My 2008

One of my 15-year-old Facebook friends (she's a friend in real life, too) posted a note today, listing what she did and learned in 2008. That inspired me to think over my own 2008, and here's the result. Please do enjoy. (I know my months are perfectly divided into quarters. Interestingly, sometimes life doesn't neatly divide.)

January - March

Difficult job transition at WGM

Christian Stewardship Association in Albuquerque, New Mexico (plus sightseeing afterwards!)

Started doing tech crew at church

Finished the Oasis room

New, fantastic discovery: It snows in Albuquerque.

April-May

Diving into new job as writer

Evangelical Press Association conference in Portland (plus sightseeing afterwards!)

Joined local farming co-op

We bought our first house!

New, fantastic discovery: My first Tenebrae service on Good Friday.

June-August

We moved into our house!

Steve's cousin's wedding in Charlotte, and we road-tripped it back with Phil

Becky's wedding in Michigan

Played softball in YMCA Corporate Challenge

New, fantastic discovery: It's nice when close friends are with you when you get really good news.

September-December

Daddy's Girl at Marion Civic Theatre

Dad's surgery (went well, he's fine now)

Weddings in North Carolina and Ohio (another Steve cousin and friend at WGM)

Ideas in Motion Trip to Peru (the real Peru)

Thanksmas with my family

Christmas with Steve's family

New, fantastic discovery: “Green gunk” made with lime Jello, cream cheese, pineapple, and cool whip. Absolutely amazing stuff.

There you have it. It was a good year. A rough one, but a good one.

Prayer Calendars and the Girl Who Compiled Them

No matter how much you love your job, they all have the busy work and things you just have to do. I love my job, I really do. But for the last couple days, pretty much all I’ve worked on is the prayer calendars for the website, where we list a missionary, support staff member, MK, and college-aged MK on each day. I had been compiling them month by month, but my boss decided (and I agree with her) that it would be good to have the whole of 2009 available on the website to be printed out.

So what is usually a two-hour job has become….a lot more than that. Plus I’m reformatting the old Word files I inherited, cleaning up information, and rewriting some of the copy to sound less pompous. It’s not creative work at all, and I’m getting bored, something that really rarely happens with me. And several days in a row of it – with more to come – is getting to me a bit.

But what it HAS done is put the names of every WGM missionary, retiree, support staff member, and MK in front of me in a very short amount of time. Now that I’ve been here four years, I’ve gotten to know a lot of them, and even would call some of them friends. I could pretty much tell you what each missionary does – at least the basics. And as I’ve been typing, coping, pasting, editing, etc, I’ve realized anew how important prayer is to these guys. I know, it sounds all cliché-y. But I believe God truly gives certain people a burden to pray through these prayer calendars, praying for each person by name.

So, even though I’m still not enthralled with this project, I’m okay with it. Because it’s not about me. At all. And that’s a good feeling. Want to check out my handiwork? (Okay, that maybe was a little about me) The whole of 2009 one will be up....oh, you know...sometime.

A funny thing happened while posting books on Half.com...

I have a bookstore in my home office. Sort of.

I started selling books on Half.com and Ebay last year, first getting rid of my old/unwanted books, and then books I found for cheap at yard sales, then my parents old/unwanted books, and now I'm selling books for my sister, a couple people at WGM, and now, the father of a friend of mine, herein called SF (Sara's father).

SF is a counsellor, and called me randomly one day to ask if I could sell a bunch of books for him. I said sure, giving him a few guidelines - they had to be in good condition, and should be relatively recent, like no older than 10 years.

I think he must have forgotten about those things, because I now have 12 boxes of books in varying degrees of intactedness, and some dating from 1957. Yikes. But I'm making the most of all that, selling what I can on Half.com and other book buyback sites like bluerectangle.com.

Now for my story. Most of SF's books are about counselling and mental issues. After a couple hours of seeing titles like "Female Sexual Psychology" and "First Person Plural : My Life As a Multiple" - ya know, your mind can start doing funny things. I picked up the next book in the box, and it was a beat-up paperback with a black cover and the title was in dark red letters, which spelled out "Self-Love."

And I was like, holy cow, did he send me a book about...???!!!?? (My mind was NOT in the gutter, it was just embroiled in psycho-babble titles!) But then I looked closer, and the author was Robert Schuller (of Chrystal Cathedral/Hour of Power fame). And the subtitle was something like "Your guide to loving yourself to success" or something equally inane.

Whew.

All that to say, if you are interested in any books about counselling, give me a holler! There's a link to my Half.com store on the right.

A Few Shots of Peru

There are not enough cameras and pictures in the world to capture the scene at Machu Picchu. It's so huge and so incredible - and the mountains that surround it are breathtaking. God's amazing!

Me, schelping around Tom's tripod while he was collecting b-roll footage.

I saw this sculpture at a tourist-trap pottery place. But it really hit me - something eloquent about how broken and damaged pots in the Potter's hand can turn into a beautiful work of art, stunning because of the flaws, not in spite of them.


And here's the obligatory team shot. It poured for the first four hours of our day at Machu Picchu. The poncho-sellers made a killing that day. Pictured are Tom (videographer), Tracy (web writer), Lindsey (photographer), Pat (web designer), Joyce (editor), Nancy (media relations), Kristi (the Boss), and me (writer)!

Life, Post-Peru

Since we got back from Peru on the 19th of November, it seems like I've just been treading water to stay on top of the multitude of the fun craziness that comes with every holiday season. We went to Clare for Thanksmas, because the three of us (brother, sister, and I) are doing Christmas with our in-law families. It was really nice to spend time with my parents, especially since Dad is still recovering from heart-valve replacement surgery. We have new jokes too! I LOVE coming up with new inside jokes! His new valve is from a pig. Oh come on, how could you NOT have fun with that!!

WGM's winter missionary-staff conference is next week, and we're having some missionaries from Honduras stay with us. And then it's like, party central until Steve's family gets here on the 22nd.

And in the midst of it all, I want so much to take the time to meditate on "the real meaning of Christmas." At our fake (Fake in that it technically wasn't Christmas Eve, but we pretended it was) Christmas Eve the Friday after Thanksgiving, Dad read the Christmas Story out of Luke, paused a minute, then read the section about Simeon at the temple. And I was really struck by what he said to Mary: "This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be spoken against, so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed. And a sword will pierce your own heart, too."

Not a very happy ending to the Christmas story. But what really good story does?