The Weekly Wrap-Up: October 26-30, 2020

My notes are less than satisfactory this week. Yes, I do actually take notes, because by the time Friday comes, I can't usually remember what happened at the beginning of the week. I do know that it was raining most of the week, which also brings the general mood of things right down. My calendar tells me that I had two doctor's appointments this week, so I know I was out of the office for at least a couple of hours. 

So, work stuff. I've been working on Tamil still. We didn't resolve the justification issue, but we'll get there. We've been doing more on the Zoom bootcamp. I have to say, we are making progress. It doesn't feel like it sometimes, but we genuinely are. HOWEVER, there is still a lot left to do, and we have a week. Pray for us. 

I honestly don't have much else to say. A very good friend of mine is in town right now, so we will hopefully be hanging out. Otherwise, I'm very tired, so I'm going to sleep a lot this weekend (I hope) and generally loaf about. I hope you have as fulfilling a weekend as you want.

Bye!

Oh yeah... Have a photo.

The Weekly Wrap-Up: October 19-23, 2020

Hey look, it's a new language! And a new dilemma. I've been working on Tamil all week. (No disrespect intended, but I did tell a couple of people this week that this language looks like someone started with the secret code made out of a tic-tac-toe board and then created the rest during an earthquake. It's trippy.) Tamil is spoken primarily in India. And as you can see, the words (or phrases, I can't tell) are quite long. This creates issues with spacing. I did the first group while leaving the paragraphs with full justification, but I moved on to the second group while I wait for the translator to tell me which of these versions is preferred. Honestly, I don't like either of them, but I'd probably ask for left justification just because I've seen how much space there is sometimes. And I like consistency. 

I've also been working on the Zoom bootcamp. We're getting closer, so I'm trying to be supportive and help people when they ask. I'm editing practice sessions and helping consolidate things, and generally just trying to be encouraging. We'll see how it goes. 

We did our annual prayer walk for chapel on Wednesday. Obviously, it was a bit different from normal. But it was still a great experience. I usually stay at HQ and pray over the cubicles and offices. I asked Alex to join me this time. There were a lot more people around than I thought there would be (we wore our masks, don't worry), and definitely more than normal since we usually do this in groups and most people were going out individually and then returning. Anyway, we prayed with the people who were here and prayed over empty spaces and the people who are now working at home. 

Oh, and my prayer letter will be coming out sometime in the next couple of weeks. 

Let's see, that's about it, really. My health stuff is progressing. I had some blood work done this week. That was fun. I have been feeling better most days, so that's good. I appreciate all of the prayers. Definitely keep them coming.

Bye!

The Weekly Wrap-Up: October 12-16, 2020

I have so many tabs open on my computer. It's truly terrible. But I guess that might be a sign of good things. It's been a really productive week, for one thing. And my brain is a bit scrambled. So, you know, you take the good, you take the bad - the facts of life. 

Anyway, you can tell we're getting to the end of the year because everyone is freaking out and trying to get stuff done. This week, those things had to do with the ECC retreat and the upcoming bootcamp Zoom training. So I put together the gift survey because I like it when people tell me random things about themselves, and then Paul and I created six sessions for the bootcamp attendees to present and practice their Zooming skills. We took a meta approach (my idea) so that we could reinforce some principles while making learning fun. Yay!

Anyway, I actually spent a lot of time on Zoom this week trying to get all of this done. I think Tuesday was the worst - I clocked about six hours on video chat. But I managed to write my prayer letter while doing that, so hooray for multi-tasking. I also managed to finish two groups of Telugu this week, so I am on a role! 

One of the things I did for the retreat was to put together my annual Amazon Christmas wish list. I'm going to share that with you now. No particular reason. Just because. 

https://www.amazon.com/hz/wishlist/ls/1G3P2CHO1L1HQ?ref_=wl_share

It's pretty much me in a nutshell.

Anyway, I'm going to go curl up in my warm bed with some cocoa and read some nice books this weekend. I hope yours is just as fulfilling.

Bye!

The Weekly Wrap-Up: October 5-9, 2020

It's been a whirlwind of a week for languages. The last group of Hindi is done. And I published a group of French. And now I'm starting Telugu. I'd be hard-pressed to find three more different languages (well, not that hard - I've seen some doozies). But it's been quite interesting to work with each group. And it's nice to get something else published. Telugu has been hanging around for a while as we figured out how to accurately portray it. 

That's Luke 5:5-7. And I only know that because I keep the English booklet up on my other monitor to make sure everything stays in the right place. I couldn't even begin trying to learn this language. Thank the Lord for variety!

We have a new team member! BJ Williamson is coming on to be our full-time translator liaison. This is an important role that had previously been split up between three people before now. Our translators are amazing, but they each have different needs in communication and technology, and it can be difficult to keep track of everything, especially when you already have a few other full-time jobs. BJ has been a missionary in Ecuador for many years, so he has a lot of experience in dealing with other cultures. Plus, he speaks Spanish, so he understands the difficulty inherent in translation. We've been working to get him up to speed so he can be fully immersed by January. 

PLUS, we're working on the ECC retreat for December. I know, I know. Like all things in 2020, we're doing it virtually. But we still have to figure out how to do gifts and some spiritual formation and have time to chat with people. And because it's virtual, we could theoretically invite more people. All things to take into consideration, and we've left it rather late since we didn't know for sure what we'd be doing. COVID really does know how to spoil everything, doesn't it?

That's about it for the week. I'm working on some donor stuff, and I need to get my next prayer letter done, but that will all have to happen in whatever spare moments I can scavenge. I have to find a topic for my prayer letter, first. Any ideas?

Bye!

The Weekly Wrap-Up: September 28 - October 2, 2020

 How has everyone's week been?

It's been pretty good around here. I've been working on Hindi booklets, which are fun. Glyph languages present their own challenges, but sometimes it's nice to not know what's going on. I just assume it's correct and let the proofreaders do their thing. This is only one of the Indian languages we're doing right now. I haven't worked with Tamil or Telugu, yet. Supposedly, they have even more funky characters, so those should be quite interesting. Not sure when we'll get to them, though. We have a huge queue of projects waiting. Job security, I suppose.

I've been trying to count how many meetings I attended this week (all on Zoom, of course). I think it's about six, and all lasted at least an hour. Some were closer to three hours. I can't say all of them were vital, but we did do some important stuff at least. We have a new team member, who I will introduce at a later date (probably next week), so we're trying to get them up to speed. 

I have nothing profound this week. I pulled something in my back today, so that's taking up a lot of my thought processing ability right now. But I hope you have a lovely weekend! Be good, vote early, and ignore the muck. 

Bye!