The Weekly Wrap-Up: July 22-26, 2019

Ah, le francais n'est-il pas une belle langue? J'ai fait beaucoup de travail pratique dans la version Africaine de cette langue cette semaine. 

If you can read that, you're cooler than I am. Only the finest Google translate for you. I could maybe work out a general idea. But any attempt to pronounce it would sound suspiciously like Spanish. 

Fortunately, I don't have to be able to speak French in order to work on it. You may recall from last week's post the many interesting paths we've taken to get to this point in French. But it's progressing fairly smoothly now. Aside from the fact that booklet 37 might cause a stroke at some point. I don't care what language we're in, that book is a menace. But I press on. I had to add a bunch of pages again and rearrange quite a bit. It looks pretty now. And, more importantly, people will be able to read it.

The goal is to get GR01 done Monday and then go on to GR02. But things change rapidly around here. It's my fault, really, since I'm the one assigning projects. Oh well. 

The weather has been glorious this week. We like to take quick breaks in the afternoons since we spend most of the time sitting or standing at our desks, and we've been able to walk outside most days. It's quite different from when we were hanging out in Satan's armpit last week. But I will embrace whatever form of warmth I can get. I remember how cold last Winter was. I'll stick to Summer, thanks.

We heard from our CROSS trainers in chapel on Wednesday. We have a few going to Hungary and then some who will be serving at HQ. We even had one person from another organization. We do a decent job of preparing folks for serving as missionaries. We should - we've learned a lot over the years. Obviously, we won't think of everything. It's impossible to cover every scenario someone might encounter. But the point is to give a solid foundation.

Which is naturally why I bring my swords in and wave them around every year. Is there a purpose? Yes. Is it also rad? Yes. I didn't bring as many this time. They are quite heavy, even if I'm only moving them across the street. But I think they do help focus the discussion on spiritual warfare. It's a reminder for me, at least.

Speaking of, do these blog posts actually make sense to you? Do they help you understand more of what I do? They are useful for me, but I also want them to be beneficial to you. I'm trying to do more one-offs as well. I'm thinking about them, at least. Most of my thoughts these days are on organizations facing quite serious trouble, and that just gets depressing after a while. But if you don't mind, this blog sometimes helps me sort out my thoughts on a subject. And I'm always willing to engage in a dialogue about something. 

Okay, enough about me. Do something fun this weekend. 

The Weekly Wrap-Up: July 15-19, 2019

If I was being really clever, I might title this week the French Mistake. But I'm not clever, and it wasn't really a mistake. But it has been something of a Marx brothers routine.

Backstory: we started French many moons ago. Eons, really, if you're measuring in the time of the digital age. In real time, we started this project in 2017. We've changed a lot since then. And that's a bit of a problem. Even the language has changed - we started this with a more European style of French, but now we're focusing on a more African French. There can be major differences. We also changed the art and the style of most of the templates.

We had done two groups of French, but then we stalled with the translator, and no one was really clamoring for it back then. But they are now.

I started working on French with the files we already had, but it quickly became apparent that we needed to completely overhaul the files. So we smooshed all of the most current translations into one file, and I've been shoving it into entirely new templates.

With the utmost care, of course.

I'll likely be doing French for a couple of weeks. I need to get it done quickly, but since we're essentially starting from scratch, I also need to make sure these files are pristine. We'd normally have two or three proofs, but this might only get one. So I gotta make it count.

This week I also oversaw the shipping of one computer to Mississippi. Trista has been remoting in to work on another office computer, but networks are unreliable, and there was often a delay for her that was quite frustrating. So we sent 35 lbs of computer to the middle of nowhere and hoped for the best (and bought insurance). And it arrived beautifully! Props to UPS for that.

Chapel this week was a prayer rally. It was actually our annual pray through the neighborhoods one. I don't actually go out, because while others are meeting the mayor and going to fire stations, I take the opportunity to pray through the offices. It's actually quite a rare thing, a fact that was made abundantly clear to me on Wednesday. Yes, we do pray a lot here. We have Monday devotions and chapel on Wednesday and we sometimes pray before meetings. But to go office to office - even I only do it once a year. If people are out, I pray over their space for general work and personal stuff, or things I know from what they've told me. But if they are in, I always ask them for specific prayer requests and then pray with them. Last year, one of them actually prayed for me after I prayed for him. This year, one individual told me that this hadn't happened in 30 years of being in the office.

We should probably work on that.

Speaking of work. Confession time means that I have to tell you I've spent a large part of today watching them tear down the building across the street.

It used to be Pool City. And we used to be 'that place across from Pool City.' But now, we shall be known as 'the place with the flags.' Which was actually our other name before this. So maybe we can finally start being known as One Mission Society. We'll see. But demolition is quite therapeutic. We (for there were many of us) considered asking to have a turn in the excavator. No one had the guts.

It's super hot here, so I anticipate doing very little this weekend. It's gonna be awesome. (And I'm officially down to two cats!)

Be nice to each other.

The Weekly Wrap-Up: July 8-12, 2019

I'm pretty sure everyone took their vacation at the same time because it has been deader than a doornail around here this week. Truthfully, it's kind of nice. The quiet is always appreciated. But it can also be a problem because certain projects require certain people to be around. Alas. We press on.

We're working on getting three new projects started. These languages will be used in Africa. See, we're revamping another program ECC uses called Village Church Planting. And part of the revamp is inserting various T&M booklets into their curriculum. But since it's only certain ones, we're kind of doing a popcorn process on the booklets. They won't be translated in the normal order. Fortunately, two of the languages are using Latin characters, so that makes my life easier. The other one I hadn't even heard of before - Amharic. Should be quite interesting when we get started.

We had a long discussion about file names this week as well. You wouldn't think it would make a huge difference, but believe me, when you're processing thousands (literally) of files per project, you need to make sure you know what each booklet is just by looking at the name. I think we got that figured out now, so that's good.

Our staff briefing was actually brief this week! Only 50 minutes. It's not quite a record, but it's close. Probably because there isn't much going on. Except CROSS-training. That did start this week. But I won't have much to do with it until later.

That's about it. I'm sorry there isn't much to talk about lately. Lots of file management and tracking down translators and figuring out why computers aren't doing what they're supposed to do. My team has three language projects going right now - Mongolian, Haitian Creole, and Mizo Chin. I'm waiting on some files so I can start publishing some stuff. I have a feeling it's all going to come in at once.

Have a great weekend!

The Weekly Wrap-Up: July 1-5, 2019

Hello, my lovelies!

Not much to report this week, I'm afraid. I've been busy setting up my new computer! Yay! I always forget how idiosyncratic I make my machines until I'm starting over from scratch. But we're getting there! And the best news is that this puppy hasn't shut down unexpectedly on me once. So I'll take some mild inconvenience.

The rest of the short week (no work yesterday, let freedom ring) has been devoted to organizing projects and tracking down which translators need a little encouragement to send us more files. At this rate, I'm going to run out of work for my team to do. (Probably not, but they are quite efficient.)

I'm also still absorbing info from the meetings in June. I only know some of it so far, but it's churning away in my brain. I might share, I might now. Some of it has the potential to bring big changes to OMS. We'll see.

Today, I'm pretty much on my own. There were 23 people in the building this morning - for comparison, we usually have upwards of 70. I guess everyone wanted to do a little extra celebrating. Fair play to them. I just did another head count, and we're down to 14. I'm the only one in my hallway again. That means I don't have to tailor my music to everyone's preferences. Or decibel comfort level.

That really is pretty much it. You should be getting my prayer letter soon. I shared it in Monday morning devos this week. I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Light some fireworks for me.