooling and food for their children and raise their status in the community. Would you be willing to help support me in this? The total cost for the Burundi trip is $3,000 and Shanthi and I will be contributing our own resources, but we can't do it on our own. If you are able to give towards this incredible opportunity please visit the EMI donations page (https://emisecure.org/donate.html) and enter "9110 - Chad Gamble" as the designation. 100% of this money will be used for the trip to Burundi and the ministry there.
On a related note, our church has asked me to lead a missions trip to Uganda this summer! We have partnered with a friend from Uganda who lives here in Sacramento and will mobilize people to drill wells in northern Uganda. The details about this trip are still being finalized and our initial meeting is next Sunday, but it seems like God is really opening up doors for us to be connected overseas while living close to family here in the USA.
As you think about us and these upcoming opportunities please pray for the following:
- God to provide all the funding necessary for both upcoming trips to Uganda
- Wisdom to know who should be a part of these trips (everyone in our family would love to return to Uganda for a visit)
- The EMI team to provide just what Sister Connection needs for their new site
- Chad would make the right connections in Uganda for future potential work
- Shanthi and the children to be protected during my trip next month (it seems like every time I leave there is a problem with the car, a pipe breaks at the house or an injury occurs at home)
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