After traveling to India last year, and having my heart break at the sight of millions living in poverty, I was profoundly impacted when news of the tsunami reached me. I knew how hard life was for these people on a good day, and I couldn’t imagine what it was like now that so much of their simple existence had been shattered.

Engineering Ministries International (EMI) notified me that they were assembling a response team. My heart was heavy, but my feet were still firmly planted in Blacksburg with my wife Tracy and our four children, until one day in February when Tracy called me at the office and encouraged me to go. Later that day I notified EMI of my intentions; a month later I was on my way to India.

Anytime you arrive in India, it is busy, hectic, loud, and full of sights, sounds, and smells. When we arrived in each of the villages, there was normally a quick gathering of people. Once introductions were over, everyone was thrilled to have our team there and eager to offer gifts or food or anything to their new friends. Children would literally scramble up coconut trees, cut down a bushel, and cut them open for our team. Everyone that we spoke to told of how these villages had changed following the tsunami - from hard, closed, suspicious villages to open, inviting, and hospitable communities that knew they needed to let others into their lives for help.

The centerpiece of our work was Shanti Nagar, the Village of Peace, which will be constructed on a recently purchased vacant tract of land. The architects on our team designed the village in 3D virtual models for the villagers to review on our laptops. In addition to surveying, I was developing a design for water supply and wastewater disposal, each with its own unique set of challenges in the coastal Indian topography and geology. We dug test pits, performed percolation tests, sampled water from wells, and I even climbed down inside of an elevated municipal water tower to gather a sample. Our plans for Shanti Nagar include a community cluster with a church, a children’s home, and a community center, all around a common courtyard; additionally, the tract will accommodate a road network and roughly 50 homes. The families who will live in this village all have been displaced - some by the tsunami and some due to intense persecution in their former villages.