The Weekly Wrap-Up: January 14-18, 2019

I've never understood the phrase 'thrown in at the deep end.' Not the meaning - I am fully aware of the meaning and the feeling behind it. But who in their right mind would teach someone how to swim by throwing them into the deep end of the pool/lake/ocean? It seems counterproductive. I didn't learn how to swim until I was 9 or 10. I was terrified of water (nearly drowned when I was quite young). If you'd thrown me into the deep end of the pool (the one I refused to dive into at the Y and thus did not graduate out of guppies with the rest of my class), I'd have probably panicked and hacked up a lung when you hopefully pulled me out. And then there would have been blood. (I heard a rumor that Russian women would throw their children into water right after birth so that the children's bodies would remember the swimming motion from the womb and they wouldn't have to be taught it later - not sure if there is truth to it, but for some reason, I believe it.)

Anyway, I'm finding a new dislike of that phrase this week, because I feel like I've been thrown into the deep end of managing T&M production, and there is just a flimsy rope attached to a sinking rowboat to keep me afloat.

Okay, maybe it's not quite that bad. But I have a new appreciation for how much work goes into this, and I feel like I already knew a lot about that. So what have I learned this week?

My documentation skills are severely lacking.

But they are getting better. They have to. We have too many projects going on right now for them not to. I think I'm starting to figure out where we are and where we're going. But it's rough, guys. So please be patient with me.

I think I touched at least four languages this week. I'm right in the middle of publishing Tagalog, so that will hopefully be done next week. I also need to do Hakha Chin. (And yes, I'm using this blog as one of my documentation techniques. You're just going to have to deal with that. If I put any more sticky notes on my desk, people are going to think I got pranked.)

Thank you to everyone who sent birthday greetings. It was a good day, and a good week. Stay safe this weekend. Be excellent to one another. As I told my mechanic, yes, the world is full of bad people. But if we don't do anything to try to change that, we become part of the problem.

Felicitations on this, the thirty-third day of my birth.

I was probably 11 or 12 when I first heard Mark Lowry tell this joke.



And I don't particularly know why, but it has stuck with me all these years. Maybe because it's funny, which it is. Maybe because it seemed like a logical dividing line. Before and After.

The thing is, I don't mind being single at 33 (which I am today). When I was younger, I told my parents that I would probably be single the rest of my life. It was in part a lament, because getting married and having kids was just what you did. But it was also partly a feeling that that path was not one I would walk. And I'm not discounting the possibility (though the older I get, the less likely it is) because far be it from me to refuse something that God has ordained.

But I'm really just Not Interested. I like the single life. I'm responsible for exactly one person. I answer to myself, and I answer to God. (A little to my employer, but that's because as a person, I have decided that a work ethic and respect for my employer is a thing that should happen.) I can't even imagine rearranging my life right now to accommodate another person.

So why are we talking about this? Because now that I've reached the dividing line, I'm not really sure what comes next. What does navigating the rest of my life as a (probably) single adult look like?

I don't know. But I'm excited to find out.

The Weekly Wrap-Up: January 7-11, 2019

So I'm reviewing Estonian files before I publish them, and something catches my eye. Can you see it?

Yep. Big old note in English from the translator that never got caught by any of the many eyes that have seen this file before (which include mine since this is the second time I've checked this booklet - lest you think I'm tooting my own horn here). That would have been an awkward conversation with anyone who downloaded it. But I think (I hope) the files are ready - they had better be, because I published them on Tuesday. They are in the world, now.

I'm going to brag on our Romanian translators for a minute. See, we're used to releasing transfiles (translator files - where they type out the translation) a few groups at a time. And then we get them back in dribs and drabs. For Romanian, which is our newest project, we told them, "Look, we're going to put all of the transfiles in Google Drive. Don't feel pressure to do all of them right now. Just upload the translations as you're able." So they proceed to send back 64 pristine translation files in under three months. That's close to 250,000 words, which is half of "War and Peace." These guys are dedicated.

But this puts the production team in a bit of a pickle. I have a lot of other projects going, but I want to honor their efforts and encourage their eagerness to use Train & Multiply. That means getting these files put into booklets in a timely manner so that they can be proofread and the translators aren't just twiddling their thumbs. So now I'm going to brag on Marie. Because she's equally fast. In the last two weeks, she has been able to process five groups of Romanian booklets. Are they perfect? No. But they don't have to be, yet. I'm able to do a quick review of the layout and then send them off.

I've done more team lead stuff this week than I've been able to do since we first talked about this transition. We had a meeting yesterday about what we'd like to accomplish in the first quarter and what that means for prioritizing T&M projects. It was quite helpful, but it has also opened my eyes to just how many projects we have and just how many segments there are to manage. Also, we've been somewhat lax in maintaining our records of who has done what and when. So I've been reviewing that file with Brian. But my To Do list looks something like this:

That's six languages, not including Romanian, that need something from me in the next week or so.

It's fine.

Really.

The Weekly Wrap-Up: January 2-4, 2019

Oh, hey, it's Friday. Totally forgot for a second. Or twelve. Or all day.

I have had no idea what day it is for about two weeks now. It's amazing I made it back into work.

But I did.

I hope you all had an excellent holiday. I had a lovely Christmas and a decent New Year. I've made my resolutions, and so far, I'm actually keeping them. We'll see how that goes.

Work this week is still rather quiet. I imagine we'll see most people coming back Monday. I considered taking the rest of this week off, but I really couldn't see the point. Of course, that might explain why HR wanted to talk to me about the massive amount of vacation days I had left.

We've changed our chapel format. Everything is on Wednesday now, so we had a brief get together. I think this schedule will work nicely. I like consistency.

I'm all about Estonian this week. Fortunately, my notes served me well, so I knew where I had left off. I don't like stopping in the middle of a project. It just makes me nervous. I have to double check everything. But I think I'm close to getting five groups published. I had to take a brief break to get group 12 out the door, but that wasn't too bad. I just want these files to be perfect since we've had to unpublish some books and hunt down files. So I'm probably being a bit more OCD than usual. But that's good, because I caught at least three major things that I hadn't seen before. Which just makes me wonder what else I haven't caught.

But I can't let myself get bogged down in that. If I do, I'll never finish a project. So I'm going to publish on Monday, and then I'm not going to think about it again. (I'm getting flashbacks to sophomore year of college and being Editor of the newspaper. Wow... those were some late nights.)

That's about it for this week. More hijinks to come. Sorry no photo this week. My phone is running out of space.

The Weekly Wrap-Up: December 17-21, 2018

So you all know that the first five books of the Bible are known as the Pentateuch or alternately as the books of Moses. In Estonian, the language I worked on this week, they actually call Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy First Moses, Second Moses, Third Moses, Fourth Moses, and Fifth Moses. Which is awesome all on its own. But it also leads to many cases of sentences referring to "_ Moosese." This always makes me laugh because it inevitably leads my brain to picturing whatever number of moose lounging around or pastoring churches.

What can I say? It's the little things.

That was just one project this week - reviewing work again. But then, today of all days, my last day in the office in the year of our Lord 2018, someone decided we needed to publish 5 groups of Estonian. No problem, it's a lot of work, but shouldn't be an issue if all the files are ready to go.

Except they aren't.

Of course they aren't.

I can't really blame anyone in particular. This project has been causing us problems for a while now. It was something of a pilot fish for us. Our translator is very reliable and technologically savvy, so we've been testing some new methods on this project. Some worked. Some haven't. But that means it has been through more stages than normal. It has also already been Beta published twice. I'm really hoping this will be the last time.

Anyway, Group 01 still had some missing translations, and text that should have been deleted hadn't been. Groups 02-03 also had missing translation and incorrect styles. Groups 04-05 are great because I just finished reviewing them. My files are impeccable.

😁

I still have to check everything. So today, I was able to finish running all scripts on Group 01, and I even split booklets 2 and 7. (I'll probably use this as a reference so I know what I did and didn't do, which is why I'm including more detail and technical jargon than I normally would.) They should actually be ready to publish when I get back.

Next year.

Indeed, this is likely the last entry for 2018, unless I get the sudden urge to post some maudlin epic next week. Which, it is me, so that's not outside the realm of possibility.

Instead of a Pic of the Week, I'm going to leave you with a quick video tutorial on splitting booklets. I hope you find it interesting. (And I hope it works.)

The Weekly Wrap-Up: December 10-14, 2018

My brain is a sieve. It's legitimately starting to worry me. It's a good thing I made my December List of Doom because otherwise, I'm not sure anything would get done. The problem is I can't remember if I added everything to the list.

Oy vey.

This week was an odd one. I was trying to accomplish several things on my list and trying to figure out the priority for translation projects. Sometimes it has more to do with how active the translators are than anything else. To that end, one of our newest projects is Romanian. They aren't even formally using Train & Multiply yet, but the team is so excited about it that they've actually translated 11/12 groups already. Of course we're going to reward that enthusiasm by getting production started as quickly as possible. But I'm still having to review a lot of Marie's work, so we're down a production specialist. Fortunately, her work is pretty decent - just a few details to keep an eye on. We're getting there, but I couldn't begin to tell you when I'll actually take over as team leader. The end of the year is a terrible time for starting new things.

I don't know if you've noticed this about me, but I tend to hyper-fixate on things. It's a little bit like having an addicted personality. I get extremely focused on something and then have to research the heck out of it before I can move on. Some things are simple to get rid of - ask my two days of hyper-fixating on Scott Foley in Scandal. Conclusion: the show is dumb and not worth my time. (The MCU, however, doesn't seem to be going away any time soon.)

Anyway, this week's hyper-fixation was stamps. Specifically, the stamps I ordered at the beginning of December so they'd be here when I finished my Christmas cards. Which they weren't. I kid you not, I was tracking those babies every single day from their origin in Missouri, of all places, until they finally arrived in my mail box. The irony of the U.S. Postal Service delivering stamps late is not lost on me.

This week was budget meetings for ECC. We always do those the week after the retreat - more on that later. I, thank the Lord, did not have attend the meetings. But that did mean I was pretty much on my own for the week. Nice and quiet. I did get lunch out of it on Friday. Not bad.

What else? There was a baby shower on Thursday for one of our Mobi folks. I won a prize for guessing 8/9 items in the diaper bag correctly. I didn't think it was that difficult - what would you normally put in a diaper bag, after all? But apparently it was. Whatever. I'm awesome.

We're back on regular chapels for the moment. Did I talk about stand-up prayer times? We were trying out a new format this fall where we didn't do chapel on Tuesday or Thursday. Instead, we met for 15 minutes up in the lobby to have prayer time for some current needs. It's quite different, and there are parts I like and some things I don't. But it's nice that we do something.

Oh, and I did something this week that I haven't done for a long time - a radio ad! We've aired a lot of repeats this year because we've all been so busy. But it was nice to get back in the studio and record something new for the gifting emphasis this year. I don't actually know where it's hosted yet, but I'll try to remember the link if I find out.

I think that's about it for the work week. On to the retreat. This can count as our Pic of the Week.

So our theme was "...and the soul felt its worth." Sarah and I planned most of it (with Tarah before she left). Oddly enough, there's not a lot of resting for the people in charge even when that's a core goal of the retreat. But it was still good. We started last Friday. Sarah and I went up early to get last minute supplies and do some decorating.

We would have team discussion a couple times a day. Eric, Tarah's husband, led worship for us. We had the retreat at Shunem House up in Noblesville. I highly recommend it. It's a guest house of sorts for missionaries and pastors. I wrote a couple of devotionals for the team time, and we did a lot of personal reflection. What does it mean to save a soul? Can we adequately care for other souls when we don't care for our own?

We also had some team activities. This was by far my favorite.

We made them put together gingerbread houses and decorate them. But only one member of the team could use their hands at a time. That person had to be blindfolded. The others had to talk them through the process. It was hilarious to see, but we actually ended up with some decent houses.

We wanted to do something different, so on Saturday night, we had everyone dress up for dinner. We went to Houlihan's, which was a lot of fun. After dinner, we opened presents. 

We've done the White Elephant routine a few times, but it kinds drives me nuts. We always end up with the same things or a bunch of crap. So I instituted the Secret Santa rule, and I send out a survey so people can be specific about the kinds of things they like. We also did a contest this year on the best-wrapped gift. Jim won with his Snowman gift for Tarah. 

I thought it was very cute. 

I had Shane this year. See, it's a secret for everyone else but me. I have a system that makes things random, but in case I need to tweak it, I can. But no tweaking necessary this year. 

I was quite pleased with my penguin themed gift. I think Shane liked it, too. I was also pleased with the gift I received. I think everyone had a good time and appreciated the personal touches. 

So last year, I got a little bit sadistic with some puzzles - for a good reason, not just because it's me. This year, we wanted to be a bit nicer about it, so we put out two puzzles that people could work on throughout the weekend. But we have some very motivated people when it comes to puzzles. This was the mad scramble to finish them before we had to leave the house. 

All in all, I think it went well. We'll have to wait for the evaluations. 

The Weekly Wrap-Up: December 3-7, 2018

You've probably heard me mention Sam a few times on here. She's a good friend and the director of Dynamic Women in Missions. Our brains seem to work on a similar wavelength. She frequently has me write up little blurbs for their publications. But it works better in person, when she can talk at me and I can distill the intent into a few compelling sentences. That was fine when she was upstairs. But now she's in another building. I must now brave the snowy expanse when she calls for aid. It's like I'm Rohan and she's Gondor and the beacons are a telephone.

It's really cold outside, guys.

Hey! How's it going? Yes, we are early. By the time I would normally post this, I'm hoping I'll be welcoming our retreat guests for the weekend. I am 95% sure we're ready for this weekend. I think it's going to be good. But it has definitely been a struggle getting to this point. Lots and lots of preparation and planning and buying and writing and calling and practicing and finding out about extra costs. All that fun stuff. But it has the makings of a really good event. Please pray for the 13 participants. Our theme is "...and the soul felt its worth." We're really hoping that they recognize their worth in Christ and start taking care of themselves a little more.

We had our regular prayer rally on Wednesday. It was a nice time to pray for eight of our OMS ministries, including a new one to the retirees. I'm really happy we do this. I'd hate for any missionary to feel tossed aside after they've given most of their lives in service here. We also had a chance to pray for three of the Billion.Global signatories. This is another thing I'm really happy about. I love that so many different organizations are working together and not trying to hoard their territory. We're all working toward the same goal, so why wouldn't we use what we're good at to complement each other's efforts?

Somehow in the midst of all of this, I managed to finish those last five groups of Tagalog. They should soon be on their way to the proofreader, and I can start to tackle the next two projects sitting in my inbox.

I'd appreciate your prayers for me this season. There is a lot to do and everything has its own deadline. The Pic of the Week should give you an idea of how I'm feeling about the next few weeks.

(I'd show you what's on the list, but I mentioned a few names, and there's no point in spoiling the surprise.)