Yesterday, (Saturday) Mariette took me and drove me around the beautiful county of Suffolk where here and Mike live, they live in a village called Great Wynham and then took me to lunch at a pub in an inlet of the sea. It was a beautiful day, where she talked to me about the history of the area, the countryside was gorgeous, and I got to share in her joy of seeing the beauty! It was so refreshing to see someone love the area they have lived in for so long, so much and who took such joy and the beauty of it. I got to walk down the high street of a village that was populated all the way back to the medieval ages, and has been populated, and built in for centuries – it was so beautiful!

Outside of the Lavenham Church

Inside the 600 year old church in Lavenham Village

The shore outside the pub where we ate lunch

In the evening, Mike drove me into Colchester to go bowling with Andrew and his friends where as one of them put it at lunch today I got 20 ready-made British friends! It was a bit overwhelming to meet so many people at once, but it was nice to hang out with people my own age who already knew what eMi was and just viewed me as part of the crowd! I then went to church with Andrew this morning and had lunch with him and his friends as well. Church was held in a beautiful place – it was over 800 years old and yet it felt as though it had been built as recently as the 20th century it was so beautiful and so modern on the inside, and yet there were candles and gothic arches and plastered walls – it was absolutely amazing!

Church I attended Sunday February 19th, 2012

Now I am sitting in Mike and Mariette’s lounge (living room) writing this in front of the fire enjoying a nice cup of coffee and looking forward to heading into the office tomorrow and getting to work!

Thank you for your prayers!

More later!

heathrow airport terminal

all packed!

Serving Christ,

Stephanie Anne Schulz

I hope this letter finds everyone doing well! Can you believe it is already February 2012? I can’t! The last month has flown by, and when I started looking back at it in-order-to write and tell about what has happened it is hard to put it into words…but I will give it a shot here! I spent the first 12 days of 2012 in Fort Worth with the fam! It was a good time of hanging out, dad and I went to the museum one day, heidi and I packed all of our stuff back up to head out again, and I had the opportunity to have a few of you over to mom and dad’s house to hear about my adventures this fall and my upcoming adventures this spring.

On January 12th, I arrived back in Calgary after a full day of flying and a layover in Denver, and proceeded to spend quite a bit of time in customs and immigration. I made it through after several conversations with people and them looking up exactly what kind of charity eMi is and all about them and deciding that no I didn’t need a work visa to be here…all very complicated stuff, but I am made it thru and I am here!

As I have previously mentioned, I am the only intern in the eMiC office this term, however I was blessed to overlap a couple of days with a co-intern who is serving in the East Africa office but is Canadian and came and spent a week in the eMiC office to experience it, it was great to get to meet him, and to have a bit of knowledge about one of the people I read about weekly on our update from that office.

It has been a very different last few weeks, both from last term and from what I expected. Just a few days after arriving here I was sitting in church and Pastor Shane made a statement that has really stuck with me and I would like to share with everyone: he said “We should not give to the Lord something that cost’s us nothing”. This was pretty powerful for me, I still have not figured out what all it has meant for me, and for my future or even my present, but it has been food for thought, as I spend this time in my life serving him in a very real way unlike any other point in my life I wonder often what this means. I do feel as though it has been a very real thought for me though these last few days as my next few weeks has been playing out in the planning stages…

My trip to the UK and Rwanda has been rearranged and bantered around as far as what is happening when and who and the details have just been really difficult for eMi to get ironed out, and it has been a real stress for me as I often have to just sit and wait for someone else to make a decision and tell me what it is. So for me it has been a very real time of costing me comfort level, and even sleep as I have stressed about not having answers or control. But really, if I am in control all the time, than the Lord is not, and what is that costing me then? At least this is my train of thought…

So, while God is working out those plans, the known factors are that I am leaving on Thursday, February 16th for the UK office in Colchester, and will be gone for exactly a month, and sometime in that month Mike Woods and I will also be making a trip to Rwanda for about four days, so much shorter than originally planned, to meet with the Minister of Health and the ministry at Kibogora Hospital. I am super excited about this, and am trusting that it will all work out – including the financial aspect of this. I am still not 100% fully funded for my term, I did lose a few of my monthly supporters as I entered into this spring term, it would be an answer to prayer to be fully funded before I head off on this next step of my adventure with eMiC and God. If God is leading you to give, please mail a check to eMi or to give online at: https://emisecure.org/donate.html and then choose Interns, Stephanie Schulz- 2903.

Please pray for me, pray that my heart be in the right place not only as I serve in the office each day, but throughout my day as I interact with the perpetually late bus drivers, as I wait in the coldest weather I have ever experienced for the bus, and as I sit at home alone in the evenings. Pray that God works all the details of my trip to UK and Rwanda out – and in His timing not mine and for strength to trust Him in that. Pray for safety as I head out on these travels, I will be traveling alone to Colchester (but at least everyone speaks English right… ). Pray for eMiC as we prepare to move into a new office space (they will be physically moving while I am gone). Pray for eMi worldwide as we continue our search for a new CEO after losing Jim in November and to go through a transitional time-period as a whole.

As always you can follow me at: http://littlemomentsinabigworld.wordpress.com and catch up with me a little more often than these monthly updates (though they get posted to it as well)! Thank you so much for partnering with me in this Adventure of a Lifetime! If you know anyone else who would like to receive my emails please feel free to forward them, as well as send me their name and email and I will send this on to them!

Serving Christ in Calgary,

Stephanie Anne Schulz

I hope that this finds you as excited about your upcoming days as I am about mine! I wanted to share with you about where I am at and where I am headed next…

I am sitting in the office in Calgary (yes, at work and typing a blog… though it is lunch time) and just booked my plane ticket to UK to join Mike Woods in the eMi UK office before heading with him and our team to Rwanda on the 21st of February! I will be spending 10 days in Rwanda and be gone from Calgary for exactly a month… the 16th of February to the 16th of March! I am so excited to see what God will bring in this next adventure! I am itching and eager to sink my teeth into another architectural design project! I am also excited to be returning to Africa, especially since this time I will be in East Africa!

If you had asked me a year ago if I would be more excited to spend 2 weeks in the UK or 2 weeks in Rural Rwanda, I wouldn’t have even had to stop and think about my answer, it would have been a resounding UK – however, now I have to say that it is Rwanda. God is changing my heart, and I don’t know the entire outcome as of yet, but I do know that Africa and the people living in its great continent are starting to play a bigger part than I ever dreamed or desired before. We have a family friend who prayed for many years for God to not send her to Africa… and that is right where he sent her , but I don’t think I had ever vocalized my fear of Africa before, and yet now that I look back at me pre-Ghana, and now, it was definitely there, I still am not sure where my location that I would say Gold please don’t send me to (fill in the blank), but I no longer think its Africa…

ok… so to answer the burning wonder in many minds… where is my support standing right now… my supports stands about $1500 short for the whole semester so I am really close to being fully funded – part of the reason is that the tickets for my trip ended up costing more than planned so the difference I am adding to my total need by about $500, so if you could join me in prayer about that, it would be amazing to have that money before I left for UK and Rwanda!

As for life here in Calgary it has started to fall into a routine much like last semester, except that once I get back to the intern house each night, it is just me instead of me and several others. It has been refreshing to have time to myself, but it has also been kinda lonely, so please pray that I will be able to build deeper relationships with the friends I have made here in Calgary! Greg and Steve are at Missions Fest #1 of 4 for the spring this week, and Steve will be gone the second half of next week at another one, so the office is fairly quite without coffee constantly brewing and popcorn popping… never mind that when the phone rings its always for one of them… oh well

I hope everyone is having a blessed week!

Excited about Serving Christ,

Stephanie Anne

I hope this finds everyone doing well, and most of you much warmer than I am today! It was a cold wait at the bus stop this morning! It was -17F felt like -28F when I got to the office, and the sun was up by then, so I am not sure I want to know what it was before that! I thought I would update everyone that I made it safely back to Calgary. I had a bit of fun getting back into Canada, I got stopped in Immigration and had to spend a while in there getting things sorted out as to whether I needed a Work Visa or not… turns out not but they had to make sure I wasn’t takin’ a job from a Canadian…

It has been good to get moved back in and to see my friends at Church this weekend! I started back at the office on Friday and spent most of the day getting through the top portion of the “Stephanie’s To Do List” that I found on my desk when I got in… it’s good to be needed!

As part of that lovely list of things to do I finally was able to get the 5 storey version of our LMK hospital fully rendered… so here is a look at those too!

I am the only intern in the office this spring, so it’s a bit different to not have partner’s in crime around, and in the house with me but I am excited to see what the Lord brings!

Yep, so there is where I stand for now! I hope you are each having a blessed Day!

Stephanie Anne

The Courtyard....

The whole property view...

Send me… those are two very small words, and yet very powerful! I am so excited that I answered God a year ago with a “send me”!

Tomorrow morning bright and early I head back to Calgary! I am so thankful for the time that I have had here at home with the family and resting and relaxing, I guess I hadn’t realized just how exhausting the last 4 months had been. I was a whirlwind of a time, and I am headed back to another one, this one with even more travel. I am so excited about what God is going to do with me, and can’t wait!

I am excited for: being back in the eMiC office, deepening the friendships I have made in Calgary, and new friendships that will come.

This term will be very different from the last one, but I am very thankful for the friends that I made and the adventures that I had!

As I go I leave you with a quote from Chuck Swindoll that is my thought for the start of 2012: “To be used of God. Is there anything more encouraging, more fulfiling? Perhaps not, but there is something more basic: to meet with God. To linger in His presence, to shut out the noise of the city and, in quietness, give Him the praise He deserves. Before we engage ourselves in His work, let’s meet Him in His Word… in prayer… in worship”

Happy 2012! What is God doing with your year?

Well, it is time for a bit of an update… as today is the start of a new year! Can you believe it is already 2012? I can’t!

I have been at home in Fort Worth, Texas since December 17th, it has been great to be home with the family for a few weeks after a great wrap up at eMi for the fall term.

First thing first, finishing off 2011 with eMi…. it was a great last few days after my last update, I had 9 days left in Calgary with my fellow interns. It was a very busy time of wrapping up projects in the office, stuffing Christmas letters in the office, and having a last few meals together with friends. We had a great Mexican dinner as interns with Barb, Steve, their son Brad, and Esther – and of course the food was a great reminder of home as 2 Texans and a California Boy made it! My project trip to Ghana has still not been wrapped up, though the drawing have greatly progressed, so I will still be working on it when I return to the office in January.

I am very excited to be returning in January, I will be the only intern this term in the Calgary office so it will be a very different experience from last term, but I am excited to see what God has in store for me and for eMiC.

As far as life at home in the last few weeks it has been a time of family bonding and doing fun things. It has also been a great time with my church family at MMBC, it has been great to be home and hear the sermons from the pulpit the last several weeks – they really have been both refreshing and challenging. In addition to being in church I was able to speak in a few of the Sunday School classes, on December 18th, as well as to have a meeting at the church that afternoon where I was able to share about my experiences with eMi this far and what I am expecting this next term to look like. It was great to share with everyone at home, and I would love to be able to share with anyone else who is interested in hearing  about it as well.

This next term I will be traveling with the eMi UK office to Rwanda to work on another hospital project, this one is a large hospital that is eMi has already made one trip to and did a masterplan for, the masterplan is going to be tweeked and then the buildings are going to start being layed out on my trip. I am excited not only about heading back to Africa, but also to be traveling with another eMi office, I will then have the opportunity to spend a few weeks in the eMi UK office before heading back to Calgary after the trip! This is another amazing opportunity that God has given me that I can’t wait to see how it stretches me – because I know it will!

Also, I am still raising support for spring term as I am not at 100% as of yet. If God is leading you to give, please mail a check to eMi or to give online at: https://emisecure.org/donate.html and then choose Interns, Stephanie Schulz- 2903. It would be an amazing gift to be able to head back to Calgary in a few days fully funded!

Ok, well I think that is about all I have for now, Please continue to pray for me, pray for my family as we part ways again here in January and I head off on my next adventure with God, because while they are incredibly supportive of me, it is hard on them to have me so far away. Pray for eMi Canada as we start a new year, and new projects, and finish up old projects. Pray for me as I enter a new and different term in the office, pray that I have the heart the God want’s me to have and that I learn what He has for me!

As always you can follow me at: http://littlemomentsinabigworld.wordpress.com and catch up with me a little more often than these monthly updates (though they get posted to it as well)!

Thank you so much for partnering with me in this Adventure of a Lifetime! If you know anyone else who would like to receive my emails please feel free to forward to them, as well as send me their name and email and I will be happy to send this on to them!

Serving Christ Faithfully,

Stephanie Anne Schulz

www.emicanada.org

My Family on Christmas Morning!Making Mexican Food!

I hope that everyone is having a merry holiday season celebrating the birth of our saviour and lord! It has been a great trip home so far! I have greatly enjoyed the time spent with my family, and am looking forward to a few more days with them before I head back out on this adventure that God has given me for the next few months.

I found Christmas very different and special this year, because while we have spent probably half of the Christmas’ in my life here at home, and there have been a number of Christmas’ that have fallen on Sunday’s in my life, the combination of the two was special. Going to church and seeing the joy that everyone was experiencing, as well as being at home with family was very special to me! I hope it was to each of you as well! One of our highlights of the day was being able to skype with the Lancaster clan in Topeka and watch little Dominic open up his Christmas presents in the evening! It was very special, almost like being there! He even gave us all a kiss when he said goodbye (though Holly’s computer screen might not have enjoyed that as much as we did…!)

ok, well just a short note! So Happy Holidays!

Stephanie Anne