update

Howdy

five months back in the states and all the old lingo has come back ;)
I just wanted to update everyone on my status.

I spent the majority of the summer in Chicago, working on getting my portfolio up to speed (still not completely finished!) as well as looking for jobs there. I had a few interviews: 3 in chicago and 1 in nyc, but nothing panned out.  In August I flew to Colorado for the emi worldwide staff conference (because I had already signed up for it due to my thinking that I would still be working in the uk at that point).  It was absolutely wonderful to catch up with my uk team as well as meet the staff from all of our seven offices around the world, many of whom I had e-mailed quite a bit but never met in person. All of the offices had a chance to present what the status was for them,  things going well, things not going well, things to pray for, introductions to the staff there! It was so great! It made me that much sadder, however, that I was leaving emi to pursue my professional license.

At the same time, I still felt like it was the direction God was taking me. Not three days after the conference was over, I was back at home in wyoming and I got a phone call from the architecture firm in casper asking if I would come in for an interview. Too good to pass up- so add one to the interview tally. It went quite well. The problem with that was I didn't have a chance to look anywhere in austin yet. So the night of the interview I booked a flight that upcoming weekend to austin so that hopefully before this firm got back to me, I at least could drop my resume off and look around at some places. The day before I flew out, the casper firm called up to offer me a position there.  I was a jumble of mixed feelings, but knew that it would be stupid to pass up a secure job at a firm where I could easily work towards my prof license.  While in austin, I still went about and dropped off resumes at a few top pick firms just in case, but I returned with no leads there.

Thus, I have now been working about a month at this firm in casper which although it is not in a location I was hoping for, it is a solid firm with competent, friendly, and helpful people and a good place to learn the knowledge I lack of architecture.  The thing that is the most frustrating is the fact that its a small town and if the community exists, i cannot find a group of 20-30s age christians around anywhere.  I kept in touch with only a few people from high school and they all live outside the state now.  It is nice to be around family again but my biggest prayer is that I'd be able to find a community/church here.

My involvement with emi now is small, but I do remain the overseas lackey :) I keep in touch with the director over in the uk and hope to continue helping out on small projects and little design issues whenever they come up. Mainly, I will have my nose in books studying for prof exams for the next few yrs but all the while holding an 'honorary emi staff' title!

Cheers once again and go use your passion on behalf of Him who gave it to you :)
carissa xx

a final farewell...tear

Much has happened in the last few weeks. I am struggling knowing how to start, perhaps mostly because I don't want it to end.  


Because I had to leave the country at the end of April, I decided rather last minute, that I would use up my air-miles to go visit friends in Romania and on the way back to the States, see if I could get back into the UK on a tourist visa. Let us just say this did not go as smoothly as I had hoped! Thus, I now find myself back at my childhood home in Wyoming.  I have spent the past week trying to re-animate my five-year old desktop (seeing as my dear laptop is somewhere in Uganda) moving back into my sister's old room (mine has become a sewing room), and learning how to trap shoot (because that's what cowboys do for fun).  

It was actually fun. 
I'm opting not to analyze what this confession suggests.


What's next? 
No really, I'm asking you. ;)


My goal now is to find a job at an architecture firm where I can finish my 2-3 years of work experience and exams that I have left to take care of in order to finish off my license.


It looks like the first step to this leads me to the Chicago area for the summer, job hunting and working periodically at the Blackhawk Baptist Camp as a camp counselor.  I've worked there two summers before while I was still at IIT, and I very much look forward to the chance to go back once again.  In August I will be attending an EMI Staff Conference in Colorado Springs.  If at this point, I still have not found a job I plan to go look further in Austin, Texas and then back here in Casper, Wyoming.  If still nothing, professional trap shooting...or perhaps a masters in structural engineering...or apply for another UK visa...


I like to think of my time with EMI as not coming to an end, but temporarily put on hold. I like to think that one day, when I am a real architect, I'll find myself back overseas designing buildings that proclaim Christ's love and bring hope to the poor.


I can't thank you all enough. 
To my financial supporters:
To my prayer supporters:
To my correspondence supporters:
To my friends:
To my mentors:
To my family:


For the money; for the prayers; for the correspondence; for the encouragement; for the faith; and for the love that made the eMiUK office function and grow as well as four amazing design projects to Patna, Monrovia, Vellore, and Kirambo happen,


Thank you. My life and many others around the world will never be the same.




with all my love,
Carissa  
     

UK adventures come to a close

Disorganization, fine print, and ambiguous wording on the border agency website has again led me to believe that one could acquire a visa of the same type without exiting the country this time around; however, it has now come to my attention that one cannot.  I now find myself in the position of having to tie up ends, say goodbye, and finish projects in a twelfth of the time frame I thought I was looking at.  Next Saturday I will need to be on a flight out of the UK in order to avoid becoming an illegal immigrant.  That being said, I am still going camping this weekend on the south coast with friends from work so packing and sorting myself out will have to wait a few days more! 


As much as having only a week to pack and sort myself out is crazy stressful, my disposition remains peaceful.  I have not decided completely if I will apply for a visa to return to the UK for the months of June and July or just take the opportunity to get a head-start on job searching, but I do think God is behind it all so perhaps it is just time to head home.


One thing I will say is I will terribly miss England and all the friends who come along with it.


Well there is much to be done and less time to do it in than expected so, tally ho! Prayers for destressification, finishing all that needs to be done in the office, and packing and such would be appreciated :)


x Carissa

Rwanda pictures posted

after a long wait and much ado, I give you pictures from Rwanda and Uganda posted here...

https://picasaweb.google.com/happycornbread


In other news:
it seems that in fine print neither the travel insurance will cover nor is the airline responsible for my laptop being stolen out of my luggage after handing over my bag to their care.  Thus, no compensation whatsoever... so thats a-lot-a-bit disappointing.

eMiUK has their first promotional booth appearance at Go Mission Conference 2011 (in two weeks, north of London)!!!  Tell your friends.

No news on the visa yet.


Prayer Requests:
*a visa to allow me to stay in the country till August finishing up the Kibogora Project as well as some promotional networking this summer
*for efficiency and wisdom as our project team tries to finish up the Kibogora drawings and report before our two interns leave at the end of May
* guidance on the next steps of life after eMi in August


I hope you enjoy the pictures and as Lewis Carroll reminds us, I pray you never lose your muchness!
x carissa

Kibogora Hospital, Rwanda

I've been increasingly aware of the sad fact that my time with eMiUK is coming to a close in just a few short months.  But if there must be a project to end with, the hospital design for Kibogora Hospital in Rwanda was the perfect one.  


The hospital has been a functioning mission hospital since the first doctor came in the 1960s, after first starting as a dispensary by Free Methodist Missionaries.  Ex-pats pretty much ran the hospital until the genocide in the 1990s.  On Sunday, April 10, 1994 the militias invaded the hospital and killed patients, hospital staff and those who had sought refuge from the violence. It is estimated that 130 men women and children died that afternoon. The hospital has been reopened and re-equipped. Refugees have returned to Kibogora, each with their own story; lost children have been reunited with families and a sense of normality has returned. There is no longer a large expatriate staff at the hospital, the management now being in the hands of Rwandan doctors. Medical assistance is provided by visiting specialists from overseas. Their stay may be for a month or a year, depending on the need and availability of the specialists. Sheila Eterington OBE is now the only medical missionary living permanently at Kibogora.  An amazing British born woman, she has been serving the hospital and the Rwandan people for 28 years and through the war. 

In the 60 or so years the mission has been at Kibogora, the needs of the population have changed but not decreased. Poverty, malaria, AIDS and other debilitating diseases have a devastating effect on many lives. The need for additional funds to treat patients is never ending; the limited medical resources mean that many die who could be cured.  Now the hospital has 250 beds and numerous existing buildings situated on hillside with a significant slope to it.  Recently they were just awarded Reference Hospital Status by the government for the Western Provence of the country.  However, located 240km (a six hour drive) outside of the capital of Kigali, Kirambo is in a very rural and poor region.  It is a great honour for the hospital but it means that much of their facilities and equipment and methods need to be updated and improved.  


Despite the tragedy that engulfed the whole of Rwanda not 20 years ago, the country is amazingly beautiful and well-kept for one of its economic standing.  The last saturday of each month is a national day of community service, where everyone participates in helping to pick up rubbish.  No one is allowed to bring plastic sacks through on the airplane so that no plastic sacks get brought into the country to become litter.  Thus, there is a since of pride and ownership of the country which makes not only the landscape scenery beautiful but the people and the cities as well!

the view outside our guest house

Pre-rwanda, I was mentally preparing myself for a west Africa climate: ridiculously hot, humid, mosquitoes, dust...  only to arrive to a pleasantly warm evening with a cool breeze  and a thunderstorm in the distance, an amazing view situated directly off of Lake Kivu, surrounded by a wealth of amazingly coloured birds, flowers and trees blanketing the rolling topography.  Rwanda definitely made my list of top five beautiful places I've been to.

one of our team nurses at work with the help of one of our team engineers

Despite the beautiful scenery and the amazing ministry, I think what made the trip my favourite yet was the team chemistry that came together in order to serve the hospital during our two weeks in country.  It was the first time an emi team has brought along team members who were not only non-design professionals but were in fact healthcare professionals who could help with the architectural planning as well as more directly serve the hospital during our two weeks with them.  We had an orthopaedic surgeon, a operating theatre nurse, a bio-chemist and a head of nursing along with us on the team, which added a whole new dimension to the trip.  The surgeon stepped in and performed a number of surgeries each day we were there with our operating nurse scrubbing in with him, the head of nurse from Colchester brought along a light-box and held a few training sessions on the importance of hand washing to stop the spread of infection and disease transmission as well as help in business planning and general operating hospital standards, and our bio-chemist helped out in the hospital lab.  On top of all of that, all of them had a hand in surveying the existing site and buildings or spacial planning of the new building designs!  

Proposed Masterplan

Probably the most challenging aspect of the project was the existing site of the hospital.  Across the site there was about a 30 metre drop in elevation with a 20% grade in some places.  The location where Kibogora is in Rwanda is subject to regular power cuts as is all of the country and most any African country.  This means that as a hospital, it would be very unwise to rely on elevators or lifts in buildings.  You can imagine how detrimental a patient moving from a ward to a surgical theatre who gets stuck inside an elevator would be.  With this in mind and the expense and maintenance costs of back-up generators we wanted to solve the problem of the grade by trying to place as many of the functions and spaces where people and equipment get wheeled back and forth from on the same building level with connecting gentle ramps between the floors for staff and public.  This meant not only designing a couple of new buildings but re-planning most of the hospital.  It was, needless to say, a very intense two weeks!
    

Level 1: Paediatrics and Training Centre

 Level 2: Paediatrics and Administration

 Level 3: Mental Health, Outpatients, Staff Changing, Lab, Pharmacy, Storage, Internal Medicine Ward

 Level 4: Diagnostics, Minor Theatres, Isolation, Surgical Ward, Reception, Emergency, Surgical Theatres, Recovery/ITU, Kitchen

Level 5: Neo-Natal, Maternity Theatres, Maternity Ward

Level 6: Chapel, Private Rooms

On our way back from Rwanda, the UK office team members had a chance to stop over for a few days in Kampala, Uganda to visit the eMiEA office.  It was so exciting to see yet another emi office at work and get to share our project with them and see what they were up to!  We saw a traditional tribal dance performance, the headwaters of the Nile in Jinja, as well as the construction progress of the Show Mercy site.  The Show Mercy orphanage was the first project I worked on when I came to the UK office as an intern! It was so exciting to see the buildings that I helped finish drawing up in CAD actually being built!  




In trip-reflection mode, the reoccurring message apparent to me is 'Christ is enough.' 


Philip said, “Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us.”
-John 14:8


Although we only had two weeks for a full-on project, although I had never attempted a hospital design in all of its complexities, although my laptop got nicked at the end of the trip, the Lord keeps reminding me that He is enough.  


So the hard work continues until the design and report for Kibogora Hospital are done.  The goal is a completion of the project before our two wonderful interns leave us at the end of May...He is enough!

Thank you to all of you who sent prayers and/or funds to make it possible for this design project to take place!  Keep an eye out for my trip pictures posted on Picasa in the next few days and keep praying for the project completion of the new building designs and masterplan for Kibogora Hospital in Rwanda!!

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Rwanda is fully funded!!!!

thank you thank you thank you :)

Not only is my final project trip fully funded a whole month ahead of time (!!), the last bit of help came from an anonymous donor!  I tried so hard to get out of Mike who it was but to no avail!  It is frustrating not knowing who to thank but I suppose the whole purpose behind it was to focus all my thanks on God.  If indeed that was your intention, be assured that it worked and please if you are reading this my sincere apologies that you wont get an awesome thank you card in the post. To you and the rest of all my amazing support team, may God bless you ten-fold for the opportunities you've given me to serve with eMi and for the people and ministries who have been blessed through eMi!

I love you all <3

Look I'm official!

http://emiuk.org/staffbio_ChristensenCarissa.html

The support continues to come and I thank you all so very much!  I am almost completely funded for the project trip to Rwanda!

In a couple of weeks the two new interns arrive to help us out on the hospital project- Monica from Brazil and Laura from Minnesota! It has been a relaxed month but I am excited for the office to double in numbers again :)

If you would please keep eMiUK in your prayers: 

-for the upcoming project trip in march

-for a full-time staff member to join our team

Tootle-pip!