Is 2016 Over Yet?

I'm trying really hard to throw a pity party for myself.

I came home to an astronomical medical bill from the whole kidney stone thing. And then more bills from the urologist, my bank, and Amazon. I got a call from someone I really can't deal with right now for a lot of reasons. I'm sick. The expectations of this day and the hopes for the coming year are weighing me down like stones on Giles Corey.

I'm listening to flipping Tracy Chapman, for crying out loud!

But I just can't keep it up. Well, okay, I could. But I really have no reason to. Because along with the bills, my mail included a couple of gifts from people just because they wanted to be a blessing. I have heat, a car, a place to live, awesome parents, great sisters, and a God who promised to be with me every step of the way.

This is such a hard time of year for so many people. We're coming down from a huge hit of endorphins and extreme emotions. We've spent too little or too much time with people we can easily love from a distance but with close proximity bring up old memories both good and bad. We probably expected too much out of the holiday, either in gifts or personal connections, and chances are we didn't get it. If we did, we discovered it doesn't really fill that void. And to top it all off, the weather either contributes to or isn't cooperating with our mood.

Welcome to the New Year Blues.



This is a momentary thing, I know. I'll figure out how to pay my medical bills. I'll stop buying stuff on Amazon for a while. I'll get rid of this cold. People will stop asking me about resolutions eventually. My friend will hopefully get better.

In the meantime, I'm relying on tried and true methods of distraction. And I'm leaning a little more heavily on God.

Happy New Year.

The Weekly Wrap-up: December 11-19, 2016

Well, then.

I didn't forget last week's wrap-up. I just knew I'd only be in two days this week, so I delayed it a bit. The end of the year is always full - finishing up last minute projects, clearing your desk so you don't come back to a mess, planning to do things better next year so you're not so stressed when your goals haven't been achieved...

You know, the usual.

It figures that my training would ramp up just as everything else is winding down. We finally decided to take me through an entire project from start to finish so I know all the steps and can document it for future production people. To that end, we're actually doing both Spanish and Portuguese. A lot of people use Spanish with the booklets, and we needed to update it, so that seems like a good place to start. Plus, they don't use a lot of odd characters or fonts. Makes life easier.

I'm glad I did these this year. I was looking back over my blog while writing my Christmas letter, and it really hit home that, while it doesn't always seem like it, I actually did accomplish a lot this year. You have to keep track of the little things because that's where the real change shows up. Sure, I still live in the same place, still no change in my relationship status, family is still around, but as I don't actually want any of those things to change, these are not bad things.

So. I may do another blog post before 2016 ends, but until then, I want to wish you a very merry Christmas! Be cool, everyone.

Strategic Retreat

Alrighty then. I promised a blog on the retreat. So here we go.

We actually went later this year than we have before. Typically, our retreat is the first weekend in December. We don't always go to the same place, but we usually go Thursday-Saturday. This year, we went a week and a day later. Not sure why, but it actually worked out really well for me. I was able to get out of town at a critical time.

Crossing into Kentucky

Sarah was my travel buddy and roommate

Our retreat this year was actually in another state. We went to General Butler State Park and Resort in Carrollton, Kentucky. I'd never been there before, and I was intrigued by the history of the place. Unfortunately, the Butler-Turpin homestead was closed for the season, but I did learn some interesting factoids about William O. Butler (who possibly had his portrait painter just copy Andrew Jackson's and make him less ruddy and wild) and the Butler clan as a whole. They really like that guy.

The resort, or lodge, is really nice.

Watch for deer!

Front lobby 

View from the porch

We arrived around 4 on Friday. I traveled with Mike and Pat Dragon. Mike is our assistant international director of ECC and my boss' boss. Pat helps run Dynamic Women in Missions and is a CMF for South Asia. We have a lot of fun together, though it took me a while to figure out Mike's personality. Sarah is better at that, but I think even she nearly drove him crazy as we went through Madison. If you've never been, Madison is a great little town right on the river. They have many shops and things to do. Sarah got a little excited, enough that Mike stopped at Dairy Queen across the river in order to get her to calm down. Speaking of, I discovered an amazing new blizzard flavor with graham crackers and peanut butter. Best thing ever!

We had dinner at 5:30 in the lodge restaurant. It was fairly obvious that we were in the south as the buffet menu included frog legs. I did not try them.

Nearly everyone was there by the time we started that evening around 7. We do a gift exchange every year, white elephant style, but classy. Mostly. My initial pick was stolen, so I ended up with a nice book about theology and doctrine. 

I learned how to play a new game that night. It's called Hand and Foot. Think Canasta, but not. We played until 10:45 at least. I'd say that's past my bedtime, but these days, it's really not. 

We didn't have to be in our meeting room until 9 Saturday, so naturally, I was up at 6:15. I survived, but only just. I should mention that to get to our room, we had to go outside. True, it was only about 25 feet, but that was just enough time to freeze a little. We also had to go outside to get to our rooms. 

We had a time of worship before each session. Our speaker was Rich Danzeisen, the executive director of international ministries. He's my boss' boss' boss' boss. His three kids led worship. 

Rich gave a very nice talk on Jesus as Prophet, Priest, and King. Since we are co-heirs with Christ, we also have these titles and the responsibilities that go with them. I found this quite interesting.

As part of the session, we played telecharades. Basically, we were given a phrase by table, and one person had to act it out for another while everyone else closed their eyes. The second person would act out what he'd seen for the third, and so on until the last person had to guess the phrase based on the acting. Needless to say, it broke down rather quickly. 

But we got some good laughs!

After lunch, we had some free time, which was absolutely spiffing. I decided to go for a bit of a walk as it's difficult to get steps when you're sitting all day. 

No, I should know better. I've seen enough trail maps to know that they are never accurate, and they underestimate distances. But I'm a trusting, naive sort. I went for the Wilderness Trail, a nice little 1 mile jaunt with a little loop. I should have known better when the first few hundred feet were directly down over rocks and tree roots. 

I liken it to the Bataan Death March. 

Found a nice little waterfall.

This was a common site along the trail.

Lots of these little ditches and gullies.

We found what was left of the Blair Witch.

Jim and Karen testing some local fauna.

The trail walk took a little more than an hour, and it was definitely more than a mile. My calves were aching for days after. But, I did get all my steps in. And then some. 

We had another session Saturday night. We had to do a skit that illustrates what it means to be a living sacrifice. 

I was there, and even I can't explain what's happening here.

Sunday was our last day in Kentucky. We finished up with our last session and then did something we did two years ago where everyone says a short prayer for everyone else. It was a nice ending. 

We left around 1 and made it back before most of the rain and snow came through. Overall, I had a lovely time, and I appreciated the chance to see the people I work with in a non-work setting. 

You learn a lot about them, believe me.

Here are some more photos.

The Weekly Wrap-Up: December 5-9, 2016

Oof.

What a week.

Why, during what should be the happiest time of year, does everyone give you four times the work you normally have and want it done in half the time they usually expect?

I think Monday may have been the only normal day. And I really only mean in the work sense, since this week has also been complicated by personal issues.

But work stuff first. We did two radio ads this week. No links yet, they aren't finished editing, but we recorded one for December and one for January. It's nice to be so far ahead, but really, if we didn't do the January one now, it would be well into 2017 before we had time.

The new portal for T&M is up and running! I'm thrilled with how it turned out. So is my boss, so that's good. Hopefully, it will be of great use to everyone and free up some time for us.

I'm working on getting out Christmas cards to everyone. It takes a while, and there's a deadline, but it's going well. You can expect yours anytime in the next few weeks. If it doesn't arrive, let me know, and I'll get you on the list.

We have our ECC retreat this weekend. I'll try to do a running post about it. It's a nice time of fellowship and spiritual growth.

Now for the personal stuff.

I'd appreciate prayer for a good friend of mine. I'm not going to get into everything, but she's made some very unwise choices that have deleterious effects on her and those involved. This has caused a great deal of anxiety for me. I'm also praying for wisdom as we move forward. There have been many sleepless nights.

I hope you know I appreciate and love all of you. 

The Weekly Wrap-Up: November 28 - December 2, 2016

I've never Britished as hard as I Britished today.

But more on that later.

If I didn't have ADD before this week, I would be inclined to believe I have it now. I have gone back and forth and between projects so many times, it ain't even funny. That should tell you a couple of things.

A) I have a ton of projects up in the air right now. Like, seriously. My to-do list could be a dollar store receipt.

2) Most of these projects are not capable of holding interest for long periods of time. So, so boring. Essential. But boring.

Quark) Holiday stress is upon us.

So.

I wrote a radio ad this week. We're still promoting the eight Christmas projects for OMS. Not sure if we'll end up using it, but we needed an idea springboard. I also need to work on one for January. We're promoting the SHEEP ministry. I need to get all of the baaad jokes out before I can take it seriously.

Have you ever read legalese? Contracts, agreements, loans, etc? (If you haven't, you really should.) Anyway, it's technical and important, and wording matters a lot. I'm trying to condense the T&M agreements, but it's hard to do that and make sure I have all of the pertinent details without the verbose language.

We're finally moving forward in a grand way on the landing page for T&M. This will be a great resource for everyone who comes into contact with our materials. It also frees us up from dealing with a lot of standard requests.

And our donation page is back up and running! Donations help us pay translators in order to move things along.

One of our big jobs is actually research. Wycliffe in particular has some really great resources for translation (naturally), so we interface with them and others in similar situations. We also have developers building new programs to aid in the translation process.

One of the programs we're trying to speed along is our CRM. (Oh, the acronyms are back.) CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management. Basically, it's how we optimize the way we interact with our constituents. Otherwise known as a database.

Theoretically, OMS is going to have one big CRM for the whole organization. This is optimal. But we've kinda been stuck up a creek without one, and it'll be another year at least until the new one is up and running. So we're trying out some free options. To that end, I've been working on compiling some records so we can test how things work.

Which brings me to my Britishness. Possibly Canadianish.

We have to assign particular codes to people so we know how they are classified. One such code is C-ZZZ. In speaking to our IT guy, I told him to classify certain people as "C Triple Zed."

Zed, of course, is how Britishers the world over pronounce the letter Z.

I didn't even think about it.

I'm such a nerd.