The Weekly Wrap-Up: December

Oh my goodness, guys, I have so much to catch you up on! It's been a whirlwind 15 days since we last spoke. I'm lumping everything in together because this month is insane, and if I don't do it now, it ain't gonna happen. Sure, there will be more happening next week. And if it's worth mentioning, I will try to get a post done. But honestly, I'm hoping for a nice quiet week before Christmas. I didn't even want to come in next week, but I'm being a good worker bee and all that.

ANYWAY. That's not why I'm posting now.

So December 1, we had our mentor party here at OMS. I am not currently mentoring anyone, so I got the pleasure of helping to plan the blessed event.

We had a photo booth for folks.

We decorated ornaments for our activity. Mine are still drying.

This is Taylor. She's fun. She was very meticulous in her painting.

We also did a gift exchange. It was a lovely evening!

Then we had our OMS Christmas party on December 4. I didn't actually take many photos of that. Nothing too wild and crazy. I wasn't involved this year. I like it that way. Mostly. It's less fun without me. But I did have a nice time with my table mates. 

On December 5, I went to a radioplay with my friend Carol. They presented "It's a Wonderful Life" as a radio drama with sound effects. Personally, I thought they could have done more with sound effects, especially as a fellow radio afficionado, but I think they did a pretty good job. 

Plus, the theater that did the performance is really nice. If you ever have a chance to go to the Artcraft in Franklin, Indiana, you should take it. 

Last week, I was working on Estonian and some side projects. However, that all came crashing down on Friday morning when my computer literally crashed. I normally like Apple. I work on a Mac, I have a Mac as backup, I have a Mac for a personal laptop. We're copacetic. 

But when Macs fail, they fail hard. And this latest update was bad news bears. It caused all kinds of crazy in my hard drives. I spent four hours Friday morning trying to fix the issue. It was ugly.

And not what I needed in advance of the ECC Retreat last weekend. 

Fortunately, I was able to let go of the anxiety I was feeling about that and just enjoy the time away with my team. We went to a place called Wooded Glen in Henryville, Indiana. 

It's quite a nice place, and they treated us very well. I would recommend it for any moderately sized group for a retreat or team-building opportunity. 

Our schedule was pretty great. Lots of personal and team reflection. One of my contributions was a team puzzle competition. It was more of a collaboration, really. I had to curb some of my more sadistic tendencies. It was a good exercise, though. Even if I don't like puzzles. 

There were some very creative methods employed.

Such intensity!

I did actually finish this one. It wasn't terrible.

I took a walk Saturday afternoon. It's a nice area. Very picturesque.

Probably my biggest achievement was winning a shooting tournament against these guys. We played Big Buck Hunter, an arcade-style game. The objective is to shoot buck. Go figure. Anyway, we took turns shooting, and I ended up with 9 nice buck. My biggest was a 14 point. It was a tough fight, but I'm the winner winner chicken dinner! Go me. 

How pretty is that?

We finished up the retreat Sunday afternoon, and I came back to work on Monday, fully expecting to deal with more computer troubles. Fortunately, a lot of the problems had sorted themselves out. That's another great thing about Macs. It's been doing okay since then, so I'm hoping there won't be any more issues. Back up your stuff regularly, kids! You never know when you're going to need it. 

Finally, OMS announced on Monday that they were having a unique Christmas sweater contest on Thursday. I know, it's not a lot of time. But I'm not one to let that discourage me. I sewed my little fingers bloody each evening. During the day, I was working to get my Christmas letter out to supporters. 

Here's a few of us who participated. 

I tied for first! I'm so happy. There was a tear in my eye, really.

Seriously, though, it was fun. 

And that's my crazy life up to now. I hope you've enjoyed the ride. 

In case I don't see you again in 2017, have a merry Christmas and a safe transition to the new year. 

The Weekly Wrap-Up: November 27 - December 1, 2017

Is it just me, or has this week flown by? Maybe we were all ready to get away from our families and back to the absolute joy of work.

Maybe not.

Regardless, I hope you all had an excellent Thanksgiving. I, for one, had a lovely time. Both of my sisters made the trip to my parent's house for the week, so it was a true Hollopeter Happening. Read into that what you will. It was quite the experience, and one in which I was a willing participant, so I can't say too much against it.

Like always, the first day back started off with a bang. And by that, I mean we had yet another multiple hour meeting. Those are great. Just love 'em. So incredibly useful.

Christmas, as you know, is just around the corner, but before you get to Christmas, you have all of those delightful parties and get-togethers for 50,000 of your nearest and dearest friends. And someone has to plan all of it.

Or part of it, at least. I have one party tonight that I was pretty heavily involved in planning, and then next week is the ECC retreat. I've made a few contributions to that, and I have more to do, but fortunately, most of the planning for that was on other shoulders. It still takes up time, though. I'm trying to curb my most sadistic instincts when it comes to my team-building exercise, but it's proving to be a challenge.

This was a French week for T&M projects. I did two groups in two separate phases, which is confusing, but essentially the same process, so not terrible. Just time-consuming. But today, and next week, I'll be back in Estonian doing two more groups, but in the same phase this time.

Finally, something you haven't heard from me for a while. We did a new radio ad! This is for OMS' new campaign to help North Korean refugees. Very little writing for me this time - just voice acting. It was nice to get back into the studio after a couple months. I hope you enjoy it, and I also hope you consider giving toward this very worthy effort.

I guess that's all for now. Be good. 

The Weekly Wrap-Up: November 13-17, 2017

Ah, mes amis! Comme c'est beau pour la fin de la semaine d'arriver encore une fois, surtout à la veille d'une fête d'action de grâces.

It's been a long week, people. Not gonna lie, I've been having some personnel conflicts. Not in the office - everyone here is lovely. But some personalities just don't mesh well. And some things build up over time. I'm trying to work on that. Time off next week will help.

I had a relatively simple project for Tagalog earlier this week. It's getting close to being published, so I was mostly doing a polish on the files. I like easy projects, and I especially like projects that only take two days.

That being said, I now have two similar projects in French (hence the introduction), and it's giving me a headache. I have to process Group 1 Proof 2 files, and then I have to process Group 2 Proof 1 files. It can be quite the challenge to keep everything straight. This is why we have Trello boards and G drive files and scads upon scads of records.

It's great. Really.

In the wake of last week's health concerns, I'm trying to take more walking breaks. I'd like to get a standing desk, but they are expensive, and I'd have to reconfigure everything. It's somewhere on the list between dining room table and new laptop.

Money is annoying.

Anyway, I like to take these walking breaks with other people, but sometimes they leave me behind. Whatever. I'm a big girl. I can take it.

::sniff::

We're still working on the ECC retreat plans. I'm trying to curb my sadistic tendencies. They really shouldn't put me in charge of team building things. That being said, if you have any ideas about how to facilitate a team puzzle contest, let me know.

I'll be out most of next week for Thanksgiving. I'm spending some quality time with family, for which I am extremely thankful. I hope you all have a blessed holiday.

Here's a little something for your trouble.

The Weekly Wrap-Up: November 6-10, 2017

I'm not really feeling up to a lot of witty banter this week. Suffice to say, this was a productive week. I finished a new project for Hakha Chin, and I did it in less than a week. I remain awesome.

That really took up most of my time. I'm trying to think of other things, and I'm sure more happened, but I honestly can't come up with anything else.

Truth is, my mind has been on other things. See, I'm back on the medical merry-go-round. I'm going in for more tests this afternoon. So I would appreciate a few extra prayers.

Sorry I'm a downer today.

Have a great weekend.

The Weekly Wrap-Up: October 30 - November 3, 2017

Back in my college days, I used to celebrate the month of November by writing as much as possibly as frantically as I could in the hope of finishing the next great American novel in 30 days.

It's called NaNoWriMo - National Novel Writing Month. And you don't really have to write a novel. Not even a very good one. You just have to write 50,000 words of something. The idea is not to self-edit along the way. That slows the process down.

I can't honestly say that I've ever successfully completed a NaNo novel. I came close my first year, but I was in direct competition with someone else then. I only did it for about five years, and I always had the same problem - I couldn't stop editing as I wrote. I don't really compete anymore, but I kinda wish I did. I could use some motivation to finish one of my books.

Anyway, that's neither here nor there. Some people write books in November. Some people don't shave. To each their own. What's your November activity?

This week was pretty full. It was also an odd one. We don't usually have chapels and a prayer rally in the same week, but we had a chapel on Tuesday with Sasha, our guy in Russia. Sasha has a great story, one that has to be told in person because it can be a little unbelievable. I always enjoy listening to his reports. We also had a webinar on Thursday when we would have had a normal chapel. They are hosted by our retirement planning people, and they are all about financial stuff, budgeting and whatnot. It's good information, and Lord knows, I'm not good with money.

Our prayer rally on Wednesday reinforced the need to be good stewards with the money we have, especially as a mission organization. It was presented by our Development team. Their job is to raise money for OMS, especially specific projects. They have to account for every dollar that comes in, and OMS tries really hard to make sure that all money that comes in is used responsibly. That sometimes means not funding certain projects if they don't align with our principles.

One of the things we did was pray specifically for our donors. I would hope that all of our missionaries do that regularly, but I want to assure you that I pray for you every week. I'm not always able to interact with all donors, but if you ever need prayer for anything, please let me know. We have a whole network of prayer warriors that we can bring to bear.

I've also been doing a little more retreat planning this week. It's my job to moderate the Secret Santa gift exchange, which means I got to choose who buys for whom. Don't assume that I cheated, either. I found a scientific method for true randomness in assigning names to people on YouTube. (Full disclosure: I may have offered preferential treatment to certain people, but they declined.) The system worked really well. I would recommend it to any office or church environment looking to do any kind of random selection. But it takes a lot of time to compile information and send it out and make sure you're not sending the wrong info to the wrong person.

One side project that took some serious time this week was fixing some old files. For some reason, the Bengali files couldn't be printed. So I had to remove security from 64 files and then put new security on the same 64 files. It's tedious and repetitive work. I feel like I use those words a lot for what I do. I don't mean to sound like I don't enjoy it. My personality is well suited to the tedious and repetitive tasks. Just not all the time.

So with all of this going on, you might be led to believe that I wasn't able to finish the four groups of Portuguese files I had left over from last week.

You would be wrong.

I finished all booklets, even the extra stuff that we've changed along the way. This is something that kind of drives me crazy. We spent more than a year getting the English books updated and polished, and we're still finding all kinds of crap that needs to be fixed. Some of it is a must, some of it is okay to leave for a while, but I am keeping a running list of things to change for the next edition.

Ugh.

Whatever. Portuguese is done. I'm ready for the next project. 

The Weekly Wrap-Up: October 23-27, 2017

Greetings, loyal subjects!

This has been quite the week. If you like variety, you would have loved this week, because I don't think any one day was like any other.

First, I'm still working on Portuguese. I don't think I really impressed upon you what I mean when I say I have four groups to finish. I mean I have 24 booklets of between 10 and 52 pages to format, find mistakes in, and make ready for publishing. We're close to putting these to bed, but these booklets, especially those in group 1, have to be perfect, because they set the tone for the rest of them. We're a third of the way to being done when these published, which is awesome. But I'm nowhere close to being done with all of these groups. Because reasons.

On Tuesday, we had our annual Fall Work Day. On this day, all of us office peons get to do work we're not qualified for either inside or out in the great wide world. This year, some poor people got stuck changing most of the lighting in the building. Are they electricians? No. Am I worried about one of these lights blowing up someday? Sure. But I wasn't on the lighting crew, so it's not my fault. No, I spent my morning outside weeding the front landscaping and pruning rose bushes. And by pruning, I mean chopping those babies to pieces. I was ruthless. And I was repaid with more than a few thorns jabbing into various body parts. In the afternoon, I moved rocks from one location to another. Now, I'm all about being a team player (I am contractually obligated to say that), but my body really did not appreciate the change from sitting in front of a computer all day. I'm still feeling pain in muscles I didn't even know existed.

Unfortunately, I have no pictures of this glorious event, because I'm not the type of person who stops working in order to take pictures that prove I was actually working.

Right.

I had a lot of side projects come up this week. Certain people ask me to do certain things because I usually say yes or they know I'm good at the thing or they know I'll do it quickly. There seemed to be many of these things this week. I don't mind. I like being needed. And if it's a larger project or not something I'm really qualified to do, I can usually say no or not right now.

Finally, the biggest reason I didn't get much Portuguese done this week, and also coincidentally the reason I'm still writing this at 5:10, I spent the day participating in a simulcast on EntreLeadership. This is a Dave Ramsey thing that OMS hooked up with, and about 15 of us spent most of the day watching a series of speakers talk about how to be good leaders. It was actually quite interesting, and I thought many of the principles could apply to other areas of life. Plus, I got Qdoba out of the deal. Remember in college when you went to events for the t-shirts? In the work world, it's lunch. You can get me to do a lot of things for free lunch.

Next week should be less crazy. I'm going to hit Portuguese hard. I'd like to have most if not all of it done by next Friday. You should hold me to that.

Now, the big news I hinted at last week. Prayer letters are in the mail, so it should be safe to announce.

I'm going to the Philippines!

It's a short trip at the beginning of February. I know very few details other than there's a T&M event. I'm not sure what my role will be yet. But I get to leave the country!

This makes me happy.

Now go forth and do good things for thy land.

The Weekly Wrap-Up: October 16-20, 2017

Well, everyone deserted me again. Such is my lot in life.

Seriously, though. It's more weird for me when people are in my hallway than when they're not.

It's been a pretty standard week. I finished Estonian early on and took advantage of the break in projects to work on my next prayer letter. I think I'll be mailing it out next week, and there is exciting news inside! You'll have to wait for a bit until I post the news here. (Incidentally, if you don't get my letter, send me a message and I'll get you on my list.)

Alas, breaks are few and far between. I now have four groups of Portuguese to process. This should take a good chunk of time to complete. So it's not like no one being here matters at all, really.

We just keep going and going and going and going and going and going and...