The Weekly Wrap-Up: January 25-29, 2021

Welcome to Zoom Bootcamp, part 2. 

This week, we started to see the culmination of the original training we did back in November. Our original 9 trainees have been training 19 new students in the fabulous art of Zoom meetings. We're all about multiplication in ECC, and that's what we set out to do with this. As a consultant in November, I led my team of 3 through the various practice sessions that they presented. Now, I get to watch them do the same with their teams. I have to say, it's a lot less labor intensive this time around, but I still get to watch and provide feedback when things don't quite go to plan. I'm pretty pleased with how things are going so far. Our last day for this training is next Tuesday. Then we send our little ducklings out into the (virtual) world with all of the skills necessary for successful Zoom training events in the future. And our email address, because Zoom keeps updating their software and driving us all crazy.

In the meantime, I managed to complete a group of Vietnamese booklets, start on Indonesian, pause Indonesian to work on French, pause French when I ran into an InDesign problem, and go back to Indonesian. It's a good thing I take good notes, because I would never remember where I am on these projects without it. 

I need to write these earlier in the day. I'm too tired and rushed Friday evenings trying to finish up last minute things and finally get home for some sleep. 

Bye!

The Weekly Wrap-Up: January 18-22, 2021

Like sand through the hourglass, these are the days of our lives.

That will only make sense to some people this week, but it's not worth explaining. 

Anyway, it's been a varied week as far as work goes. I led devotions on Monday about the dreams of Joseph and his father Jacob. Then I finished GR04 of Tamil, which wasn't as taxing as GR03. I did some more editing of booklet 64. We had a few Zoom meetings for the next bootcamp happening next week. I've been working on GR03 of Vietnamese, which is only about 20% longer than English, so it's been pretty great compared to Tamil. I definitely have fewer pages I need to add. 

Otherwise, life goes on much as it has for the last few months. 

Yep. That's how I feel about the world at large right now. I'm pretty much ignoring it. You might say that's irresponsible. But what can I actually do about it at this moment? Exactly what I have been doing. I'm trying to get as many people into the kingdom of God as possible. That means supporting the awesome men and women using the booklets in the power of the Holy Spirit to tell their family and neighbors about Jesus. 

And since it's been a while since I wrote about my anxiety (we are now calling it The GAD), I'll catch you up on that, too. I still have it. But I'm getting better at managing it. I'm recognizing the patterns in my life that have lead up to this and identifying triggers, and I'm pushing myself to try new things and become more comfortable being out in the world. But it's a process. It's a little bit like a dance. I can have a great day and do-si-do like nobody's watching, and then a week later, I'm back in the parking lot, breathing into a paper bag and swearing off jazz music. (I hope that made sense. It works in my brain, but I recognize that my brain is a little 'special.')

Also, the pandemic is theoretically still a thing, right? I'm a bit limited on how much dancing I can do until we've all decided that was a fever dream. 

Anyway, I appreciate your continued prayers, and don't be afraid to ask questions or invite me to things. Just be prepared for lengthy answers and a solid maybe on the RSVP.

Bye!

The Weekly Wrap-Up: January 11-15, 2021

Happy birthday eve to me! Yes, I am indeed working today. I'd take the day off, but I hate doing that so early in the year. Who knows when I'll need the time? (I say that every year, and every year, I have vacation time left. Someday, I'll get it right.)

This was a fairly typical week. We worked on more bootcamp prep, which is actually going pretty well from the original training team's perspective - we only have to do 2 session out of 9. My facilitation team, however, is learning just how much we actually put into making their training experiences interesting and informative. I'm sure they will rise to the challenge. 

I'm in Tamil this week. It's another lengthy language with its own inherent challenges. I usually have to add pages to Tamil booklets just so I can fit everything in. That's not really a problem, it just takes more time to get through a group. 

I did have some downtime this week, though, because I had to do a backup and then an upgrade to Big Sur. That always takes forever, so I took the opportunity to look through the newest booklet, which Trista has lovingly laid out for us. I'm thinking it will need some pretty significant rewrites, though. There's a lot of 'Christianese' in it, and the goal for every booklet is to make it as easy to translate as possible. I'll be getting up close and personal with a thesaurus soon. 

Please continue to pray for my health situation. I've been having blood pressure issues again, and that makes life very not fun. 

I hope you have a fantastic time celebrating my birthday without me.

Bye!

The Weekly Wrap-Up: January 4-8, 2021

Happy New Year!

Is it over, yet?

Yeah, so there's a lot going on in the world right now. A lot of bad stuff. And all of it convinces me that we need to work harder than ever to bring people to Jesus. Because no government, no social cause, no NGO, NOTHING is going to save us except Jesus Christ. A reckoning is coming, and I, for one, intend to be ready. 

It feels weird to say that and then talk about the very mundane aspects of my work. But that's what y'all signed up for! So here we go.

New year means new energy and reorganization and setting goals and priorities. 

All of which means meetings. I think I spent more time on Zoom this week than I did off. I think I had one hour on Monday that wasn't spent on Zoom. There were plenty of other meetings throughout the week, but I still managed to put together the two newest books in Tagalog. It was not pleasant. The new books are filled with a lot of different elements, and Tagalog is a language with lots of long words. The two things don't always go together well. But I persevered and managed to create something passable. Now it's up to the proofreaders to decide whether or not I did a good job. 

My other big project this week was the online training bootcamp. Yes, you read that correctly. Yes, we did already do this in November. Yes, we are doing it again. Now, our original group is going to train a larger group of people how to use Zoom. We've been reworking some of the training materials and prepping the new facilitators, but ultimately, I'm going to take a step back and just let them at it. I always think the best way to learn is by doing and by teaching others. 

That's about it, really. I'm optimistic about the work of T&M this year, if not that optimistic about anything else. So we take what we can get.

Bye!

A Year in the Can

I don't really want to reflect back on this year. It happened, I hated most of it, move on.

But as with every year, there were parts I didn't hate. Parts I actually really liked, in fact. I don't keep a regular diary, but I do jot down a few highlights from each day. This has been extremely helpful, because I can look back on things and get an idea of my mindset at the time. It also helps me see just how much work I've been able to accomplish and remember happier times. 

This year, of course, has run the gamut. Much of my joy comes from going places and hanging out with people, both things of which I experienced little. But I was able to find new things that gave me joy and kept my mind fairly intact. As Iago said in "Aladdin," you'd be surprised what you can live through. 

There's one photo that really sums up a large part of my year. 

That's about 3/4 of the medication I was prescribed this year and then either couldn't tolerate or didn't work as intended. It represents hundreds of dollars, days of dizziness and nausea, and weeks of frustration. I really didn't realize just how horrible I'd been feeling this year until I looked back over my calendar - I have a shorthand for health (which says a lot in itself), and just about every week had at least 2 days that indicated that it was a bad day. And that's all before I started developing hardcore anxiety. Which necessitated even more med trials. 

Last year, on New Year's Eve, I was at my friend Lori's house. I felt awful. Very dizzy, very spaced out, nauseous, and just plain miserable. I feel 100x better this year than I did then. For that, I'm thankful. 

In 2019, I wrote down on thing every day that made me grateful. I think for 2021, since my theme is joy, I'm going to write down one thing every day (or week, whatever works) that brought me joy. I'm counting on you guys to hold me accountable for that. And I'm going to explore the definitions of joy a bit more. It's a feeling like no other. 

I pray that 2021 brings all of us bountiful blessings, great joy, and an abundance of common sense. 

Happy New Year!

The Weekly Wrap-Up: December 14-18, 2020

'Twas the week before Christmas, and all through the office, the mice were disappearing one by one. Seriously, though, everyone is using up all of their leftover vacation time. How they can tell what was vacation and what was WFH, I don't know. I haven't decided what I'm going to do next week or the week after. I'll probably be in the office for at least part of it. There's always plenty to do. 

This week was mostly about getting cards out. I finished the last one today. I'm really glad to have that done. I always forget just how long it takes to write out 100 Christmas cards. 

I also finished a couple more groups of Castilian. Because I'm awesome like that. 

I feel like I should be saying something profound to wrap up the year. But let's be honest, it's been a terrible year. I'd really rather just forget it existed. I don't have that luxury, of course, but it would be nice. Honestly, though, this year has been make or break for a lot of people. I feel a little cracked, but I don't think I'm totally broken yet. I even managed to learn a few things. Maybe not the things I wanted to learn, but probably some things I needed to learn. 

Here's to 2021 being just as amazing as 2020 was awful.

Merry Christmas!

Happy New Year!

Bye.

The Weekly Wrap-Up: December 7-11, 2020

Okay, so I didn't quite get to this on Friday. It was a long week, and I was feeling a bit stressed, so I didn't take the time to really list everything. But I'm back at it, so that's something.

I worked on two groups of Castilian last week. I'm really hoping to get it done before the end of the year, but there's so much going on each day. My primary project last week was working on getting my end-of-the-year letter written and cards sent out. I'm still writing the cards. They go to a lot of people, so it's no wonder that it takes some time, especially when I'm hand-writing all of them. I try to be a little more personable than my normal letters, which are definitely heartfelt, but it's not personalized. I want to acknowledge the support that people have given me, especially in a year when we really haven't been able to connect in person. 

Everyone else was in planning and budgeting meetings. I was very happy to not be included in those. I think it went fairly well, but obviously, we did a lot of planning for this year and look how that turned out. I think they were a little more loose with things, ready for whatever changes come next. 

Lori and I did some more work in the warehouse, mainly getting things organized into groups. We're still not totally sure what we'll do with the rest of the books, so if you have any ideas, let me know. 

Other than that, it's pretty standard around here. This is definitely going to be a weird Christmas. But I hope you find fulfillment and joy in the gift of Jesus Christ.

Bye!