The Weekly Wrap-Up: March 19-23, 2018

This will not be nearly as verbose as last week's. Probably.

It was a training week in Greenwood, which means I was mostly on my own in the office. I did have to go over to the church on Thursday to help with introducing T&M Online and to take the group pictures.

In the meantime, I was listening to this:

Still working on windows. And now on my side of the building. I still don't have a new one. But my headphones got a good workout this week.

More Hakha Chin, of course. I finished one group, after having to add pages to a booklet, which is always a nightmare, and now I'm working on the next.

And that's about it. Nothing fancy. Except our Pic of the Week. I call it "Dedication? Or Lunacy?"

That was taken on Wednesday, the day after the first day of Spring, and the day on which we woke up to snow. Lots of it. And yet, our fearless window guys were hard at work. I'll let you decide the answer to the question.

The Weekly Wrap-Up: March 12-16, 2018

It's March. And more often than not, I still wake up to snow on the ground.

I'm not a fan.

Ah, well. That's life. It's been a lovely week otherwise, actually. It started out with some trepidation. We got an email at the end of last week that we would be having "An Honest Conversation About Money" on Monday after the staff briefing. None of us were quite sure what we'd be up against. But it was okay. All about funding, and how everyone is in a similar boat, albeit differing in how they boarded. We got some interesting numbers. Homeland missionaries take an average 19% salary reduction. In fact, 81 of the 123 people who work here take some kind of salary reduction. In some cases, it's much more than 19%.

I am one of those people who takes a salary reduction. I can't really afford to, but if I didn't, whatever reserve I have built up would be gone in two months. It's not something I normally advertise, but we're being honest here, right? Anyway, we all need to put some more focus on funding. And I'm going to work on it throughout the year. I just have to figure out how.

We did get a nice gem in the middle of the meeting. Carl Walton got up to talk about a recent deputation trip, and he shared a photo from when they were first starting out.

I was highly amused.

Oh! Nearly forgot that I was volunteered to take part in a simple visual demonstration of how people feel when asking or being asked for money.

In case you can't tell, that's my 'incredulous/nervous laughter' face. As in, please stop asking me for money. I don't have any.

The rest of Monday was spent recovering from the AHCAM. (What? We abbreviate everything else around here.) And working on Korean. It's a fairly easy language, but it has some tricky bits to it. And it's hard to extrapolate the rules of a language when you only know one and it's not the one in which you're working. But I did actually finish the job in four days, which might be a personal record for this particular stage. But there were only five booklets, and like I said, Korean is easy. Next week, I start on four groups of Hakha Chin. Decidedly less easy.

We only had one chapel this week as we were celebrating Founder's Day. Founders' Day? The Day of the Founders? Whatever. They did a Jeopardy-style game with facts about the founders. I was not on a team, but I really should have been. In the first round at least, there were really only six possible answers to the questions. Once you figured that out, you could start to narrow things down. But I am apparently one of the few people who thinks this way.

I'm just kidding. That sounds mean. It was a fun and different thing to do.

Another fun and different thing for the week was being asked to record a song that someone connected to OMS wrote. I'm still not entirely sure what it's for (little fuzzy on the details), but it was nice to be asked, and it's a lovely little song. Hopefully, we did the recording justice. I was fighting off a cold, so who knows? You can listen to it on Soundcloud by clicking on this blue bit.

I was having some computer issues this week with connecting to our file storage site. Not sure why, but it caused a few headaches and delays. And we're still having discussions about file names. My brain can't quite catch on to the logic of the naming system. It has its own logic, and I can psych myself out of any naming convention if I think about it for too long. It's an annoying trait, even more so because I do everything else correctly, but when you name a file wrong, it reflects on the rest of your work. Apparently. It's incredibly frustrating.

Also frustrating:

We're getting new windows. That part is fine. I'm sure they'll be lovely. But the noise and dust while they do is not lovely. Lots of drilling, banging, fear of falling debris, etc. Not sure when they'll get around to my little window, but I plan to be well out of the way when they do.

This isn't really a work thing, but I got the chance to go see Les Misérables at the Murat Theatre in Indy on Thursday night. A friend had an extra ticket and invited me. It was such a great night! I love the show, firstly, and I was hard-pressed not to sing along with the cast. But also, it was just so nice to get out of the Greenwood bubble and feed on some culture. I need to do more of that. If only it didn't cost so much money!

Finally, I had another new experience today. Many of our regularly scheduled receptionists and stand-ins were out or busy, so I covered the front desk for an hour. It's a little daunting. There are lots of dos and don'ts, and people can ask weird questions that you have no idea how to answer. But I think I did all right. And it was nice to be upstairs looking at sunshine for a change.

So, I know we already have several photos. But the official Pic of the Week is this:

It's pie! In honor of Pi Day (3/14), a dear friend brought me a pie. I was overjoyed. I work with good people.

Have a great weekend, everyone!

The Weekly Wrap-Up: March 5-9, 2018

I'm gonna do a new thing.

Shut up. I know you're all groaning because I often say I'm gonna do a thing and then it doesn't happen, and quite frankly, that might happen this time, too, but I don't care. Just hush. (And the Philippines blog is coming, all right? I just got a bunch more photos to sort through so I can give you the quality content I'm known for.)

Here's the new thing: Pic of the Week. It's something I took a photo of, something I downloaded from the internet, or something I came across in the week that I deemed important enough to spend time on. So here's the one for this week:

This is on my door now. Because it's hilarious.

Anyway, this has been a looong week. I didn't realize until I started thinking about it. I've worked on three different languages this week. I finished the Estonian panic project. I also finished Hakha Chin. Now I'm on to a new group of Korean. It should be great fun.

We had prayer rally this week, which usually means no chapel, but we had a special guest. Bishop Ezra Sargunam was the head of the Evangelical Church of India denomination. I first met him in 2011 in Thailand. He's quite a remarkable person. He was one of two people from India who had a personal invitation to Billy Graham's funeral, so on his way back, he stopped in at OMS. He gave a nice greeting on Tuesday.

It's orientation week, so we met and prayed for the newbies at the prayer rally. The prayer department is testing a new prayer workshop, so we did that for the rest of the morning. I must say, there was a lot that cut into normal work hours this week. Prayer is fine, but three hours of it wipes me out.

Like I said, it's orientation week, and you all know what that means. I get to play Vanna! We did the usual History of Missions session, and I got to do the illustrations. I don't know how I got asked to do this - I'm terrible at drawing. But I guess people like it, and it's something different in my week. Plus, I did the intro to ECC this time. The usual person would have had to come in on their day off, and that's just no fun, so I volunteered. Don't know if I'll ever do it again as I'm not entirely sure what I told them about ECC. But I had fun, and that's all that matters.

I'm getting tired of grey days. Spring can pop 'round any time now, thanks.

Let me know what you think of the new thing. And you can send submissions each week, too. That's a brilliant idea. Go me. 

The Weekly Wrap-Up: February 26 - March 2, 2018

Let's deal with the melodramatics from last week first, shall we?

I'm fine. Ish. More like, I'm the same as I have been. Not worse. Not much better. So we're back to the waiting game. I feel stupid for getting all worked up. Or working other people up. I wasn't as bothered as some people seemed to think I should be. This is going down a weird rabbit trail. Sorry. Moving on.

It's been a good week. I got one group of Hakha Chin done, and I made a start on the second before I had to pause that to do a higher priority project. Someone realized that there's a training event in Estonia in two weeks, so I'm finishing up two groups of that so they actually have the booklets they need.

I don't mind too much, though it can be hard to remember where you left off on a project. This is why we document things, though, isn't it?

Chapels were interesting this week. All about marriage, which really holds no interest for me. But there are things that can be applied to other relationships, so it wasn't terrible. One thing I came away with is that it usually takes 5 positive interactions to counteract one negative interaction. I believe it. I always remember the bad stuff before the good stuff, so it stands to reason that you'd need more good experiences to drown out the bad ones.

Umm, what else happened this week? We had a training event, which I actually had nothing to do with, but I benefited from them having lunch brought in. That's always nice. Plus, I got to hang out with Sarah and Madison a bit more than I normally do, which is always fun.

One other interesting thing this week is that, at least early in the week, everyone that could be in our office was actually here!

This is our new board that keeps track of where everyone is so that people don't have to ask whoever is around if certain people are in that day. This is the first time that everyone has been In. Normally, it looks more like this:

We tend to have a lot of people traveling, and this month is no exception. But that just means a little more peace and quiet around here for the faithful worker bees. (Of which I am one, in case you were wondering.)

I think that's about it for this week. I need to start keeping notes again. Oh, other than me getting my utility bill for January and having a small heart attack. I have no idea how 400 sq. ft of space generates that much energy. 

The Weekly Wrap-Up: February 19-23, 2018

Happy President's Day!

Right, that's done.

Korean is done! Yay! It's been hanging over my head, and yeah, I went to the Philippines in the middle of it, but that's hardly an excuse, is it? Now I have Hakha Chin, which is a fun language. Quite easy. Two groups, but it should be a breeze.

I've also been working on my prayer letter. That should be coming off the presses shortly and in your lovely hands in no time at all. Or however long it takes for bulk mail to go through the system.

You should also be seeing an extremely lengthy post about my trip to the Philippines on here. Not sure when it will go up, as it's taking quite a while to write everything down and sort through photos, but it will be here within the next month at least. Probably.

Not much else to talk about from this week. We had a couple of nice chapels, a few sidebars, a short field trip to the dollar store, and a lovely little birthday celebration for James.

There's some stuff going on again. Stuff I'm not ready to share publicly, but I'd appreciate your prayers. And I'll be ramping up the funding in the next few months, so if you have some friends you'd like to introduce me to, I'd appreciate it. :)

Ta!

The Weekly Wrap-Up: February 12-16, 2018

The weary traveler has returned! I promise that I will have the most epic of blog posts about my trip, but it must wait until I get my prayer letter out. Then I can give you the behind-the-scenes exclusive on every fun-filled moment.

I will, however, give you a little heads-up on my trip home. I'd prefer to detach it from the rest of my time in the Philippines, so it's beneficial to talk about it now instead of attaching it to another post.

Short story is this: I was supposed to leave the Philippines at 12:10 Wednesday morning. Their time, of course. I was supposed to arrive in Indianapolis at 8:00 Wednesday evening. Our time. Instead, I left the Philippines around 6 Wednesday morning and arrived in Indianapolis around 1 Friday morning. In between, I spent two hours on a runway in Oman, a night in Qatar, and the better part of a day in Chicago. If you ever get the urge to not take a flight you're scheduled to be on, please do everyone a favor and decide this BEFORE you get on the plane and check your luggage.

Needless to say, it's taking me a while to recover fully. Not only did I spend roughly 72 hours in transit, I also spent most of it in a tin can with germ-ridden strangers. So I've been fighting a bad cold along with jet lag.

Ah, well. Makes life interesting.

Fortunately, I was able to get back into my work routine fairly easily. We had a staff briefing on Monday, so that always helps get me into that numb-brain work mode we all know and love. I honestly can't remember if anything useful came out of that. Probably, but you couldn't prove it by me.

I quickly started to work my way through emails and other correspondence. It only took me most of Monday to get that done so that I could turn my attention back to Korean. I had one group left to finish this week, which I'm happy to say is mostly done. I just need to create the proof files and send them off. So I was able to be productive.

I think next week will be better on the work front. I won't be as tired (we hope), and I'll have a new language. Plus, I have my performance review to look forward to. Yippee. Who doesn't love that?

See you all next week!

The Weekly Wrap-Up: January 22-26, 2018

Busy weeks are good. Busy weeks keep me distracted from the tin can I'll be flying in for 12 hours.

Mostly.

I'm getting there. I'm probably 70% packed, and I've got the whole weekend to get the rest of it around. It'll be good. I just hope I don't forget anything. I'm trying not to overdo it, but my list-making brain is trying to ensure I have everything for every possible eventuality. It'll be fine, though. I'm only going to the other side of the planet.

Moving on.

I'm done with the first group of Korean. I've started the second, but no way I'll be done until I get back. I wish I knew a little more of these languages. I don't even have to speak it, really, I just need to know the grammatical structure and punctuation rules. It would help a lot.

Lots of little side projects this week. Another email out to our organizers so they know to send in their reports. Editing documents for various uses. Trying to keep my organized mess a little more organized and a little less mess. Like that will ever happen.

If you happen to think of me over the next couple of weeks, say a little prayer, yeah? I'd appreciate it. And keep an eye on Facebook. I'm hoping to post some updates on the trip.

Bon voyage!