The Weekly Wrap-Up: July 23-27, 2018

GUYZ.....

Hakha Chin is done. For the moment. I'll be back at it with another group next week no doubt, but I'm taking the win now because all 12 groups have been through the initial stages. The rest is just window dressings.

I actually met one of the guys using T&M in Myanmar. He was so gracious and appreciative of the work. It's worth every gripe about text boxes and overset text and fifteen character words to hear how this material is changing people's lives. I don't want to breeze past that. I do what I do for a reason. I need to remind myself of that every now and then.

Had quite a few side projects these last couple of weeks. CROSS-training is now done, so no more sticking my head in and bothering them. I taught them the bridge model of sharing the Gospel, which was super popular in tracts many years ago. I don't know if it still is. But it's a good picture of how sin separates us from God.

And this was the interns last day. No interns in ECC this year, but I got to know a few of the others. They are a lovely bunch, and I wish them well. I found a fellow nerd in Isaac, so we spent some time bonding over Lord of the Rings and our love of sci-fi.

But as much as I love the people months (HA!), it will be nice to get back to the quiet routines of missionary life.

Heh.

Heh heh.

BWAHAHAHAHAHEHEHAHA!

Quiet. Right.




Here's your Pic of the Week.

I love baseball.

The Weekly Wrap-Up: July 16-20, 2018

Text boxes are the devil.

I'm tempted to just end this entry there. This has been a hot mess of a week, and I don't think I have the emotional capacity left to delve into everything.

I'm not done with Hakha Chin. See the aforementioned text boxes for the reason. More than anything, the text boxes get overrun in languages with more characters. And you can't just make them longer. They have to look right. When they move, they still have to be pointed at the right person. And when the booklet is nothing but a conversation among multiple people, you have to seriously focus to make sure the right people are saying the right things with the right amount of space.

Like I said. The devil.

I'm still ruminating on that post I promised. Maybe next week. I'll need an emotional bloodletting. There are some announcements coming.

Stay tuned...

The Weekly Wrap-Up: Whenever we stopped - July 13, 2018

Wow. Okay. We have a lot of ground to cover.

Let's see, we last did one of these about a month ago. Since then, I've attended the OMS conference, went to Nineveh where I hung out on a boat, and visited my parents. I also worked. But somehow, I was never here on Friday, and this just doesn't feel the same if it's not done on Friday. (Okay, it's really only been two weeks. But it feels like it's been a month.)

Conference was good. I have a letter coming out that will tell you more, but I can give a few snippets. It was a little odd having it in Greenwood this year. I guess it made it feel more like work since I was still in the same environment. But I actually didn't have to contribute a lot this year. I wasn't setting up or designing or running anything. That was largely on purpose. I'm practicing a little self care, and I have a blog post I'm ruminating on that might actually get written down some day about that. But I needed to experience conference as its own entity, not something that I was partially responsible for. It changes the dynamic, in ways I think many people don't understand.

We didn't really have a main speaker. We were supposed to, and then life happened, and the organizers had to scramble a little. But I think it worked out fairly well. Pam Tebow spoke Thursday night and shared some of her story as a missionary and how God has used her son. She was incredibly humble and so quick to give God the glory for everything they've been able to do. The Bible studies were led by Stan Key. He spoke at the ECC retreat a few years ago, and I really like him. He always does exegesis on the stuff no one else wants to touch, the stuff I usually have questions about and ask my dad to look up in the original language. I like people who aren't afraid to really dig into the Bible and ask the tough questions. If we can't answer the questions for ourselves, how do we explain it to others? Not that everything is explainable. But God was very purposeful when he gave us the Bible. There's usually a reason for something we find troubling.

The speaker Friday night and Saturday morning was Ed Stetzer. I'd never heard of him before, but he's now the interim pastor at Moody Church in Chicago. He was quite intriguing, and he challenged some things we've just accepted as fact. I appreciate that, too. I'm a pursuer of Truth. Not conventional wisdom or tradition or popular opinion, but real, undeniable Truth. Truth doesn't change with our emotions, it doesn't change with history, it just is. People are going to be confronted with Truth during the last judgment, and if you don't want to be caught off guard, I think you have to pursue it rigorously in your time on Earth.

Too deep? Okay. On to work stuff.

As of today, I have completed the initial formatting stage on all but one group of Hakha Chin. This puts us well on the way to getting it published. I hesitate to say it'll be done by the end of the year, but we should be able to come pretty close. So that's pretty cool.

It's been quiet around the office. People took time off after conference and all the meetings. It's slightly busier this week because it's CROSS-training, but not everyone is involved in that. Except today was sword day. I love sword day! I like showing off my collection and seeing people's eyes get wider as I keep bringing more out. This is why you shouldn't judge the book by its cover. Except now I have a reputation. Probably deserved. But still...

That's about it for work, I think. Actually, that's probably it period. Like I said, there's a letter and a blog post, and both of those have kind of hit a nerve with me. I'd appreciate your prayers over the next few months.

Enjoy the Pic of the Week!