The Weekly Wrap-Up: September 21-25, 2020

Lots to celebrate this week! Those four groups of Haitian Creole are now fully published! Yay! We typically say that the first three groups of a language represent the MVP - minimum viable product. We picked the booklets in those groups specifically because they are the ones used most often and necessary to starting the process of church multiplication. So, it's nice to be able to send these booklets to our partners in Haiti to begin training.

I was also able to advance the new booklets in Spanish. If you recall, we are doing three versions of Spanish, two of which have been published already. However, we didn't get the two new booklets done in those versions of Spanish, so we've been playing catch up. 

Other than that, it's been a fairly tame week. The usual meetings and phone calls happened, and we had a nice lunch with the local ECC folks on Thursday. We don't really see each other that much (understandably), and I think we're all missing the community aspect of our jobs. Zoom just doesn't cut it. 

I read somewhere about the six month wall. Like, six months into a traumatic event, you start really feeling the fatigue, especially when the outcome of that event is uncertain. I don't know if it's super scientific, but I have hit that wall. I was dealing really well with the pandemic in the first few months, and then as it drags on, I've become less and less ... secure is really the only word I can think of that fits even marginally well. I don't deal well with uncertainty, and that is going around in spades right now. So I'm withdrawing a bit. I'm limiting my social media, I'm limiting my news intake, and I'm limiting how much I'm going out as well. I've dealt with anxiety before, but never quite on this level, and I need to figure out how to deal with things now. 

Which means I appreciate your prayers, especially now. I hope you are well, and if you've hit your own wall, give yourself a break. We're in uncharted territory. Stick to what you know to be true, and rely on your faith.

Bye!

The Weekly Wrap-Up: September 14-18, 2020

Language of the Week: Haitian Creole

Groups : 1-4

Status: (Mostly) ready to be published next week

As far as work goes, this has been a fairly productive week. I made it through four groups of Haitian Creole in the midst of various meetings and Zoom fatigue and phone calls asking random computer questions. 

Personally, the week has been rough. I'm dealing with anxiety and medication issues and loneliness and all the other fun stuff that comes with COVID and an uncooperative body. 

So we push forward. Life goes on and all that. I appreciate your prayers and encouragement, and I would encourage you to spend less time online (missing out on my keen wit notwithstanding) and more time meditating on God's glory and grace. I'm endeavoring to do the same. 

Bye!

The Weekly Wrap-Up: September 8-11, 2020

I'm seriously contemplating removing the Internet from my life for the next two months. I don't know if it's possible. But it's incredibly tempting. 

In the meantime, we can continue as usual. 

This was a short week, and it was an awesome feeling to actually get some sleep last weekend. I say some because I was kitten-sitting, and kitty's got claws. But I still have some skin, so it's fine. 

It's all Haitian Creole this week. We started over, essentially, so that all template and style changes and updated transfiles could be incorporated at the same time. I'm taking a little extra time, therefore, because I will also be moving directly to publishing once I've processed the first four groups. Not sure how long that will take, but it's going well. I'm doing it fully in CC, and I've never published in CC, so that could be interesting. 

Just a few side projects this week. We have a few more people trickling into the office, so there's some minor adjustments, but it's still pretty much just the few and the faithful. 

Health update: I was feeling pretty well last week, but this week has not been as encouraging. I had two appointments yesterday, which means three new prescriptions today. So we'll see. That's the motto lately. We'll see. 

I think that's it for the week. I'm working on some stuff behind the scenes, but it's taking a while to sort out my thoughts. 

We'll see.

Bye!

The Weekly Wrap-Up: August 31 - September 4, 2020

This has been a productive week, so in honor of that, I gave myself a day off. So technically, this should only be through September 3. But I like consistency and symmetry, so there. 

I finished a group of Hindi, which was quite a feat in itself. I mentioned the switch to Adobe Creative Cloud (hereafter referred to as CC), and that has not been without its challenges. One of the reasons we were using CS4 was because it offered a Middle Eastern option, which we needed because of all the glyph languages. (I could be mangling this explanation, but it's how I understand things, so if I'm wrong, don't tell me.) Glyphs are cool, but they do have a tendency to make life rather interesting sometimes. They either don't come in correctly or they end up in weird places, and we don't always catch on because, well, we don't speak or read glyph languages. Sometimes, though, it's pretty obvious. Anyway, Hindi is a glyph language, and what makes it even more interesting is that it tends to sit below a Latin script. I'm not sure how to explain it. Just look up something in Hindi and see how the top bar tends to squash things. Anyway, that means you need less room above a line and more below, because there are little dangly bits that can throw you off as well. But we figured it out, and another group is in the can. 

The other big coup is that I finally (FINALLY) published all of the updated English F booklets. If you recall, I've been working on this project since January. Yeah. It's been my background project for when I needed something to do or just needed a break. But rare are the days when there isn't anything else to do. But I figured 8 months was probably long enough, so I finally found some time to get it done. 

All the usual stuff is still going on, so I'll continue to be plenty busy. But I needed a break. It's weird to think about that this year. You'd think everyone would have had enough of a break with the lockdown. But I didn't really stop doing what I'd been doing. I actually did more, since quite often Sarah and I were the only boots on the ground, so to speak. And I am feeling it. 

So, I am going to enjoy this Labor Day weekend by doing absolutely no labor whatsoever. I hope you are in a position to do the same. 

Bye!