28 April 2008 Update
Mon Apr 28, 08 6:39 am
*Travel*
By the time you read this note I will be in Germany. I started writing it while in England, wrote must of it while at the Manchester Airport and finished it on the bus to Kiel from Hamburg. I will be here until 6th May when I return home to England. I have been looking forward to the trip. It will be on the Logos Hope where I will be doing some IT work. I am quite interested in seeing the changes that have occurred since I was here nearly a year ago. If you are wanting to know more about Kiel go here.
I have also purchased my tickets for Lucas' wedding. I will be getting into Bloomington on 11/06 for the wedding on 14/06. The Monday after the wedding I will be heading down to Atlanta, GA for 2 weeks. This has been an answer to prayer that my travel to the US can coincide with ministry travel.
*Misc. Activities*
Yesterday I went on a walk all by myself in the Lake District. I took a few photos at the beginning, but it was a wet day.
The first mile of the walk was along a lovely waterfall and rapids section. I came back very tired, but still having a lot of things to sort out before my departure for Germany. I was able to get everything done and then crashed into bed.
On Tuesday this last week I also organized a BBQ at our house for the office. It was too spur of the moment for most people so only one person joined us. The weather is rarely warm or dry enough to have a BBQ so when it was nice we jumped on the opportunity. Photos will go later today once I get them.
*Work*
My work is taking me back to things I did in university. I am performing an analysis of email protocols and how much data is transferred across your internet connection when checking, sending or authenticating for email. I have to come up with realistic scenarios to test, figure out how to test the scenarios and then write my report based upon the findings. I enjoy the detailed work and analysis that I need to perform. We have 5400+ missionaries in 110+ countries and have over 50 mail servers worldwide. It might make sense to centralize email, but my report will help in determining if a centralized email solution is viable.
I am also the technical lead (and partial project manager) for OM USA in a project where they are converting ~125 email accounts from a Linux server to Microsoft Exchange server. The project manager in the US quite unexpectedly left OM last week Tuesday. This has caused them to scramble to get a new person to take on this responsibility. The project is still moving forward rather well despite this unexpected turn of events.
As a team, we received financial support raising training on Wednesday and Thursday this past week. Much of the same information was presented to me when I first joined OM, but I found it quite helpful as a review. I do need a few more people to join my financial support team so it was good to encourage and cheer me on towards doing the actual work. Here are some of the fascinating photos from the training.
*Outreaches*
The Football and Faith ministry at an Anglican church in Carlisle is going really well. (I had to step away from helping it for the last 6 months due to a sprained ankle. It is nearly healed and only swells a bit after each time I play.) There are usually 20 lads and fathers who come each Saturday morning to play football (soccer) and hear a short devotional. It has been slow going, but a few families are beginning to come to church and are softening towards the Christian faith. No one has yet come to know Christ as their Lord, but I continue to pray.
I am coordinating my church's participation in a city wide church mini-football (soccer) tournament. The goal is to have 6 people teams made up of Christian and non-Christians on a team. There will be a short gospel presentation half way through the tournament. This outreach was run in the fall as well. We had a good turn out and a positive response. I know of a few people who have started to explore the Christian faith as a result of the tournament in the fall.
*Prayer Requests*
1. Safety in my travels back from Germany and to the US
2. That I can re-integrate into my local church. There is a bit of a leadership change and different vision for ministry and in theological emphasis which I am struggling with.
3. Wisdom for my work
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