The Weekly Wrap-Up: May 10-14, 2021

Whew! This week has been all over the place! I guess I could say that of a lot of weeks, but this one really has made me feel like a ping pong ball used in an Olympic-level match.

I was only able to work a bit on French this week. I made some decent progress, but most of the week has been focused on the first two days of online Zoom boot camp training. We have a good group, though we did lose one participant due to time commitments, but everyone who was able to make it has been really engaged and ready to learn. There have been a few rough spots, of course, but over all, I'm really pleased with how things are going. My facilitation team has been meeting quite a bit this week in between training sessions to practice and make sure we are doing our best to communicate well with the participants. Lots of good questions, and I'm excited to see what happens when we finish up on Tuesday.

On Wednesday afternoon, though, I went to get my second vaccination shot. I've heard all kinds of things about reactions and recovery periods, but I did my research and felt that this would be a good time to take care of that. 

On Thursday, I woke up feeling a little stuffy, but nothing too terrible. We made it through the first session of the day, and I knew that the second session was work time for the groups - nothing in which I had to participate. I had started to feel a little meh, so I went home for a nap around 11. By 12, I knew I wasn't going to make it back into the office. I had a fever, body aches, chills, and I felt incredibly dizzy any time I got up to get anything. Thankfully, my dear friend Sarah (who led this training back in March) very graciously stepped in for the final session of the day. I am so grateful for my amazing team who rolled with it and kept the ship sailing smoothly.

I'm feeling better today, but I'm still not 100%. Fortunately (maybe), most of my day has been filled with Zoom meetings, so I just had to sit and listen, contributing occasionally to the discussion. I'm confident that this weekend will give me ample time to fully recover. 

One more thing, the latest issue of OMS Outreach has been published. You can find the online version here by clicking on this sentence. If you recall, I mentioned a super secret project that I'd been working on. This is it! No, I didn't write any articles. But all of the handwriting in here is mine! Yes, you may now judge my terrible printing skills. And, of course, read about the amazing things God is doing through OMS. 

Bye!

The Weekly Wrap-Up: December 16-20, 2019

It's been interesting to walk around the office each day. All week, there are fewer and fewer people in the building. One of the biggest adjustments after 22 years of living on a school schedule is that there is no summer break, no extended Winter break, no Spring break - none of that. If you want time off, you have to plan for it, and you have a limited amount. Due to my trip to Wyoming in June and then my trip to Hawaii in November, I am a bit low on vacation time. Thus, I have been in the office all week, and I will be in next week, at least on Monday. Not sure about Friday, yet.

First, though, remember when I said I was looking forward to a weekend without people? Well, I got it, but not in a way I really wanted. I woke up at 5:30 on Saturday morning and proceeded to be sick for the next 16 hours. Really sick. The disgusting kind of sick.

Sorry. I'll refrain from describing any more.

Suffice to say, it was an unpleasant weekend. And it took a while to recover, though because I am a masochist, I was actually in the office every day. Mostly away from other people, thank you very much. I try not to share my germs. (Also, the new medication I was on gave me some incredibly horrible side effects. That did not help my recovery. But now I have new ones, so that's good.)

Anyway, sob story aside, I was able to get some stuff done this week. I finally got all of my Christmas letters and supporter gifts out, which took a huge weight off my mind. I hope I do a good job of keeping people involved and informed in this ministry. It's important to me that people know that their contributions are appreciated and stewarded well.

I finally got Castilian off the ground this week! It feels like we've been doing Spanish booklets for as long as we've been working on Train & Multiply itself, and we kinda have. You may recall that we have two versions of Spanish already, but we needed one that catered more to a European audience than a Latin American one. It's important that people feel a familiarity with materials and don't get distracted by language or images that don't fit into their context. We want as few obstacles to sharing the Gospel as possible. So it's nice to be able to start work on Castilian.

We're also moving forward with publishing more English sets. We did African and Universal art first since those are being used in the Village Church Planting volumes, but now we can get started on the European (Art F) version. For many years, this was our standard English set, so it'll be nice to get that back into circulation.

In the meantime, though, it IS actually Christmas next week, and my team is taking some well-deserved time off. I figure I can tie up the rest of the loose ends on Monday and then enjoy the season.

Adeste the heck out of those fideles, ya hear?

Merry Christmas!

The Weekly Wrap-Up: November 7-11, 2016

I'm really hoping we're back on schedule with things. I sort of, finally, feel like I'm getting back in the swing of things.

Sort of.

I felt pretty productive Monday. I had a couple of good meetings about making sure everyone was on the same page with things. We have so many projects going that it's hard to keep track of who is doing what.

I was also able to get an email out to our T&M organizers asking for reports. I've been working on this for a couple of weeks, and I get to deal with the responses, so I'm glad it's out and producing more work for me. (Actually glad, there. No sarcasm.)

Of course, then I was out again on Tuesday. Sick as a dog Monday night, and definitely in no shape to do much of anything except lie around watching episodes of "Murder, She Wrote."

I was back on Wednesday, though not 100%. Which was just as well, because the toughest thing I had to do was upgrade my computer. We use so many programs for T&M, and we all have to make sure we're using the same software at the same version. So I spent some time upgrading the virtual machine, installing a newer version of Office, and all the fun little things that come along with having a Mac for hardware and Windows for the VM OS - making sure everyone talks to each other and gets along.

In the midst of that, we managed to write and record a new radio spot for our Christmas giving projects. If I've figured out how to embed it properly, you can listen to it below.



Veronica and I had a 2.5 hour chat Thursday about the process of things and future training. I also got to crack open Hindi. I did a little for the project this summer, but now we're moving forward on the rest of the project. It's such a fun language, and I have no idea how to read it, but it's just nice to look at.

Today saw a follow-up meeting to one from Monday. We're getting more of the team on board with some project managing programs that are really going to help us with collaboration in the future. I think it'll be really good for us. Yay for communication!

My part of Hindi is now done, and I need to work on the language in the agreements to make sure it's understandable and reflects how things operate now. And I need to fix about 30 Trello boards. Communication is great. Except when you change the base board, you have to change all of the boards in progress as well.

Seriously, though. I think I need to do a juice cleanse or something. My body hates me right now. 

Is "plague" stretching things a bit?

I do not like being sick.

I try not to advertize that fact.

This might be surprising to people who have been reading my last few Facebook posts.

 

I started to feel ill on Friday, but by Saturday, it was evident this was not going away. Also, one of my favorite poems.

 

Beth wrote a poem. Not for me specifically, but it was still lovely.

 

 

I don't know why no one liked this. I thought it was a legitimate request.

 

Less than articulate.

 

That comment got a lot of interesting comments. And Emily was awesome.

 

Couldn't have come at a better time.

 

That was this morning. I needed to eat so I could take meds before I went to work. But everything I eat now tastes like medicine. It's disgusting.

So yeah, I'm fairly vocal about it. But I try to be funny-vocal instead of the whiny-vocal that I really feel. There's nothing I want more than to curl up next to my mother and whimper pathetically as she pets my hair and tells me everything will be okay.

This is difficult from 150 miles away.

It's impossible when you belatedly remember that your mother has gone to Pennsylvania for the weekend.

So yeah. I muddled my way through. Theoretically, I caught up on the CBS shows I hadn't had a chance to begin. Don't ask me what happened in any of them, though. I really couldn't say.

And today, I'm back to work.

Yippee.