The Weekly Wrap-Up: July 26-30, 2021

Who else thinks we should institute the wonderful tradition of an afternoon siesta here in the U.S.? I don't know if it's the heat or my general inability to sleep through the night these days, but I have been feeling so sleepy in the afternoons. I've never been much of a nap person, but I'm thinking it might be time. 

This has been a fairly quiet week. Sarah left me to go on vacation with her family (only fair since I did the same thing to her a few weeks ago), and that has meant I'm regularly one of the few people downstairs. Add to that the slight hiccup with the A/C this week, and you have at least three days where I was the only one in my hallway. It's not an unheard of phenomenon, but it does get awfully quiet when you can't hear other people on Zoom or arguing with the printer. 

I spent most of this week making videos, which is not my normal state of affairs. I'll try to upload them sometime, but I'll tease you with this - I downloaded both the Law & Order theme and the Looney Tunes theme for these. If I tell you it has to do with the CMF Seminar coming up, what conclusions would you draw?

The rest of the week, I've been working on Tamil booklets. They are rough. We reduced the font size, and they are still overrunning just about every space they'd normally fit in English. I'm definitely going to be spending a fair bit of time on these. 

We had a special prayer time today for a man who has done a lot of work with OMS over the years. He's in the hospital with COVID. I know it's a hot button topic these days, but we were talking afterward that our mission hasn't changed. Beyond politics, beyond personal pronouns, beyond whatever distraction the world throws at you, what we are interested in is people's souls. Don't forget to do a soul check every now and then. 

We know how to love because Jesus loves us.

Bye!

The Weekly Wrap-Up: July 19-23, 2021

This is a late one, boys and girls. I gotta say, I'm not normally around at 5:30 on a Friday afternoon. As soon as 5:00 hits, I tend to be off like a shot. But this has been an interesting week, and I had a lot of things to finish up, so here we are.

I started this week hearing some disappointing news. Not bad, and certainly not disappointing for the person bearing it, but it was certainly not news I expected right now. I'm happy for the person who told me, but sad for me. And yes, I'm being deliberately vague, but that's really all I can say until it's official. 

With regard to the workload this week, I was swamped. Still am, but we have to put it down sometime. I created two volumes of T&M booklets this week - one in Swahili and one in English. It's something new, and I'm glad I learned how to do it, but they do take some time to compile and check page numbers and such. 

Sarah and I created scripts for the CMF Seminar in August. We're trying to illustrate the benefits of digital collaboration, so we wrote some things to be filmed. I tried to tone down my usual brand of humor, but I do have a particular style, so there will be one or two sarcastic moments. I'll post a link to one of the videos if I think of it. And if it's any good. We'll see. 

I haven't been sleeping well this week. I had one dog sitting gig with an adorable Golden, and I never sleep well in different places, but these days, it turns out I don't sleep well in my own place, either. Any ideas?

That's all, folks. Have a pleasant day whenever you read this.

Bye!

The Weekly-Wrap Up: July 12-16, 2021

Hello, beautiful people!

Yes, I did in fact survive Wisconsin. And my family. And my family together in Wisconsin. Thank you for praying for us! We had a fantastic time and got to enjoy many of the natural wonders of the state most known for cheese. 

Alas, this week I returned to the real world and got back to business. I had a fair amount of catching up to do, which is great because it means my team did a great job without me. But it also meant a lot of emails and answering questions and catch-up meetings. I published a group of Swahili booklets in preparation for creating the next VCP volume. 

Sarah and I had a meeting with leadership about some of the safety concerns around the building. We've been part of various safety teams, but they never gained much traction. So, I now know where all of the fire extinguishers are and we have some clear steps for moving forward. It's all part of working to ensure our success as an organization.

I had a meeting on Thursday about digital collaboration - gotta come up with some video skits for that. Not sure when, but I'll find time somewhere. Then four meetings Friday morning (FOUR) about T&M and app stuff and Billion.Global. 

Needless to say, I'm looking forward to a stress-free weekend. We'll see if I get it. I hope your weekend is everything you need it to be.

Bye!

The Weekly Wrap-Up: June 28 - July 2, 2021

This will be a quick one today. There were two major projects - proofing the Global Impact Report and publishing GR01 of Tamil. I think I finished publishing Tamil right at 5 on Friday. Craziness. I wanted to get it done before I'm off next week, so I just kept pushing. As always, there's more that we did this week, but those were really the major ones. The GIR (I have another name for it, but it's less polite) was fairly easy, but it's amazing how many little details get missed in publications. Lori and I were talking about it, and she said something along the lines of "Who really reads it that closely?" Granted, most people won't. But people pick up on the mistakes far more quickly than they will compliment the design, unfortunately. I always notice stuff like that in magazines and flyers. It makes me think less of the companies that produce those materials, like they don't have pride in what they do enough to make sure it's perfect. Maybe that's an unhealthy perspective. But that's just me. 

Anyway, pray for my family as we travel, and pray for good weather and a lovely time of fellowship and fun. I appreciate all of you so much!

Bye! Happy Fourth!