The Weekly Wrap-Up: January 25-29, 2021

Welcome to Zoom Bootcamp, part 2. 

This week, we started to see the culmination of the original training we did back in November. Our original 9 trainees have been training 19 new students in the fabulous art of Zoom meetings. We're all about multiplication in ECC, and that's what we set out to do with this. As a consultant in November, I led my team of 3 through the various practice sessions that they presented. Now, I get to watch them do the same with their teams. I have to say, it's a lot less labor intensive this time around, but I still get to watch and provide feedback when things don't quite go to plan. I'm pretty pleased with how things are going so far. Our last day for this training is next Tuesday. Then we send our little ducklings out into the (virtual) world with all of the skills necessary for successful Zoom training events in the future. And our email address, because Zoom keeps updating their software and driving us all crazy.

In the meantime, I managed to complete a group of Vietnamese booklets, start on Indonesian, pause Indonesian to work on French, pause French when I ran into an InDesign problem, and go back to Indonesian. It's a good thing I take good notes, because I would never remember where I am on these projects without it. 

I need to write these earlier in the day. I'm too tired and rushed Friday evenings trying to finish up last minute things and finally get home for some sleep. 

Bye!

The Weekly Wrap-Up: January 18-22, 2021

Like sand through the hourglass, these are the days of our lives.

That will only make sense to some people this week, but it's not worth explaining. 

Anyway, it's been a varied week as far as work goes. I led devotions on Monday about the dreams of Joseph and his father Jacob. Then I finished GR04 of Tamil, which wasn't as taxing as GR03. I did some more editing of booklet 64. We had a few Zoom meetings for the next bootcamp happening next week. I've been working on GR03 of Vietnamese, which is only about 20% longer than English, so it's been pretty great compared to Tamil. I definitely have fewer pages I need to add. 

Otherwise, life goes on much as it has for the last few months. 

Yep. That's how I feel about the world at large right now. I'm pretty much ignoring it. You might say that's irresponsible. But what can I actually do about it at this moment? Exactly what I have been doing. I'm trying to get as many people into the kingdom of God as possible. That means supporting the awesome men and women using the booklets in the power of the Holy Spirit to tell their family and neighbors about Jesus. 

And since it's been a while since I wrote about my anxiety (we are now calling it The GAD), I'll catch you up on that, too. I still have it. But I'm getting better at managing it. I'm recognizing the patterns in my life that have lead up to this and identifying triggers, and I'm pushing myself to try new things and become more comfortable being out in the world. But it's a process. It's a little bit like a dance. I can have a great day and do-si-do like nobody's watching, and then a week later, I'm back in the parking lot, breathing into a paper bag and swearing off jazz music. (I hope that made sense. It works in my brain, but I recognize that my brain is a little 'special.')

Also, the pandemic is theoretically still a thing, right? I'm a bit limited on how much dancing I can do until we've all decided that was a fever dream. 

Anyway, I appreciate your continued prayers, and don't be afraid to ask questions or invite me to things. Just be prepared for lengthy answers and a solid maybe on the RSVP.

Bye!

The Weekly Wrap-Up: January 11-15, 2021

Happy birthday eve to me! Yes, I am indeed working today. I'd take the day off, but I hate doing that so early in the year. Who knows when I'll need the time? (I say that every year, and every year, I have vacation time left. Someday, I'll get it right.)

This was a fairly typical week. We worked on more bootcamp prep, which is actually going pretty well from the original training team's perspective - we only have to do 2 session out of 9. My facilitation team, however, is learning just how much we actually put into making their training experiences interesting and informative. I'm sure they will rise to the challenge. 

I'm in Tamil this week. It's another lengthy language with its own inherent challenges. I usually have to add pages to Tamil booklets just so I can fit everything in. That's not really a problem, it just takes more time to get through a group. 

I did have some downtime this week, though, because I had to do a backup and then an upgrade to Big Sur. That always takes forever, so I took the opportunity to look through the newest booklet, which Trista has lovingly laid out for us. I'm thinking it will need some pretty significant rewrites, though. There's a lot of 'Christianese' in it, and the goal for every booklet is to make it as easy to translate as possible. I'll be getting up close and personal with a thesaurus soon. 

Please continue to pray for my health situation. I've been having blood pressure issues again, and that makes life very not fun. 

I hope you have a fantastic time celebrating my birthday without me.

Bye!

The Weekly Wrap-Up: January 4-8, 2021

Happy New Year!

Is it over, yet?

Yeah, so there's a lot going on in the world right now. A lot of bad stuff. And all of it convinces me that we need to work harder than ever to bring people to Jesus. Because no government, no social cause, no NGO, NOTHING is going to save us except Jesus Christ. A reckoning is coming, and I, for one, intend to be ready. 

It feels weird to say that and then talk about the very mundane aspects of my work. But that's what y'all signed up for! So here we go.

New year means new energy and reorganization and setting goals and priorities. 

All of which means meetings. I think I spent more time on Zoom this week than I did off. I think I had one hour on Monday that wasn't spent on Zoom. There were plenty of other meetings throughout the week, but I still managed to put together the two newest books in Tagalog. It was not pleasant. The new books are filled with a lot of different elements, and Tagalog is a language with lots of long words. The two things don't always go together well. But I persevered and managed to create something passable. Now it's up to the proofreaders to decide whether or not I did a good job. 

My other big project this week was the online training bootcamp. Yes, you read that correctly. Yes, we did already do this in November. Yes, we are doing it again. Now, our original group is going to train a larger group of people how to use Zoom. We've been reworking some of the training materials and prepping the new facilitators, but ultimately, I'm going to take a step back and just let them at it. I always think the best way to learn is by doing and by teaching others. 

That's about it, really. I'm optimistic about the work of T&M this year, if not that optimistic about anything else. So we take what we can get.

Bye!