The Weekly Wrap-Up: December

Oh my goodness, guys, I have so much to catch you up on! It's been a whirlwind 15 days since we last spoke. I'm lumping everything in together because this month is insane, and if I don't do it now, it ain't gonna happen. Sure, there will be more happening next week. And if it's worth mentioning, I will try to get a post done. But honestly, I'm hoping for a nice quiet week before Christmas. I didn't even want to come in next week, but I'm being a good worker bee and all that.

ANYWAY. That's not why I'm posting now.

So December 1, we had our mentor party here at OMS. I am not currently mentoring anyone, so I got the pleasure of helping to plan the blessed event.

We had a photo booth for folks.

We decorated ornaments for our activity. Mine are still drying.

This is Taylor. She's fun. She was very meticulous in her painting.

We also did a gift exchange. It was a lovely evening!

Then we had our OMS Christmas party on December 4. I didn't actually take many photos of that. Nothing too wild and crazy. I wasn't involved this year. I like it that way. Mostly. It's less fun without me. But I did have a nice time with my table mates. 

On December 5, I went to a radioplay with my friend Carol. They presented "It's a Wonderful Life" as a radio drama with sound effects. Personally, I thought they could have done more with sound effects, especially as a fellow radio afficionado, but I think they did a pretty good job. 

Plus, the theater that did the performance is really nice. If you ever have a chance to go to the Artcraft in Franklin, Indiana, you should take it. 

Last week, I was working on Estonian and some side projects. However, that all came crashing down on Friday morning when my computer literally crashed. I normally like Apple. I work on a Mac, I have a Mac as backup, I have a Mac for a personal laptop. We're copacetic. 

But when Macs fail, they fail hard. And this latest update was bad news bears. It caused all kinds of crazy in my hard drives. I spent four hours Friday morning trying to fix the issue. It was ugly.

And not what I needed in advance of the ECC Retreat last weekend. 

Fortunately, I was able to let go of the anxiety I was feeling about that and just enjoy the time away with my team. We went to a place called Wooded Glen in Henryville, Indiana. 

It's quite a nice place, and they treated us very well. I would recommend it for any moderately sized group for a retreat or team-building opportunity. 

Our schedule was pretty great. Lots of personal and team reflection. One of my contributions was a team puzzle competition. It was more of a collaboration, really. I had to curb some of my more sadistic tendencies. It was a good exercise, though. Even if I don't like puzzles. 

There were some very creative methods employed.

Such intensity!

I did actually finish this one. It wasn't terrible.

I took a walk Saturday afternoon. It's a nice area. Very picturesque.

Probably my biggest achievement was winning a shooting tournament against these guys. We played Big Buck Hunter, an arcade-style game. The objective is to shoot buck. Go figure. Anyway, we took turns shooting, and I ended up with 9 nice buck. My biggest was a 14 point. It was a tough fight, but I'm the winner winner chicken dinner! Go me. 

How pretty is that?

We finished up the retreat Sunday afternoon, and I came back to work on Monday, fully expecting to deal with more computer troubles. Fortunately, a lot of the problems had sorted themselves out. That's another great thing about Macs. It's been doing okay since then, so I'm hoping there won't be any more issues. Back up your stuff regularly, kids! You never know when you're going to need it. 

Finally, OMS announced on Monday that they were having a unique Christmas sweater contest on Thursday. I know, it's not a lot of time. But I'm not one to let that discourage me. I sewed my little fingers bloody each evening. During the day, I was working to get my Christmas letter out to supporters. 

Here's a few of us who participated. 

I tied for first! I'm so happy. There was a tear in my eye, really.

Seriously, though, it was fun. 

And that's my crazy life up to now. I hope you've enjoyed the ride. 

In case I don't see you again in 2017, have a merry Christmas and a safe transition to the new year. 

The Weekly Wrap-Up: November 27 - December 1, 2017

Is it just me, or has this week flown by? Maybe we were all ready to get away from our families and back to the absolute joy of work.

Maybe not.

Regardless, I hope you all had an excellent Thanksgiving. I, for one, had a lovely time. Both of my sisters made the trip to my parent's house for the week, so it was a true Hollopeter Happening. Read into that what you will. It was quite the experience, and one in which I was a willing participant, so I can't say too much against it.

Like always, the first day back started off with a bang. And by that, I mean we had yet another multiple hour meeting. Those are great. Just love 'em. So incredibly useful.

Christmas, as you know, is just around the corner, but before you get to Christmas, you have all of those delightful parties and get-togethers for 50,000 of your nearest and dearest friends. And someone has to plan all of it.

Or part of it, at least. I have one party tonight that I was pretty heavily involved in planning, and then next week is the ECC retreat. I've made a few contributions to that, and I have more to do, but fortunately, most of the planning for that was on other shoulders. It still takes up time, though. I'm trying to curb my most sadistic instincts when it comes to my team-building exercise, but it's proving to be a challenge.

This was a French week for T&M projects. I did two groups in two separate phases, which is confusing, but essentially the same process, so not terrible. Just time-consuming. But today, and next week, I'll be back in Estonian doing two more groups, but in the same phase this time.

Finally, something you haven't heard from me for a while. We did a new radio ad! This is for OMS' new campaign to help North Korean refugees. Very little writing for me this time - just voice acting. It was nice to get back into the studio after a couple months. I hope you enjoy it, and I also hope you consider giving toward this very worthy effort.

I guess that's all for now. Be good. 

The Weekly Wrap-Up: November 13-17, 2017

Ah, mes amis! Comme c'est beau pour la fin de la semaine d'arriver encore une fois, surtout à la veille d'une fête d'action de grâces.

It's been a long week, people. Not gonna lie, I've been having some personnel conflicts. Not in the office - everyone here is lovely. But some personalities just don't mesh well. And some things build up over time. I'm trying to work on that. Time off next week will help.

I had a relatively simple project for Tagalog earlier this week. It's getting close to being published, so I was mostly doing a polish on the files. I like easy projects, and I especially like projects that only take two days.

That being said, I now have two similar projects in French (hence the introduction), and it's giving me a headache. I have to process Group 1 Proof 2 files, and then I have to process Group 2 Proof 1 files. It can be quite the challenge to keep everything straight. This is why we have Trello boards and G drive files and scads upon scads of records.

It's great. Really.

In the wake of last week's health concerns, I'm trying to take more walking breaks. I'd like to get a standing desk, but they are expensive, and I'd have to reconfigure everything. It's somewhere on the list between dining room table and new laptop.

Money is annoying.

Anyway, I like to take these walking breaks with other people, but sometimes they leave me behind. Whatever. I'm a big girl. I can take it.

::sniff::

We're still working on the ECC retreat plans. I'm trying to curb my sadistic tendencies. They really shouldn't put me in charge of team building things. That being said, if you have any ideas about how to facilitate a team puzzle contest, let me know.

I'll be out most of next week for Thanksgiving. I'm spending some quality time with family, for which I am extremely thankful. I hope you all have a blessed holiday.

Here's a little something for your trouble.

The Weekly Wrap-Up: November 6-10, 2017

I'm not really feeling up to a lot of witty banter this week. Suffice to say, this was a productive week. I finished a new project for Hakha Chin, and I did it in less than a week. I remain awesome.

That really took up most of my time. I'm trying to think of other things, and I'm sure more happened, but I honestly can't come up with anything else.

Truth is, my mind has been on other things. See, I'm back on the medical merry-go-round. I'm going in for more tests this afternoon. So I would appreciate a few extra prayers.

Sorry I'm a downer today.

Have a great weekend.

The Weekly Wrap-Up: October 30 - November 3, 2017

Back in my college days, I used to celebrate the month of November by writing as much as possibly as frantically as I could in the hope of finishing the next great American novel in 30 days.

It's called NaNoWriMo - National Novel Writing Month. And you don't really have to write a novel. Not even a very good one. You just have to write 50,000 words of something. The idea is not to self-edit along the way. That slows the process down.

I can't honestly say that I've ever successfully completed a NaNo novel. I came close my first year, but I was in direct competition with someone else then. I only did it for about five years, and I always had the same problem - I couldn't stop editing as I wrote. I don't really compete anymore, but I kinda wish I did. I could use some motivation to finish one of my books.

Anyway, that's neither here nor there. Some people write books in November. Some people don't shave. To each their own. What's your November activity?

This week was pretty full. It was also an odd one. We don't usually have chapels and a prayer rally in the same week, but we had a chapel on Tuesday with Sasha, our guy in Russia. Sasha has a great story, one that has to be told in person because it can be a little unbelievable. I always enjoy listening to his reports. We also had a webinar on Thursday when we would have had a normal chapel. They are hosted by our retirement planning people, and they are all about financial stuff, budgeting and whatnot. It's good information, and Lord knows, I'm not good with money.

Our prayer rally on Wednesday reinforced the need to be good stewards with the money we have, especially as a mission organization. It was presented by our Development team. Their job is to raise money for OMS, especially specific projects. They have to account for every dollar that comes in, and OMS tries really hard to make sure that all money that comes in is used responsibly. That sometimes means not funding certain projects if they don't align with our principles.

One of the things we did was pray specifically for our donors. I would hope that all of our missionaries do that regularly, but I want to assure you that I pray for you every week. I'm not always able to interact with all donors, but if you ever need prayer for anything, please let me know. We have a whole network of prayer warriors that we can bring to bear.

I've also been doing a little more retreat planning this week. It's my job to moderate the Secret Santa gift exchange, which means I got to choose who buys for whom. Don't assume that I cheated, either. I found a scientific method for true randomness in assigning names to people on YouTube. (Full disclosure: I may have offered preferential treatment to certain people, but they declined.) The system worked really well. I would recommend it to any office or church environment looking to do any kind of random selection. But it takes a lot of time to compile information and send it out and make sure you're not sending the wrong info to the wrong person.

One side project that took some serious time this week was fixing some old files. For some reason, the Bengali files couldn't be printed. So I had to remove security from 64 files and then put new security on the same 64 files. It's tedious and repetitive work. I feel like I use those words a lot for what I do. I don't mean to sound like I don't enjoy it. My personality is well suited to the tedious and repetitive tasks. Just not all the time.

So with all of this going on, you might be led to believe that I wasn't able to finish the four groups of Portuguese files I had left over from last week.

You would be wrong.

I finished all booklets, even the extra stuff that we've changed along the way. This is something that kind of drives me crazy. We spent more than a year getting the English books updated and polished, and we're still finding all kinds of crap that needs to be fixed. Some of it is a must, some of it is okay to leave for a while, but I am keeping a running list of things to change for the next edition.

Ugh.

Whatever. Portuguese is done. I'm ready for the next project. 

The Weekly Wrap-Up: October 23-27, 2017

Greetings, loyal subjects!

This has been quite the week. If you like variety, you would have loved this week, because I don't think any one day was like any other.

First, I'm still working on Portuguese. I don't think I really impressed upon you what I mean when I say I have four groups to finish. I mean I have 24 booklets of between 10 and 52 pages to format, find mistakes in, and make ready for publishing. We're close to putting these to bed, but these booklets, especially those in group 1, have to be perfect, because they set the tone for the rest of them. We're a third of the way to being done when these published, which is awesome. But I'm nowhere close to being done with all of these groups. Because reasons.

On Tuesday, we had our annual Fall Work Day. On this day, all of us office peons get to do work we're not qualified for either inside or out in the great wide world. This year, some poor people got stuck changing most of the lighting in the building. Are they electricians? No. Am I worried about one of these lights blowing up someday? Sure. But I wasn't on the lighting crew, so it's not my fault. No, I spent my morning outside weeding the front landscaping and pruning rose bushes. And by pruning, I mean chopping those babies to pieces. I was ruthless. And I was repaid with more than a few thorns jabbing into various body parts. In the afternoon, I moved rocks from one location to another. Now, I'm all about being a team player (I am contractually obligated to say that), but my body really did not appreciate the change from sitting in front of a computer all day. I'm still feeling pain in muscles I didn't even know existed.

Unfortunately, I have no pictures of this glorious event, because I'm not the type of person who stops working in order to take pictures that prove I was actually working.

Right.

I had a lot of side projects come up this week. Certain people ask me to do certain things because I usually say yes or they know I'm good at the thing or they know I'll do it quickly. There seemed to be many of these things this week. I don't mind. I like being needed. And if it's a larger project or not something I'm really qualified to do, I can usually say no or not right now.

Finally, the biggest reason I didn't get much Portuguese done this week, and also coincidentally the reason I'm still writing this at 5:10, I spent the day participating in a simulcast on EntreLeadership. This is a Dave Ramsey thing that OMS hooked up with, and about 15 of us spent most of the day watching a series of speakers talk about how to be good leaders. It was actually quite interesting, and I thought many of the principles could apply to other areas of life. Plus, I got Qdoba out of the deal. Remember in college when you went to events for the t-shirts? In the work world, it's lunch. You can get me to do a lot of things for free lunch.

Next week should be less crazy. I'm going to hit Portuguese hard. I'd like to have most if not all of it done by next Friday. You should hold me to that.

Now, the big news I hinted at last week. Prayer letters are in the mail, so it should be safe to announce.

I'm going to the Philippines!

It's a short trip at the beginning of February. I know very few details other than there's a T&M event. I'm not sure what my role will be yet. But I get to leave the country!

This makes me happy.

Now go forth and do good things for thy land.

The Weekly Wrap-Up: October 16-20, 2017

Well, everyone deserted me again. Such is my lot in life.

Seriously, though. It's more weird for me when people are in my hallway than when they're not.

It's been a pretty standard week. I finished Estonian early on and took advantage of the break in projects to work on my next prayer letter. I think I'll be mailing it out next week, and there is exciting news inside! You'll have to wait for a bit until I post the news here. (Incidentally, if you don't get my letter, send me a message and I'll get you on my list.)

Alas, breaks are few and far between. I now have four groups of Portuguese to process. This should take a good chunk of time to complete. So it's not like no one being here matters at all, really.

We just keep going and going and going and going and going and going and...

The Weekly Wrap-Up: October 9-13, 2017

"It was a week like any other week."

That's Foster's contribution to my blog. He's loitering in my office because it's 4:00 on Friday, we're two of about 12 in the building, it's a beautiful day outside, but we both feel like we can't just leave.

Why do we have to be so responsible?

Anyway.

I finished up Tagalog and sent it off Wednesday morning. It had more than a few issues, but I was able to resolve most of them. I was going to start on groups 2 and 3 of Estonian, then, but I had to republish one of the group 1 Estonian booklets because it had a pretty glaring error. My fault, unfortunately. How will I ever live with myself?

I'll manage. My bigger problem might be that all the languages are starting to blur together. Most of the ones I do are Latin-based, so they all start to look the same.

They are not the same.

When your cheat sheet for a language starts to look like a textbook, you might as well just go ahead and learn the language.

I actually spent a good portion of my time putting the following together. Hopefully, it was worth the effort.



Thanks, everyone.

The Weekly Wrap-Up: October 3-6, 2017

Pennsylvania was great, thanks.

Moving on.

I hate trying to get back into the swing of things. There's always a ridiculous number of things that only seem to happen when you're away. I could be here for months on end, day in and day out, with nothing noteworthy happening, and then leave for three days and come back to complete anarchy.

So there's that.

Lots of meetings this week. This was a prayer rally week, put on by the finance department. It was nice. Money isn't anyone's favorite thing, but it's the thing that makes a lot of what we do possible. So it was good to pray for some people that we don't normally hear about. (By the way, if you're looking to help out somewhere, we need field treasurers. You don't have to know a lot about finance. We have morticians, dairy farmers, and teachers as field treasurers right now. You'd fit right in whatever you do normally.)

I also started Tagalog group 2. There have been some consistent issues with this group's templates, and I'm hoping we actually got them fixed this time.

I threw a party for myself when I was doing booklet 14. It was well deserved. I deleted four extra pages that were not needed at all. And now everything matches the English version. You know how some people can just pack really well so that all space is utilized in an efficient manner? Consider me that person, but with InDesign. I made it fit, and I made it pretty.

Go me.

Other than that, I really don't have much to say. I'll be playing catch up next week as well (seriously, how does that even happen?), but we're making progress!

Adios.

The Weekly Wrap-Up: September 18-22, 2017

First, here's the radio link I promised you.

I finished Tagalog on Monday. (I did say I was close.) I could have stayed late on Friday, but it was our craft night, and I wanted to give the files a good last look, so I waited. Also, who stays late at the office on a Friday?

Not me.

I got into a bit of a debate about file names on Tuesday. I know it seems like a small thing. There are a lot of small things, actually. And they build up into big things after a while. But sometimes you have to bring these things up if you think there's room for improvement.

It went nowhere, but you still have to try.

My next project is Mizo Chin. This is a new language for me, though it's similar to Hakka Chin, as you'd probably imagine. There are a bunch of Chin dialects, though we've only started these two. (Chin is primarily used in Myanmar, in case you were wondering.)

I've made it through one group so far, and I have another left to do. Hopefully, I'll finish on Wednesday. I'm leaving Thursday for Pennsylvania, so there won't be another one of these posts until the week after.

I haven't forgotten about the Ask a Missionary posts. There's been a very small response for questions, so I'm gathering source material from a few other places. Plus, blog posts take time, and I've been neck deep in language projects. But they are coming.

Really.

No foolin'.

The Weekly Wrap-Up: September 11-15, 2017

So some of you may wonder how I find time every week to write out this blog post.

I frequently wonder this.

Today, I'm competing with my desire to get Tagalog done and dusted. I'm so close! But I am dedicated to you, my dear readers. Also, I don't want to send out a rushed product.

So you get me, yet again, awkwardly trying to appeal to a wide base that is almost entirely made up in my head.

I've spent a ridiculous amount of time on the computer this week. And while this isn't exactly new, it is generally unknown for me to have my door closed. Sure, my headphones are on. But I'm usually accessible to the rest of the world. But we had to do a bit of tidying of my hardware and downloading of new files. And of course, if something is going to go wrong or be weird, it's going to happen around me. Which was exactly the case this week. Veronica (our London T&M person) had some new specs for me, and in the course of testing, sure enough, they did things she'd 'never seen before.' I'm brilliant at finding the fly in the ointment, me.

Once I had my workstation back up to snuff, I started in on Tagalog in earnest. If you're curious, Tagalog actually looks a lot like Hakka Chin, so my brain went a little weird trying to separate the two languages. I think I managed, though there were a lot of issues with this particular run of booklets. I'm going to state categorically, though, that I despise booklet 37. Not necessarily the content, because it's the Church Planting Guide. But the way it is layed out is ridiculous. I have never received a file of booklet 37, regardless of language, that wasn't completely screwed up.

I'll survive.

Probably.

The other project this week was a new radio ad.

I know! It's true!

It's been quite a while since we've recorded a new ad, and you could tell, because it took us

FOR

EHV

ERRRRR

to write and produce it. I'll link to it here when it's approved.

That's the week, everyone.

Autumn is coming.

The Weekly Wrap-Up: September 5-8, 2017

Sorry about last week's passive aggressive rant. I was rather annoyed with certain aspects of finishing the Estonian project.

Fortunately, I was able to resolve this issue. It did take a while, though.

This week, of course, was shorter than normal. I had a very quiet Labor Day weekend, which was nice, though not quite what I had planned originally. Still, I liked sleeping in.

We had prayer rally this week in our new fellowship hall. To be honest, neither my brain nor my heart were in it. It does happen, even for missionaries. Fortunately, none of my usual quip partners were sitting near me, so I wasn't as disruptive as I could have been. I do try to curb my old nature, but even I get bested sometimes.

Yesterday, I helped out with orientation again. I do so enjoy presenting the history of Christianity.

Today, I'm back into Tagalog.

No rest for the weary.

The Weekly Wrap-Up: August 28 - September 1, 2017

Dear Font Creators,

When you create a font, please be sure to map all of the characters correctly, for all language configurations, in compliance with unicode usage.

I can't stress this enough.

Because when you don't map your characters correctly, I have to spend an extensive amount of time mapping the characters you missed manually.

One.

Line.

At.

A.

Time.

So, if you could just take care of that in the future, we'll all get along nicely, and I won't have a bloody tongue from the many times I've had to bite it this week.

Sincerely,

Jessica Hollopeter
InDesign User
Multiple Font User
Annoyed Patron

The Uber UBer Conference Post

What? A conference post a month and a half after it ended?

What can I say? We did get here eventually.

So, where to begin? A few months ago (more than a few by now), one of our MFM regional guys asked me if I'd be willing to represent OMS at the United Brethren National Conference in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. I'm one of three UB people at OMS, and I guess a familiar face is helpful with these kinds of things.

Not gonna lie, I was a bit hesitant. There's some history if you will, and I also wasn't sure about logistics. Driving 500 miles one way isn't my favorite thing to do.

Fortunately, one of the other UB people at OMS was also coming along.

That's Sarah. Sarah and I work together in ECC, and we have lots of fun. (I also helped recruit Sarah - sort of - so that's a thing you know now.) Sarah and I convinced my dad to drive us out to PA for this most auspicious occasion.

You know the best thing about driving to Pennsylvania?

Tunnels!

Tunnels are awesome.

In order to save some money and our sanity, we decided to camp halfway. We found an interesting little campground at the Laurel Hill State Park. If you like trees and hiking a mile to the bathroom, this is the place for you.

We were visited by a few friends while we were there. 

Finally, we made it to Lancaster. My dad stayed with his brother while Sarah and I stayed at the new Hotel Lancaster. I don't have a picture of it. Apparently, it used to be some kind of flea pit (my uncle's words) before they spruced it up. I thought it was fine; not much of a view, but I had a place to rest my head, and at the end of the day (hehe), that's really all that matters. 

Lancaster had pianos in random locations, and this one was outside the hotel. 

We were about three or four blocks from the convention center where the conference was being held. That meant I had very little trouble getting my steps in for the day. We also saw some interesting sights along the way.

On to the reason for being in Lancaster! Our job was to represent the wonderful opportunities and ministries of One Mission Society to the lovely people of the United Brethren church. We were also heavily promoting the billion.global vision. Which, you know, you should really sign up for if you haven't.

Our booth was back in the corner, which wasn't the greatest position in the world, but we did okay. 

The conference went from Wednesday evening to Saturday morning, but we really only needed to be there in the evenings. Garth, the MFM guy, manned it in the morning, and we kinda hung out in the afternoons, but mostly, we had mornings to explore. 

Naturally, I found a bookstore.

And a few books.

On Friday morning, we went on the bus tour to see Isaac Long's barn and the Martin Boehm Chapel. 

Apparently, the United Methodists put up the sign and only deigned to include the UBers a few years ago, despite us existing first. 

The historical part is that little stone bit behind the barn in front. Yes, people still live there. I'm hoping someone told them we would be traipsing over the their land before we arrived.

Martin Boehm was actually excommunicated by the Mennonites for being too evangelical. They unexcommunicated him (recommunicated? recommunioned? uncensured, yes) in 2016. 

My dad's best "I'm so disappointed in you" face.

"Ye must be born again!"

Though we were done Friday night, my dad and I stayed for the final session on Sunday. They commissioned new pastors and Bishop Fetters gave a charge to the church. Did I mention this was the 250th anniversary of the church? That's important. Lots of history. Lots of people. Lots of awkward moments. coughcoughhistorycoughcough

Then, as we were in Pennsylvania anyway, my dad and I took a mini vacation. We saw some miniature trains in Strasburg. 

This model railroad would switch from day to night settings. It was quite a large setup.

Those are actual goldfish.

Kinda looks like I'm in a blimp for this game.

Look at that detail!

My dad was in his happy place.

Hanging out with old stuff is fun.

On Sunday, we went to probably my favorite place in the world, which you should know by now.

If you've not done the cyclorama, you really, really should. It's worth the extra cost. Try to go when there aren't a ton of people so you can see more.

This painting will be in my mansion in Heaven.

Checking on my boys from Maine.

This doesn't look like much, but on July 2, 1863, probably close to 10,000 men died in this field.

Every time I go to Gettysburg, I take two pictures. I always take these pictures from roughly the same places. It's kind of my own memorial. 

The first picture, because it's early in the auto tour, is taken just beyond the Virginia Memorial. 

This is the view that Longstreet, Lee, Pickett, and the top brass of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia had as they watched their men march on July 3, 1863. They were all aiming for those trees in the middle there, trying to break the Union lines in the middle.

This is the opposing view. Hancock, Meade, and the top brass of the Union Army of the Potomac watched 12,500 Confederate soldiers march across an open field.

Pickett's Charge gets a lot of press. It's the "high water mark of the Confederacy," the point at which the Confederate cause pretty much reached its zenith (despite the fact that they were actually marching south - it's confusing, I know). That marker there, with the rebel flag, is for Lewis Armistead. He actually made it over the wall but was mortally wounded in the process. 

In my opinion, and I'm stressing that this is simply my opinion, Pickett's Charge, while incredibly brave, was also incredibly stupid. I don't care how many men you have. You don't march across an open field into the center of the enemy. He's got reinforcements on both sides with excellent interior lines. The Union troops didn't even fire their light weapons until the Confederate troops were about 200 yards away. Up to that point, though, you'd better believe they were firing all the artillery they had. The South lost about 50% of their men. Lee got caught up in his own hype and the push from Jefferson Davis to deal a crushing blow on northern soil. But the South was never going to win that war. (I don't care how many shows HBO makes with that premise, it's completely illogical.) I have a lot more I could say about the Civil War, and I'd be happy to if you contact me, but this is probably not the place for it.

So why do I take these pictures? It's a touchstone for me. It's a reminder that two sides stood this far apart and couldn't stop the inevitable. A lot of men died on this land, for a lot of different reasons. I don't ever want to reach this point again.

We headed back West on Monday morning. Have you ever taken US30 in Pennsylvania? With a camper? It's a daunting prospect at the best of times. You start to realize very quickly why the highways have tunnels.

On the way, we stopped at another place I've been wanting to visit. I wasn't sure how I'd feel about it, to be honest. That day holds a lot of memories for me.

You're looking out over the final resting place of Flight 93. The memorial is quite well done, and also quite sobering. I was in New York City in 2004, and I've seen the Pentagon from a distance, and I wanted to complete the journey in Pennsylvania. There were some parts that were quite horrifying. You can walk down to a memorial grove of trees, but it felt almost sacrilegious to walk over that ground. They also had recordings of phone calls that were made from the plane to family members. That's an awful thing to have to do. In some ways, I felt unprepared for the emotional gut punch, but at the same time, I think it was a little healing to be there and acknowledge the grief I've carried. It's hard to express just how much the events of September 11 effected me. A lot of people died for no reason. I'm still angry about it. 

Moving on.

We stopped to camp in Cambridge, Ohio, Monday night, mostly because we were tired and didn't feel like finishing the drive after dark. I'd be hard pressed to recommend the campground. It's right along 70, and it's crowded. A big rig came in around midnight, which also added to the annoyance. But I can't complain, because it was cheap and convenient. 

We got back Tuesday, a full week after we left. (By the way, we didn't just abandon Sarah in Pennsylvania. She had her own mini vacation.) It was a good trip, and I am glad I went. I'm not sure how successful we were, but I did see a lot of people I really only ever see at conference. And I gained some new supporters, so that's always a good thing. 

As ever, if you have questions, feel free to leave a comment. Or email me. Or call me. Send a pigeon. 

How do those work, anyway?

The Weekly Wrap-Up: August 21-25, 2017

Technically, I suppose, this also covers last week as well. I wasn't in on Friday, so I didn't write a blog post. I took the day to do some work at home. It was a good day. The rest of the week was mostly spent on French and more doctor visits and lots of meetings. Oh, and I went to the State Fair on Tuesday. That was fun.

But we're back to business this week. Monday was pretty much entirely meetings from 8:30 to 4:00. (It was very difficult to get steps in that day.) I finished up French then and worked on Outreach proofs. It's always a nice change of pace.

I also did a little impromptu work on the fellowship hall. We're redoing it (and when I say we, I really mean other people with me offering an unsolicited opinion), so on my way through, I occasionally pick up a scraper or something. I'm sure it's not at all annoying for our dedicated crew of professionals. Of course, this also means no chapel for a few weeks. It's weird, I'm so used to being there Tuesdays and Thursdays at 9:00. Also, I hadn't realized that chapels seem to be the only time I see certain people.

My latest project is Hakha Chin. I've worked on it before, but we had to change the font, so we're going back over everything to make sure it's copacetic. Which it's not. There's a glyph missing, and it's pretty prominent, so I'm muddling through as best I can while I wait for the head of production to tell me how to fix it. Although I did just add four pages to a 52-page document, so we'll see how well that goes.

Aaaaand, that's about it. Time to hit the reset button and get rested up so I can do it all again next week. 

The Weekly Wrap-Up: August 7-11, 2017

First, a conversation with myself.

Jessica: Hey, how's it going?

Also Jessica: Great! I don't have cancer!

J: Oh. That is good. Was that a possibility?

AJ: Yes. There was a 30% chance that I had cancer.

J: I didn't know that.

AJ: Not many people did. I wasn't telling a lot of people because I didn't really know anything yet. But I think most folks knew something was happening.

J: Yeah, you've mentioned some health issues. And you had surgery, right?

AJ: Yes, back in July. The surgery cleared up some of the issues, but it also highlighted some other problems, like the possibility of cancer.

J: So are you healthy now?

AJ: Not entirely. But I'm on my way to being healthy, so that's good.

J: How can people help you now? 

AJ: Prayer is always greatly appreciated. Pray for my health to improve, for the tests to keep coming back with good news, and for the work to still get done. Also, pray for my finances, or contribute if you're able. All of these tests and the surgery have really wiped out my savings and bitten a huge chunk out of my credit card. (Ironically, if it had been cancer, everything would have been paid for by Aflac. But, you know, cancer vs. money... I know which I'd choose.)

J: Anything else?

AJ: No, I think we're done now. On with the regularly scheduled programming!



So, yeah, crazy week. I finished up my Hindi files Monday and sent them off into the ether. It's always satisfying to finish a project because it means we're making progress, and it's not always easy to tell that progress is being made. Don't think that the only languages we're working on are the ones I mention here, though. There's another gal doing what I do in Chile. She's working on some different languages, like Odia and Chinese. It's easy to keep just a few in our repertoire at a time so we don't get super confused.

This was T&M training week. I guess about 40 people were hanging out at the local church where we do training. This was the first time we've tried to do everything on the app, which had some positives and negatives. It's nice to get feedback on it since we've spent literal years building it. I hung out with the training folks for a few hours over the course of things, and I took the group photo on Thursday. It's nice to see so many different backgrounds and ministries coming together to learn more about T&M. It's a great window into how what I do is utilized around the world.

Finally, my latest large project is French group 2, which I'm actually taking through about four stages. It's a lengthy process, made even more so when I run into situations like this:

It's a little small, I know, but let me show you what it's supposed to look like (except in French): 

Neat, clean, one line of text, right in a row. 

So what happened with the first picture up there?

Our translator, instead of putting one part of the verse in each line, put the whole chunk of verses in each line. So where a phrase should go is an entire paragraph. 

I don't speak French. I could maybe puzzle out a few words based on my limited Spanish. But I somehow have to figure out where each part of that phrase should start and stop. 

I'll get fixed in proofing, yes. But somehow, I need to make sure all of the text is readable and ready to proof. 

This is just one issue I ran into. It's the most severe, which is why I used it for my example, but it is by no means the only problem. 

Word to the wise: when building template files in English that will then be translated into another language, leave plenty of white space. I don't care if it looks weird. Your graphic designers will thank you later. 

I still owe you a conference post.