Is 2016 Over Yet?

I'm trying really hard to throw a pity party for myself.

I came home to an astronomical medical bill from the whole kidney stone thing. And then more bills from the urologist, my bank, and Amazon. I got a call from someone I really can't deal with right now for a lot of reasons. I'm sick. The expectations of this day and the hopes for the coming year are weighing me down like stones on Giles Corey.

I'm listening to flipping Tracy Chapman, for crying out loud!

But I just can't keep it up. Well, okay, I could. But I really have no reason to. Because along with the bills, my mail included a couple of gifts from people just because they wanted to be a blessing. I have heat, a car, a place to live, awesome parents, great sisters, and a God who promised to be with me every step of the way.

This is such a hard time of year for so many people. We're coming down from a huge hit of endorphins and extreme emotions. We've spent too little or too much time with people we can easily love from a distance but with close proximity bring up old memories both good and bad. We probably expected too much out of the holiday, either in gifts or personal connections, and chances are we didn't get it. If we did, we discovered it doesn't really fill that void. And to top it all off, the weather either contributes to or isn't cooperating with our mood.

Welcome to the New Year Blues.



This is a momentary thing, I know. I'll figure out how to pay my medical bills. I'll stop buying stuff on Amazon for a while. I'll get rid of this cold. People will stop asking me about resolutions eventually. My friend will hopefully get better.

In the meantime, I'm relying on tried and true methods of distraction. And I'm leaning a little more heavily on God.

Happy New Year.

The Weekly Wrap-up: December 11-19, 2016

Well, then.

I didn't forget last week's wrap-up. I just knew I'd only be in two days this week, so I delayed it a bit. The end of the year is always full - finishing up last minute projects, clearing your desk so you don't come back to a mess, planning to do things better next year so you're not so stressed when your goals haven't been achieved...

You know, the usual.

It figures that my training would ramp up just as everything else is winding down. We finally decided to take me through an entire project from start to finish so I know all the steps and can document it for future production people. To that end, we're actually doing both Spanish and Portuguese. A lot of people use Spanish with the booklets, and we needed to update it, so that seems like a good place to start. Plus, they don't use a lot of odd characters or fonts. Makes life easier.

I'm glad I did these this year. I was looking back over my blog while writing my Christmas letter, and it really hit home that, while it doesn't always seem like it, I actually did accomplish a lot this year. You have to keep track of the little things because that's where the real change shows up. Sure, I still live in the same place, still no change in my relationship status, family is still around, but as I don't actually want any of those things to change, these are not bad things.

So. I may do another blog post before 2016 ends, but until then, I want to wish you a very merry Christmas! Be cool, everyone.

Strategic Retreat

Alrighty then. I promised a blog on the retreat. So here we go.

We actually went later this year than we have before. Typically, our retreat is the first weekend in December. We don't always go to the same place, but we usually go Thursday-Saturday. This year, we went a week and a day later. Not sure why, but it actually worked out really well for me. I was able to get out of town at a critical time.

Crossing into Kentucky

Sarah was my travel buddy and roommate

Our retreat this year was actually in another state. We went to General Butler State Park and Resort in Carrollton, Kentucky. I'd never been there before, and I was intrigued by the history of the place. Unfortunately, the Butler-Turpin homestead was closed for the season, but I did learn some interesting factoids about William O. Butler (who possibly had his portrait painter just copy Andrew Jackson's and make him less ruddy and wild) and the Butler clan as a whole. They really like that guy.

The resort, or lodge, is really nice.

Watch for deer!

Front lobby 

View from the porch

We arrived around 4 on Friday. I traveled with Mike and Pat Dragon. Mike is our assistant international director of ECC and my boss' boss. Pat helps run Dynamic Women in Missions and is a CMF for South Asia. We have a lot of fun together, though it took me a while to figure out Mike's personality. Sarah is better at that, but I think even she nearly drove him crazy as we went through Madison. If you've never been, Madison is a great little town right on the river. They have many shops and things to do. Sarah got a little excited, enough that Mike stopped at Dairy Queen across the river in order to get her to calm down. Speaking of, I discovered an amazing new blizzard flavor with graham crackers and peanut butter. Best thing ever!

We had dinner at 5:30 in the lodge restaurant. It was fairly obvious that we were in the south as the buffet menu included frog legs. I did not try them.

Nearly everyone was there by the time we started that evening around 7. We do a gift exchange every year, white elephant style, but classy. Mostly. My initial pick was stolen, so I ended up with a nice book about theology and doctrine. 

I learned how to play a new game that night. It's called Hand and Foot. Think Canasta, but not. We played until 10:45 at least. I'd say that's past my bedtime, but these days, it's really not. 

We didn't have to be in our meeting room until 9 Saturday, so naturally, I was up at 6:15. I survived, but only just. I should mention that to get to our room, we had to go outside. True, it was only about 25 feet, but that was just enough time to freeze a little. We also had to go outside to get to our rooms. 

We had a time of worship before each session. Our speaker was Rich Danzeisen, the executive director of international ministries. He's my boss' boss' boss' boss. His three kids led worship. 

Rich gave a very nice talk on Jesus as Prophet, Priest, and King. Since we are co-heirs with Christ, we also have these titles and the responsibilities that go with them. I found this quite interesting.

As part of the session, we played telecharades. Basically, we were given a phrase by table, and one person had to act it out for another while everyone else closed their eyes. The second person would act out what he'd seen for the third, and so on until the last person had to guess the phrase based on the acting. Needless to say, it broke down rather quickly. 

But we got some good laughs!

After lunch, we had some free time, which was absolutely spiffing. I decided to go for a bit of a walk as it's difficult to get steps when you're sitting all day. 

No, I should know better. I've seen enough trail maps to know that they are never accurate, and they underestimate distances. But I'm a trusting, naive sort. I went for the Wilderness Trail, a nice little 1 mile jaunt with a little loop. I should have known better when the first few hundred feet were directly down over rocks and tree roots. 

I liken it to the Bataan Death March. 

Found a nice little waterfall.

This was a common site along the trail.

Lots of these little ditches and gullies.

We found what was left of the Blair Witch.

Jim and Karen testing some local fauna.

The trail walk took a little more than an hour, and it was definitely more than a mile. My calves were aching for days after. But, I did get all my steps in. And then some. 

We had another session Saturday night. We had to do a skit that illustrates what it means to be a living sacrifice. 

I was there, and even I can't explain what's happening here.

Sunday was our last day in Kentucky. We finished up with our last session and then did something we did two years ago where everyone says a short prayer for everyone else. It was a nice ending. 

We left around 1 and made it back before most of the rain and snow came through. Overall, I had a lovely time, and I appreciated the chance to see the people I work with in a non-work setting. 

You learn a lot about them, believe me.

Here are some more photos.

The Weekly Wrap-Up: December 5-9, 2016

Oof.

What a week.

Why, during what should be the happiest time of year, does everyone give you four times the work you normally have and want it done in half the time they usually expect?

I think Monday may have been the only normal day. And I really only mean in the work sense, since this week has also been complicated by personal issues.

But work stuff first. We did two radio ads this week. No links yet, they aren't finished editing, but we recorded one for December and one for January. It's nice to be so far ahead, but really, if we didn't do the January one now, it would be well into 2017 before we had time.

The new portal for T&M is up and running! I'm thrilled with how it turned out. So is my boss, so that's good. Hopefully, it will be of great use to everyone and free up some time for us.

I'm working on getting out Christmas cards to everyone. It takes a while, and there's a deadline, but it's going well. You can expect yours anytime in the next few weeks. If it doesn't arrive, let me know, and I'll get you on the list.

We have our ECC retreat this weekend. I'll try to do a running post about it. It's a nice time of fellowship and spiritual growth.

Now for the personal stuff.

I'd appreciate prayer for a good friend of mine. I'm not going to get into everything, but she's made some very unwise choices that have deleterious effects on her and those involved. This has caused a great deal of anxiety for me. I'm also praying for wisdom as we move forward. There have been many sleepless nights.

I hope you know I appreciate and love all of you. 

The Weekly Wrap-Up: November 28 - December 2, 2016

I've never Britished as hard as I Britished today.

But more on that later.

If I didn't have ADD before this week, I would be inclined to believe I have it now. I have gone back and forth and between projects so many times, it ain't even funny. That should tell you a couple of things.

A) I have a ton of projects up in the air right now. Like, seriously. My to-do list could be a dollar store receipt.

2) Most of these projects are not capable of holding interest for long periods of time. So, so boring. Essential. But boring.

Quark) Holiday stress is upon us.

So.

I wrote a radio ad this week. We're still promoting the eight Christmas projects for OMS. Not sure if we'll end up using it, but we needed an idea springboard. I also need to work on one for January. We're promoting the SHEEP ministry. I need to get all of the baaad jokes out before I can take it seriously.

Have you ever read legalese? Contracts, agreements, loans, etc? (If you haven't, you really should.) Anyway, it's technical and important, and wording matters a lot. I'm trying to condense the T&M agreements, but it's hard to do that and make sure I have all of the pertinent details without the verbose language.

We're finally moving forward in a grand way on the landing page for T&M. This will be a great resource for everyone who comes into contact with our materials. It also frees us up from dealing with a lot of standard requests.

And our donation page is back up and running! Donations help us pay translators in order to move things along.

One of our big jobs is actually research. Wycliffe in particular has some really great resources for translation (naturally), so we interface with them and others in similar situations. We also have developers building new programs to aid in the translation process.

One of the programs we're trying to speed along is our CRM. (Oh, the acronyms are back.) CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management. Basically, it's how we optimize the way we interact with our constituents. Otherwise known as a database.

Theoretically, OMS is going to have one big CRM for the whole organization. This is optimal. But we've kinda been stuck up a creek without one, and it'll be another year at least until the new one is up and running. So we're trying out some free options. To that end, I've been working on compiling some records so we can test how things work.

Which brings me to my Britishness. Possibly Canadianish.

We have to assign particular codes to people so we know how they are classified. One such code is C-ZZZ. In speaking to our IT guy, I told him to classify certain people as "C Triple Zed."

Zed, of course, is how Britishers the world over pronounce the letter Z.

I didn't even think about it.

I'm such a nerd.

The Politics of Lamentations

433 years.

It seems like a long time, right? Four whole centuries of history and culture and ideas. It's certainly longer than the United States has been around as a country. I'm sure when Lincoln was saying 'four score and seven years,' he was wishing it was more like 'twenty-one score and three years.' At least there would be some meat on the country's bones, then.

But it's also a really short time when you're looking at the whole scope of history. (Even with a young Earth perspective.) That's potentially just four people living their lives in succession. It's not even half of England's existence.

To the author of Lamentations, it was too short a time by far.

See, 433 years (give or take a few) is how long the kingdom of Israel lasted. And yes, I know there was a civil war and then technically two kingdoms, but let's ignore that for a moment and just consider Jerusalem as the symbol of this idea of one united people, God's people.

It started out well. Ish. Saul brought them all together and then David brought them power and fame. Solomon really cemented the deal. People came from all over the known world in order to see what his secret was. Jerusalem was the place to be.

And then...

Then the kingdoms split. They were still individually powerful. Just not as powerful as they had been together. And of course, they alternated between fighting each other and fighting their neighbors. They went back and forth (Judah more than Israel) between following God and following their own depravity.

Then Israel ceased to exist. And Judah (and Jerusalem) were in a real pickle. Because if the existence of Israel had weakened them, it's non-existence was like a mortal wound.

Before too long, Judah was reduced to a city. Jerusalem was the last vanguard. But it was more like a prison for its inhabitants. And in 587 B.C., Nebuchadnezzar came along and left no stone unturned.

"How deserted lies the city, once so full of people! How like a widow is she, who once was great among the nations! She who was queen among the provinces has now become a slave ... Her foes have become her masters; her enemies are at ease. The Lord has brought her grief because of her many sins."

In just 433 years, Jerusalem went from being the shining city on a hill to the dust beneath her enemies' feet.

There's probably a lesson to be learned, there.

I've been reading through the Bible this year. I'm not doing it chronologically or in book order. I'm reading a little of the Old Testament, a little of the New Testament, a little of Psalms, and a little of Proverbs. It makes for an interesting juxtaposition, sometimes. For example, I was reading Lamentations at the same time I was reading Hebrews.

Hebrews covers a lot of ground. Everyone remembers the 'by faith' chapter, but there are also many warnings about the dangers of falling away. So while I'm reading about faithful people and being told of the many pitfalls, I'm also reading about a city and people that didn't heed those same warnings made 500 years earlier.

And then you come to Lamentations 3. (Which I'd love to read in the original Hebrew, btw. It's an acrostic poem. Jeremiah was a very gifted individual.)

At first, it's more of the same. Lamentations is a lament, after all. (In Hebrew, the title sounds like a longsuffering sigh, apparently.) Jeremiah has just spent 52 chapters warning people about what was going to happen because of their sin. It's not even a warning to turn back. It's a reminder that they had their chance, they will be punished, and if they want anyone to be left after the city is conquered, they'd better shape up - only to be forced to sit back and watch all of the things he'd been talking about come to pass.

So yeah. He's been through a lot.

In fact, Jeremiah is literally at the end of his rope. "I remember my affliction and my wandering," he says, "the bitterness and the gall. I well remember them, and my soul is downcast within me." He says a few verses earlier that he'd forgotten any good thing that might have happened to him. This is a man who has been beaten down by his own, forced to record his city's destruction by his enemy, and he's nearing the end of his life. He reached bedrock and was forced to keep digging.

And yet...

"Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope: Because of the Lord's great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. I say to myself, 'The Lord is my portion; therefore I will wait for him'."

Hold up. He has hope? How? Everything these people have worked for is gone. No country, no home, they are literally slaves again. Everyone who was fawning over them before is now laughing in their face. What hope is there?

"The Lord is good to those whose hope is in him, to the one who seeks him."

Oh. So our hope isn't in a city. It isn't in a government, our family, a job, weapon, food, exercise, a car.

No.

Our hope is in the Lord. We have hope when we seek him. Everything else is incidental.

That's not to say there won't be bad times. Of course there are. I can control exactly one person, myself, and even then, I'm not very good at it. Take a look at Adam and Eve if you doubt it. Sure, they were tempted. But it didn't take a lot to get them to abandon whatever common sense or fear of God they had for the chance to be something more. So yeah, we can screw things up by ourselves just fine. We can already see what happens when 7 billion people are working in their own self interest at the same time.

But regardless of what happens, whatever bedrock we hit, we have hope. "For no one is cast off by the Lord forever. Though he brings grief, he will show compassion, so great is his unfailing love. For he does not willingly bring affliction or grief to anyone."

That last verse threw me off for a bit. It's the classic 'why do bad things happen' question. I already answered part of it. But God is God, right? Why couldn't he just make things easier for everyone?

Well, ironically, because God is God. Because of who he is, there are certain rules to the universe that can't change. Peter tells us that God doesn't want anyone to perish, but because of who he is, he has to let it happen. We make a choice. If God changed the rules, he wouldn't be God, and there wouldn't by any reason to worship a god who is fickle and unreliable. I'm glad there are rules. It lets me know where I stand.

So no, he doesn't want there to be affliction and grief. But he'll allow it. He'll even cause it if there's a chance of us waking up and acknowledging his rightful place as ruler of the universe. As Jeremiah says, "Why should the living complain when punished for their sins?"

If Lamentations were being written in today's church culture, it would end with chapter 3. "Sure, lots of bad things have happened. We're at the end of the line. It could probably get worse, but we don't really see how. And we're not really sure how it could get better, either. But we know it will because God is with us. He has punished us for our sins, but even in doing so, he has shown compassion. He will lift us up once more, and he will wipe out our enemies. We will have vengeance on those who persecuted us! Happy days are here again!"

There's a clear plot line. We like things to be neatly sewn up with us rightly in our position of power, honor, and righteousness again.

Except Lamentations doesn't end with chapter 3. The fourth chapter, while still using poetic language, gets even more explicit about what has been lost.

Precious gems and jewelry? Tarnished. Scattered. Stolen.

Children? Starving. Helpless. Being eaten by their parents.

Public officials? Sticks. Dust. Unrecognizable.

Priests? Unclean. Dishonored. Outcasts.

Everything we held dear, everything we thought would always be true, every dream and hope we had for a future - all of it turned to ash. We thought we were hot stuff because God was on our side from the start. It didn't matter that we turned aside and pursued other gods. Surely God would still protect us. Why bother continuing to seek after him when we can simply trust that the foundation he laid will stand up to us constantly chipping away at it?





Are you picking up what I'm laying down?




Jeremiah finished up with a prayer. Does he still believe what he said back in chapter 3? Absolutely. But he has to deal with his current reality. He can't linger on a nebulous future he may never see in this life. Life for him at this moment is just really not good. "Joy has gone from our hearts; our dancing has turned to mourning."

There's this joke that Mark Lowry likes to tell about his favorite verse. He says that it is this: "And it came to pass..." That's it. It came. And then it passed. My sister says this to me all the time, but especially when things aren't going well. "It's going to pass! Things will get better."

And sure. I know that. Deep down, I am fully cognizant of this fact.

But before it passes, I have to live with it. I can't ignore the fact of what is for the hope of what will be. Because if I don't deal with why something is the way it is, the way things are is the way things will continue to be, and that future I'm counting on is going to start getting further and further away.

Which is when Jeremiah's last though should really start to worry us. He ends his prayer by asking God to "restore us to yourself ... that we may return." Awesome. Let's do that. "Renew our days as of old," right, with you so far, "unless you have utterly rejected us and are angry with us beyond measure."

Oh. Well, crap.

Don't forget this critical point: God does not want us to perish. But it can happen. Whether by the firm dismissal of Truth or the slow attrition of time, we can absolutely come to a point of complete separation from God.

It's a sobering thought. It's the thought that is constantly in the back of my mind. I know, in theory, what separation from God means. I don't ever want to know it in practice. And I don't want that for others, either.

This is my reality. Because while I have hope, there are so many who don't. Everything I do works toward the goal of making my hope a reality for others even as they deal with this present darkness.

No one wants to live in the world of Lamentations. Jeremiah never wanted to have to write this book. But he did. And I think we're headed in that direction.

The Weekly Wrap-Up: November 14-18, 2016

I didn't get sick this week! Whoooo!

Is it bad that this has become a celebratable achievement in my life?

Sadly, it didn't actually mean much, because I still missed an hour on Wednesday to go to the doc for follow-up. So the 'normal week' is still an elusive concept. I'm not going to blame it on the flu shot I got this year for the first time in forever. But come on. What else could it be?

So we're still doing app meetings in the mornings. I know, I know, we've been doing those forever. I just feel the need to mention it because it takes up a lot of time and energy for very little reward right now. But sometimes that's life.

We're working on putting together another English volume for T&M. Volumes are different from booklets because they are actually several booklets bound together. South Asia does this with the most commonly used booklets, and we thought it would be a good idea for English users. The problem is, the only English volume we have right now uses Indian art. It's not really a problem, it just isn't as culturally ubiquitous as it could be. And we store everything on a remote server, but I don't have access to everything on the server, so I can't change the art. And our main production person just travelled from the UK to Chile. So that slows things down a bit.

So what can I work on? Mostly Trello maintenance. Sorry if you don't use Trello, I'm going to get a little technical right now. I created a base language board that we can copy every time we start a new language. The problem is this: we keep changing the process. So every time I change the base board, I also have to update the languages that are in progress. It was fine when we only had six languages going. But now I have 27 boards to update. But I don't mind because I make them look pretty.

And I can assign labels to things any way I want to. 

I also discovered that I need to redo the landing page for T&M that I created. The icons don't show well on the internet, apparently. Whatever. I'm probably being gaslighted, but I don't actually mind creating a new page. And the new icons are still nice, so I'm cool with it. 

I've spent a lot of time singing about not being a chicken this week. This weekend, I'm doing a children's program for a mission conference at my parent's church in Huntington. Well, I'm leading it with a friend and fellow missionary. So we had to plan what we were going to do. Which involves singing about not being a chicken. You should totally come check it out if you're curious. We'll be an New Hope church all weekend. I may take embarrassing photos and post them on here. 

Next week is Thanksgiving. I'll still be at work through Wednesday, so I may still do this. Or I might write about Lamentations. It's anyone's guess, really.