26 September 2009 Update
Sat Sep 26, 09 11:36 pm
***Life Around Carlisle***
I had a really enjoyable visit to Sweden at the end of August to visit my friend Mona. It was only a short 3 day holiday but one which I quite enjoyed. I had never properly been to Sweden before and I found it quite relaxing. The scenery in the country was quite pretty and it was nice catching up with my friend.
Sunset in Sweden
Visiting a fortress in the harbour of Gothenburg
dungeon
I went with 2 colleagues to Yorkshire to attempt a 3 Peaks Challenge. I made it to the top of the first peak but then my ankle started bothering me quite badly and I had to go back early to the car and waited for the others to return. I still got some nice photos and enjoyed my day out. We had brilliant weather for the walk.
Yorkshire Dales in the background
Me, Bernd and Andrew
Limping along without a boot because of the pain my boot gave me viaduct and me carrying my boot
I have been playing a lot of Ultimate Frisbee here in Carlisle. I am playing on a team that practices twice a week. We quite often go afterwards to the pub for drinks. Sometimes during the week we will get together to go to the cinema, go on a walk or otherwise hang out together. They are a good group of people and I have had a few opportunities to talk about my Christian faith with a few of them. My experience with people here in the UK is that evangelism is very relational and I hope to be able to soon invite some of them to a few activities that church is planning this autumn.
***Work***
I have been really busy with support calls from various fields in OM over the past month. Nearly every day I work with Ireland and have spent a few late nights working with Mexico and Brazil. Throw in some work for the local team and the Netherlands and my time has been spent working on servers that span the globe.
When I am not doing support for OM fields I have been finishing moving mailboxes from Carlisle to the US. This week Wednesday I moved the last mailbox. We now have 1200 mailboxes in the US that amount to 430 gigabytes of email data. So the major part of the migration is all done now and there are just a few bits and bobs to sort out. I went back through my email and discovered that we first started discussing a centralized Exchange service in of August 2006. Now 3 years later after lots of research, discussions and implementation we have a centralized email server. So you can imagine that I am over the moon with getting that done. I am now spending time working with fields to get them moved off of using their local Linux based email server to Exchange. I have a lot to document and many people asking questions and training to do for Exchange. I am actually down to Birmingham for 2 days next week to teach two of our area IT directors how to use Exchange and how they can migrate 300-500 of their missionaries in their area to start using Exchange.
Now that we are centralizing email we can start to investigate going to a single email address format for everyone of something@om.org instead of something@field.om.org. This would really simplify things for the organization if we could operate under the one name space. I have begun thinking through all the implications and practicalities of what that would mean for the organization. There is still much to work through on that question, but probably in the 2-3 years OM will move to a single name space for their email addresses.
I have also been researching a method for email distribution group internally to OM. We have currently been using Yahoo Groups for sending emails to all our OM'ers but this has not been a good policy because of security concerns. Yahoo Groups are not secure and we email confidential data on those lists which is not good. Now that we have a centralized email service we can more simply implement such a solution that is all internal and secure within OM.
As well, now that we have so many people using Exchange for email we recognize that we need a good way to manage all these mailboxes. The Microsoft solution is a bit of a mix bag for our purposes unfortunately. We are therefore looking at ways to do all the administration through a web page. Three weeks ago a new guy, Johan - a young man from Sweden, joined the team. He has begun working for me to investigate possible solutions to this management question. Johan has been a good help already to me.
***Leaving OM? Yes or No?***
I have been praying about this question for some time. I have not felt God leading me back to the US at this point in my life. This is now the third time I have decided to stay longer with OM. This time around I am not setting an end date although will continue to re-evaluate this decision at appropriate intervals. What this does mean for me is that I will need people to continue supporting me financially and in prayer. I am much appreciative of those who do support me. But it is a concern that will need to be addressed fairly quickly before I head out on various trips this autumn.
***Travels***
I am doing a bit of travel this autumn. Most of my travels are work related but I am fitting in a one week holiday to rest and rejuvenate. My travels start this upcoming week with a trip to:
Location Date* Purpose
Birmingham, England 30/09-01/10 teaching Exchange (email) management and terminal services
Brussels, Belgium 05/10-14/10 teaching IT administrators at our yearly sysadmin training course
Venice, Italy 14/10-/17/10 holiday
Rome, Italy 17/10-21/10 holiday
Doulos in Singapore 06/11-TBD** teaching IT staff and doing some project work
*European date format of day/month
**Either 3 weeks or 6 weeks. The Doulos is one of OM's ships
***Prayer Requests***
- Continued opportunities to witness to those playing Ultimate Frisbee
- Safety in my travels
- Stay close to God while travelling
- People will desire to support me financially in my continued ministry with OM
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