Jordan?!?

Unbeknownst to most, Jordan has been lingering in the back of our minds the past several months. eMi hopes to open an office there to service the Middle East and north Africa. I just returned from a project trip to Jordan to advise Habitat for Humanity Jordan on construction management issues to make their construction process "better, faster, cheaper..."

Heather and the kids remained in the states (see previous post) while I traveled to Jordan. The trip with Habitat was amazing (read the technical details here in EricEMI.blogspot.com). We finished the construction of the roof system of a house outside of Amman. I found Jordan to be very different, much more different from the States than Guatemala. I quickly found this out during a early conversation with the brother of the woman for whom we were building the house. He asked the typical question about the ages of my kids. I told him I had a 7 yr old and 3 5 yr olds. after I told him they were not triplets he assumed I had two wives just like him. I quickly realized I was "not in Kansas anymore" The cultural differences abound in a culture based in Islam instead of Christianity. About 2% of the population are "Christian" and only 0.2% are "evangelical" (1% Catholic and about 1% Coptic).

I have always been drawn to those who are against the gospel. In Guatemala the gospel is evident and culturally accepted as a base of society. Jordan, on the other hand, is one of the most Islamic of the Middle Eastern countries by percentage. It is relativley safe for Christians to live there though it is still illegal to "convert" muslims.

Randy, while working in the eMi Guatemala office, encouraged me to go with him to start the Middle East office but it looks like they will not be openning the office for a significant amount of time. When the EMI project trip to advise Habitat came up I was excited for the opportunity. Habitat was asking for construction suggestions and then requesting someone to return for a 1.5 to 2 year commitment to implement the suggestions. This peaked my interest. While we were praying about Jordan the news came up about the possibility of the eMi Guatemala office moving. As this option was investigated by eMi they decided to move the office to Costa Rica. At the end of last year Heather and I had roughly decided on leaving Guatemala at the end of the summer 07 because our original 3 year commitment was just about up and the summer was a good time. Ironically the office will be moving to Costa Rica in September.

Heather and I always pray that the Lord narrows our options down to only one that we feel is right. I think that if eMi were to stay in Guatemala it would be much harder to move to Jordan because we are so happy with the work here. We don't feel drawn to move to Costa Rica nor would we want to switch organizations in order to stay in Guatemala. Well that certified our thoughts of leaving at the end of summer but neither of us are ready to leave the mission field.

When going on the project trip to Jordan I was unsure exactly how much help I would be. I have never been a professional construction manager nor a practiced structural engineer but I found that my experience with building low cost, masonry single family homes in a 3rd world context for the past year and rebuilding homes in the "Stan" project proved to be invaluble. I was able to engage myself in the discussions and be a valuable asset to the assessment team as we quickly found several ways to improve the current designs as well as alternate design technologies to improve the process altogether.

For a while Heather and I have had a desire to understand the muslim culture and the thought process of the Middle East altogether because we want to understand the mindset of Jesus and the authors of the scriptures better. Jordan allows us these cultural insights as well as being right next to the Holy Land to explore and understand. One cannot come to Jordan as a "missionary", you have to come as a professional in some other field and live your life as a missionary. God has made a way for me through engineering.

We have made no definitive plans yet but we do see an obvious trend and leading. There are still many talks to have regarding specific job description and location. Much prayer to be done in ensuring God's leading. There are still other options that still remain possibilities and we will wait until the option is clear before proclaiming our path but we wanted everyone to know that Jordan is a very real possibility that is becoming more and more likely.

Pray for us as we seek the Lord in this time of change.