Last hours in Canada...

Well, the team's packed and ready to go. Our bags left yesterday because the plane from Comox to Vancouver is too small to take all of our bags at the same flight so they had to be shipped in several flights. The last day or two have been a little tough as we've just been itching to just go. As we wait the final hour before we leave for the airport, I think I'll take the the time to introduce you to the rest of the team, and their roles, as best as I can remember/explain. (I'm not even entirely certain on what I'll be doing, so you can see why I'll have some trouble explaining the rest of the team's roles.) I wish I had a picture of the team to post up but I'm sure there will be plenty to post in the near future.

So, there are thirteen of us that will be travelling to Uganda. There are six guys and seven girls, the oldest is 66 and the youngest, 20. (I only know this because we had to answer these questions during our intercultural training)

I'll start with the team leader, Richard; he is the one of two full time staff at ACTS and he serves as the program manager. He will be going over to help the rest of our team settle into our different roles and in particular, will be traveling with me and two others on the roving team as we look into the suitability of other sites for future projects. He will be in Uganda for six weeks, the shortest stay on our team.

Bern and Nancy Cassidy are one of two couples on the team. This is their second time going to Uganda, they first went last year with the previous year's interns. This time, they will serve as the "camp boss" & "assistant camp boss" for the team while we are in camp, which will be for the large majority of our time in Uganda. Bern is a retired engineer and he will be largely responsible for overseeing the design and construction of the water project. Nancy is a retired teacher, she will working as the administrator in the camp along with several other responsibilities. She started a sponsorship program at a local school during her last visit and she will be working to expand on the number of children who will be sponsored to go to school.

Next up are Geoffrey and Rosalind Dixon, they are a retired couple who served in the Anglican church in northern Canada for much of the last 35 years. Geoffrey was an Anglican clergyman and, along with Rosalind, will be in Uganda for three months doing discipleship training. They will be working at a different camp than the rest of the team, at one of the previously completed water project sites.

There are three engineers on the team: Mike, Chris and myself. Mike is volunteer while Chris and I are sponsored interns; however, our roles are all fairly similar and interchangable. Mike and I make up 2/3 of the roving team and will working on future projects and thier proposals for much of our time. Mike is more responsible for the environmental assessments and water testing aspects due to his background. He also has been working as a engeering consultant for the past seven years so I expect that I'll be relying on his experience for much of the work that we'll be doing. Chris will be staying at the camp and will be working with Bern on the design for the current ACTS water project named Lifewater. (because the Ugandan name is too difficult to pronounce.)

Jaquelyn is environmental officer and will conduciting experiments into water quality. She'll also need to help the engineers at some points for surveying and other field assessments.

Andrea is a co-op student and the youngest member of the team. She'll be staying for the next shortest time after Richard, and will be leaving at Christmastime. She'll also be working on water assessment and quality stuff.

Naomi is one of the volunteers on the team and will be working on the agroforestry aspect of the project. She'll be working to set up a tree nursery in the new location and help promote tree planting in the local communities.

Julia is the agrocultural intern and will be helping to establish mutual benefit societies which are widow agriculture (gardening) co-ops. She'll also looking to training community members to train other community member in sustainable agricultural practices. (She pretty much dictated this job description to me which is why it sounds so much more technical than that of the others)

Stephanie is the health education and AIDS officer. She'll be helping community leaders educate the rest of the communities to improve basic health and safety practices.

And I think that's the team! This turned out a lot longer than expected but I guess it's suiting as it might be the last post for awhile. Next post will be from Uganda!

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I also forgot to add that there is a good chance that for much of the next six months, I'll often be without access to internet for up to a month at a time. Obviously, updates during these periods will be slowing coming, as well as any emails or responses to emails. So, please be patient with regards to this as I'll try my best to update as often as possible.

The adventure begins...

Well, I'm now at orientation in Courtenay on Vancouver Island. I've met the ACTS staff, last year's interns, as well as this year's interns and the other five people who will be forming this year's team to Uganda. The three days of orientation so far has been somewhat long and tiring, with a lot of administrative work, briefings, and training sessions.

Yesterday has been the best so far, as each of the new interns had the afternoon to meet with their corresponding interns from the previous year to be debriefed and to officially be handed over the reins to their respective responsibilities and projects.

Up until now, I wasn't exactly sure what I would doing but it is much clearer now. Though many things often come up unexpectedly which will inevitably force us to adapt our plans and schedules. Though the first and most oft brought up tip by last year's interns is that schedules, and time, for the most part, are near non existent in Uganda, as well as in many other countries in the world today. In these cultures, the concept of time as we know it is not nearly as important, and thus, things happen when they happen.
Regardless, my job will be to team up with one of the other engineer volunteers on the team, as well as a local Ugandan from the ACTS construction team, (we will also have Richard Roberts, an ACTS staff, accompanying us for the first five or so weeks) and we will be traveling to various regions in Uganda and deciding the most appropriate locations for future projects. We will then forward our findings to the ACTS board to be decided upon, and we will then be writing project proposals to be sent to CIDA, the Canadian agency mandated by the federal government to allocate humanitarian aid funds through the channels that will have the greatest chance of creating sustainable international development. (This only sounds so technical because we covered these terms during our intercultural training sessions today!)In short, the large part of our jobs will be to find future projects and then write proposals asking for CIDA funding in order that ACTS will continue to have projects to work on in the next few years.

You can find out more information about ACTS, the organization that I am working for, at acts.ca.

The Prayer Letter, it all starts here...

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Dear Friends and Family,

I hope this letter finds you doing well. As many of you already know, I graduated this spring with a degree in Civil Engineering from the Royal Military College of Canada in Kingston and will soon be leaving to work in Uganda as a Rural Water Supply Officer. I will be serving with an organization called African Technical Community Service (ACTS) from August until the end of February 2009.

I would first like to rewind a little bit and share about how God has led me to this opportunity. During the last three years, I have had the privilege to serve on missions teams to Nicaragua and Haiti, as well as numerous opportunities to serve the less fortunate in the local community where I have been studying. Throughout these experiences, God has continually and increasingly placed on my heart the desire to help those who, by societal or worldly standards, are needy and disadvantaged. The longer I serve, the more I realize how great exists the need, as well as the failure by most of us (sometimes unintended, other times deliberate), to support these people as God has commanded us to, with nothing but the same love with which He loved us. The lyrics in the song God of Justice, by Tim Hughes, are as follows and always resound within me whenever I hear or sing them:

We must go

Live to feed the hungry

Stand beside the broken

We must go

Stepping forward

Keep us from just singing

Move us into action

We must go

Now, God has once again provided me with the opportunity to do something with what He has convicted in me. When I look back, it is amazing how God has been laying the path ahead of me, often completely without me knowing. I first learned about ACTS while serving with Engineering Ministries International last summer. A member of my team to Haiti had served as an intern with ACTS and encouraged me to consider the position. I have been further encouraged by the increasing number of friends and family who I have personally witnessed stepping out in faith into the mission field. After much prayer and reflection, I applied and was accepted for a position with ACTS that will allow me to serve those in need with the engineering skills that I have learned.

ACTS is a Christian organization dedicated to providing community development assistance. My role on the development team will be to focus on the research and design of water projects in the South Western region of Uganda. This internship is fully sponsored by Ledcor, a private construction and engineering company, so I do not need to raise my own support. However, what I truly require is your prayer support. While the focus of the trip will be to serve through my technical knowledge and abilities, I am also going to Uganda to serve as a witness for Christ and I would greatly appreciate if you would partner with me in prayer.

The most pressing requests at the moment are:

• Pray for mental and spiritual preparedness, this summer has been a whirlwind of events and as a result, I have not had the time or the environment to prepare like I had in the past.

• Pray that God would break my heart and reshape it with a deeper understanding and compassion for the Ugandan people.
• Pray that I would have the opportunities to serve in the community and help these people to realize their spiritual needs as well as their physical ones.
• Pray for team unity as most of us have never met but we will be eating, living, and working together for much of the following 6 months.
• Pray for the physical health and safety of our team.

Thank you for taking the time and care to read this. Furthermore, thank you for being a part of my life and helping to shape me to who I have become up to this point. I would love to share more with you, so please feel free to email me at wesleytse[at]gmail.com. I will also be trying something new this time by writing updates via a blog which you can find at wesinuganda.blogspot.com. I pray that I can be a blessing to those I will be serving, just as many of you have been to me.

With much love and thanks,

Wes