The Weekly Wrap-Up: October 30 - November 3, 2023

Has anyone else glanced at a calendar and started hyperventilating just a little bit?

Time is not a friend right now. 

It certainly didn't help that I was laid up for a couple of days this week with back spasms. Ain't nobody got time for that. 

Otherwise, I've been working on stuff for Family Fun Night and writing my presentation that I'm giving at a church in Michigan next weekend. It's not exactly easy to distill my job into 30 minutes while still being interesting and not getting lost in the weeds. 

To that end, I will not be posting next week, but I plan to be back for the rest of November (probably not Black Friday, tbh). 

I hope you have a great weekend, a great week, another great weekend, and enough time to get everything that absolutely has to be done DONE. 

Bye!

The Weekly Wrap-Up: October 23-27, 2023

Hello, my lovelies!

I hope you are well. This has been a topsy-turvy week for me. I am dog sitting a very adorable, very hyperactive Golden Retriever, so I have spent some time trying to attend meetings with a dog giving me sad eyes and some time in the office trying to get things done. Who knows if I've succeeded at either?

Anyway, we're working on some back-end stuff for T&M, so I don't know how exciting my updates will be for a while. One thing we did this week was add the new booklets to the Student Activity Guide. This is a relatively minor fix, but it does have a lot of repercussions for current and former projects. Some of the languages we've done in Edition 4 don't have the new booklets, yet, so we need to determine if they even want them or have time to do the translation. V and I are tag-teaming the art sets to get the updated templates out, and then we need to publish all of the English again. 

It's a process.

As we get closer to the holiday season, I'm sure my posts will be less frequent. I will try my best to keep up with things, but I have at least two weekends in November that I'm traveling and probably two more in December. As always, you can contact me directly via email or comment. This time of year gets crazy. You already know that. 

Hey, thanks for sticking around. You're awesome. 

Bye!

The Weekly Wrap-Up: October 16-20, 2023

Howdy, friends!

It has been a quiet week around here. My boss is in Kenya for a VCP gathering, so Sarah and I have been alone in our hallway. 

We managed. 

I finished the fifth group of Swahili along with the volume for Africa. I think Brian was able to show it to the trainers, so that's cool. 

We had a team meeting for T&M. You can pray for spouses and health issues especially. 

I sang in chapel on Wednesday. They were new to me songs, so I had to do some practice, but I think it went well. 

Today, I met my mom halfway to get her computer back to her after some work was done on it. It's what any good boss would do for their employee. 

I think that's it for this week. Stay warm.

Bye!

The Weekly Wrap-Up: October 9-13, 2023

Heyo! I have returned!

Vacation was lovely, thank you. Not without its struggles, but I honestly had a great time with my parents. We visited family, toured some museums and battlefields, and slept in weird beds. All the things you could hope for on vacation, really. 

But I'm back in the office now. All good things must come to an end. (I don't know where that phrase comes from, but I don't actually believe it's true. It's just funny to use in certain instances.)

Anyway. I'm really just still catching up on things. I was gone for two weeks, but it always feels like much longer. And I still haven't slept in my actual bed since I immediately started a dog sitting gig when I rolled into town. Choices. 

I did start some work on a group of Swahili, which is going well. My boss actually left two days after I got back, so I am holding down the fort here in Greenwood. 

Two things you can pray about:

First, we lost one of our homeland missionaries quite unexpectedly on Sunday. Marty, our hospitality coordinator at HQ, had a heart attack. She had a big personality around here, and I know that she is already sorely missed. She had been with OMS for 42 years, living in Japan for much of that time. Pray for her husband David and for her children and grandchildren she leaves behind. 

Second, Israel. 

I'm struggling with this one. I saw way more of what has happened than I ever wanted to. There's this notion that Christians have to support Israel no matter what, and I'm not sure where that came from. What exists now is quite different from who God established as his Chosen People (who kinda lost that status when they rejected the Messiah, but whatever). Yet I can't and won't condone wholesale murder and rape from anyone. 

And OMS has a presence in Israel. I would ask you to pray for those individuals. Pray for the innocent civilians who are suffering. Pray for peace. I don't know what else to do. 

I think that's it. I don't really want to leave it on this note, but I'm just drained. I hope your weekend is restful for you.

Bye!

The Weekly Wrap-Up: September 18-22, 2023

Hello! Is it me you're looking for?

I hope so. But if not, stick around. I do try to be entertaining. 

This has been a good week, and definitely busy, as I worked to check everything off my list before I take off on vacation. 

I started off the week knowing I had two meetings on Monday. I was nervous about one because I didn't know what it was about, and I was looking forward to the other. The first meeting was actually fine, though I don't know if anything will come of it. But it was a good conversation, and I think I made some points. The second meeting never happened. That was incredibly frustrating, because it was a meeting that was to make up for a meeting that was making up for another meeting. Lots of cancellations. 

Whatever. I've washed my hands of it.

You'll be happy to hear (or at least I hope you'll be happy) that I have finished my next prayer letter! It is on the presses and getting ready to be mailed out. I'm pleased with this one, and I hope it is informative for you. 

Finally, I have completed the first group of Nepali!

Doesn't it look like Hindi? I suppose you may not be familiar with what Hindi looks like, but I spent months working on that language. They are incredibly similar to me. It's such a clean language, though, and very easy to work with. I think it will be a very smooth project. 

That's all I have for you folks. I'm off for the next two weeks on vacation. I'm really looking forward to it. I hope you get some time for rest as well.

Bye!

The Weekly Wrap-Up: September 11-15, 2023

This has been a week. 

I know. Stating the obvious. 

I am continuing apace with Nepali. It's going well, though the first group always takes longer, especially with a glyph language. Like Hindi, there are no periods in Nepali, just a vertical bar. (I'm sure it has a name, I just don't know what it is.) Sometimes it ends up on a different line from the rest of the sentence. Fun times. 

I have also been scheduling social media posts again. I can only post 29 days out, so I'm trying to get everything scheduled before I leave on vacation so it just runs without me. 

We had a team meeting on Tuesday. It was nice to see everyone on screen for an hour or so and hear about their lives. Please keep praying for Veronica, Eliana, Lynae, Naomi, and my mom (Donna). 

I sang in chapel on Wednesday. I had to learn a lovely new (to me) song by the Gettys. And now I've forgotten the name. Hang on. Google! 

Okay, I hope that worked. Anyway, we did that one and "Oh Praise the Name." 

Did you know there's more to Outreach than what you (hopefully) get in the mail? You can find it online with bonus content! Just click the linky-dink there. 

I think that's it for work. For non-work stuff, I'd appreciate your prayers. My new medication is seriously messing with me. It's moving into 'the cure is worse than the disease' territory. I really want to stick with it because it was incredibly expensive and really hard to get, but it just makes me feel awful. Please pray for that to subside. 

Anyway, that's about it. I hope you have a great weekend. 

Bye!

The Weekly Wrap-Up: September 4-8, 2023

It's another short one this week. Which is weird, because it feels like Labor Day was a month ago, not a week. I didn't do much for Labor Day this year. I was finishing up a cat-sitting stint, and I was also fighting a cold - still am, though it's in the final stages. 

This week, I've been working on social media posts. It amazes me how long it takes to come up with content. I feel like so many people think they can be content creators online, like they'd totally be interesting on YouTube, and they have no idea how much work actually goes into it. Occasionally I think I should do a podcast, but you really have to have the right combination of people and a good topic for it. Again, it's a lot of work. 

But I digress. 

I have also started a new language this week! Nepali is coming along nicely. It looks a lot like Hindi, but as with all languages, it has its own style. It has actually been a long time since I've started a new language and worked from the very beginning. I'm usually publishing and finishing languages, so it's nice to be doing something different. (I just hope I remember what to do at this stage.)

We're entering a stage with a lot of people traveling (including me), so it'll be weird in the office. Okay, I have to clarify that, because people are always traveling. THIS TIME, however, it's people I usually hang out with or see on a regular basis. So the usual routines are going to be thrown off. Which is fine. We all know how much I hate routine. 

O_O

Bye!