Logos Hope Trip - #3 - At Anchor, and a Change of Plans

I wish I had written more down at the end of each day we were on the ship, since the week is already starting to get blurry as I try to remember the details of what actually happened. Of course, the fact that we were stuck out at anchor and couldn't participate in many of our planned activities didn't help. The first couple of days (Fri-Sun) went according to plan, but the announcement early on Monday morning (about 6:00AM) that we were leaving our berth due to the continued swell, pretty much threw the rest of our agenda to the wind.

(Apparently, the problem was a storm on the other side of the island. We had bright, clear weather with a moderate wind, but the waves were carrying around and coming into the harbor where we were tied up, causing the ship to rock back and forth enough that the captain was concerned with potential damage to the ship and moorings. We were also concerned with being bumped out of our berth by a grain ship which was due to come in to offload flour, a process that would take several days. If we had been forced to leave that berth, we would have lost the advantage of being open up to the public for access to the book fair. If we had moved to one of the cruise line berths, then the crew could come and go, but the general public wasn't allowed.)

I now have a pretty good idea of what seasickness feels like. Thankfully, I didn't get really nauseous, as some people do, but I had a nagging headache for most of the first day at anchor, and for the next couple of days, found myself constantly tired. Later in the week, the waves started to calm down a bit, and I started to get used to the constant rolling, but overall, seasickness wasn't one of my more pleasant experiences. According to our original schedule, Monday was supposed to be an "off day," so we had planned to go ashore and look around the island a little. Unfortunately, that trip got immediately axed. However, I managed to take a nap on during the day, which helped with the seasickness. My bunk was perpendicular to the axis of the ship, which meant that I was rocking head-to-foot rather than rolling back and forth. At least I wasn't feeling like I was going to roll out of bed. Eventually, my system sort of got used to the rolling, and though I still felt tired a lot, I was still able to work, and after a while, even enjoy the rest of the week.

Sue and Joyce did a lot of sewing during the week, from curtains to mending. They had planned on doing some sewing anyway, but being at anchor and our onshore activities canceled, they took up sewing in earnest. A couple of people came up to her and almost begged to have some of their work clothes patched. (Those people down in the engine room and serving as deck crew can be pretty hard on even the toughest of clothes!) I had to spend an hour or two on Tuesday trying to fix one of the two old sewing machines, since it wasn't functioning at all. I'm no expert on sewing machines, but with some fiddling, I was able to at least get it sort of working.

Starting Tuesday, Dave and I went to the book exhibit. With all the pressure to just keep the shelves filled during the time visitors are on board, it's hard to actually spend time checking that the books are shelved correctly (not jumbled up by people putting things back in the wrong place), or even that the price markings are accurate. Since the ship visits so many different ports, they don't use any specific currency, but instead, use "units", which then correlate to a list of prices posted around the floor. For example, a book of 200 units translated to something like 5 Barbados dollars. However, sometimes, there would be a change in the unit price of a book. If someone put up a new stack of books but forgot to change the ones already there, you would have a discrepancy. So, Dave and my job for the next two days was to go through the stacks and make sure that the prices of the books were marked and consistent..... all while the ship was rocking, back and forth, back and forth. OK, remember we have to be FAT -- Flexible, Available and Teachable. ;-)

While I (mostly) enjoyed the practical work on the ship (OK, I really liked the engine room), what I really thought was important was the time we had interacting with the young people on board. While at anchor, there was a lot of frustration among the crew that they couldn't get off the ship or open up deck 4 and the I-Café to do what they had come there to do. However, as the ship's director reminded us, God wasn't surprised by our turn of events, and He still had plans. Since we couldn't get on shore, the effect for us was that we had much more time to talk to and work along side of the crew.

We had many meals when we could sit down and share with people. For Sue and me, it was especially rewarding to catch up with some of the young people we had met 8 months earlier at the GO conference in Germany. We'd met so many people there, full of hopes and dreams and visions for the future, and now we had a chance to see how they were actually doing. It was encouraging to see how much each of them had grown in that short time.

Of course, they still had their struggles. One common theme was that of relationships. Several people mentioned having a difficult time because they had developed close friendships with short term people (such as people in the “STEP” program, which only lasts a few months), only to have those friends leave the ship at the end of their term, perhaps never to be seen again. One asked for prayer after developing a friendship with one young lady, and then feeling crushed (“I can't breathe.”) when she left the ship at the end of her time there. Sometimes, with the intensity of life on the ship, it's hard to find someone who will just be a friend to hang out with, to talk and joke, to give you a chance to unwind and decompress. There were issues with balancing between working/ministering and relaxing. Some worried about getting to the end of a day and looking back and feeling like they hadn't used their “free time” wisely, while another asked for prayer for a balance between being involved in an endless blur of activities and being more contemplative, or as she put it, “a balance between being a Martha and a Mary.”

Still, with all the pressure and struggles, I was amazed to see how God was working, and the depth of character that these young people showed. We had the opportunity to attend several prayer meetings on board ship during the week we were there, and when there was time for sharing, they would come up one after the other, sharing Scriptures, and encouraging each other. I never heard them complain about the work, though I did hear some frustration over not being able to get off the ship to talk with people on shore more. For me, that time was perhaps the greatest blessing I could have received from the trip -- to see how, in spite of all their fears and foibles, God was filling the hearts and minds of these young people with a passion to serve Him and to know Him.

Logos Hope Trip - #2 - In the Belly of the Ship

On Saturday, I was assigned with Dave and Larry to work in the engine room (deck #1 - as far as you can go down in the ship, not counting the ballast tanks). We first had to get our ear guardians and steel toe shoes. They had a big bag of shoes for people to use, but I couldn't find anything that was actually my size. I found a pair one size larger than I thought I wore (they used European sizes), which I could get on my feet, but they were pretty floppy, and make going up and down the stairs pretty dicey.

Once we had our feet and ears protected, we went down in the engine room and had our safety briefing. This mostly involved walking around the four main compartments (generators, main engines and cooling, machine shop and fuel bunkers) and pointing out the various fire extinguishers, emergency exits and waterproof bulkhead doors. There were also the various alarms that would go off, most of which we actually were supposed to ignore, unless there was a general alarm, which would mean heading to our assigned muster stations.

Elanor spent most of the day working with us, since she was responsible for “Vision Teams”. First went to the most aft compartment in the engine room, which housed one of the main fuel bunkers (heavy fuel oil). It had been primed once, but we had to wipe it down with solvent (to remove any film from the constant oil in the air) and then give it a second coat of primer. Once we had wiped down the wall, we got paint and small rollers (much smaller than normal rollers: about 1 inch diameter and about 4 inches long). Talking with Elanor while we were working gave us a little snapshot of life on the ship.

The next painting project was a small workshop they were building for the chief engine specialist (I don't remember what his exact title was), where he could have a more controlled working environment for his specialized tools and sensitive engine parts. I'd actually had about as much as I could take with solvent fumes, so I volunteered to do power wire-brushing of some of the extruded steel supports on the outside wall of the workshop. This was a little more “fussy work”, but actually suited me better. It was tricky getting in all the tight corners to get at all the rust, since the spinning wire brush was about three inches in diameter, and the tool was big enough that it made it difficult to get around some of the other stuff in front of the wall we were painting. You end up holding it about 6 inches from your nose. Yea, look out in case it grabs and kicks back at you... ;-) Dave, Larry and Elanor were working on painting the inside of the shop while I was working on the outside. Once I had finished wire brushing, we were able to complete painting red primer on the outer wall.

I was glad that I had brought a pair of grubby jeans to work in. We were definitely filthy by the time we were done, not to mention exhausted!

By the time we mostly finished that job, it was time to clean up. Since this was on a Saturday, which is the end of the week for the crew, we spent the last hour or so doing what they call, “Hour of Power” -- doing a more thorough cleaning of the whole engine room area. The team was in the middle of moving some equipment lockers around in preparation for the “Heavy Oil Project” (setting up to process the cheaper, but dirtier heavy fuel oil to run in the generators and main engines), so that had to be straightened up. We also helped with hauling out garbage, which included various scraps of steel and other parts that had been left over from other jobs, and hauling it up the very narrow and steep stairs to the deck above (#3) where we left it in a large drum to be dumped later.

One of the things that Elanor said was that she really enjoyed working with short term Vision Teams, perhaps even more than some of the other departments, since whatever the teams down in the engine room did, it usually made a visible, long term impact on the ship. When you paint a major piece of equipment, it's obvious when you were done. You can point to that job and say, “That's where I made a difference.” Other assignments, such as working in the book hold or helping in the galley, were perhaps just as important, but those were often ongoing activities where it was much more difficult to see a long term, physical impact on the ship. As we finished up sweeping, the engineering team expressed how thankful they were for the contribution of our team. I was tired and filthy with oil and paint and rust, but I definitely felt like I'd accomplished something, and made some good friends.

Logos Hope Trip - #1 - First Impressions

“You have to be FAT –Flexible, Available, Teachable”

My first impression of the Logos Hope is of the size – not so much of the ship itself (though it is a pretty good sized vessel), but of the vision, the ministry, and the hand of God on the crew.

Since we have been working at the OM USA office, I have gotten used to the idea of working full time at a place where God is the center of everything we do. People there aren't perfect, and things don't always go smoothly, but there is an intentional effort to see God working in us and through us. Prayer is serious business, and miracles are something you come to expect on a regular basis.

On the ships though, everything is even more compressed, shaken together, with the fluff squeezed out. People are still people, and it doesn't take long to see the little signs that everyone there is still God's “work in progress”, but there is no doubt that this ministry exists based on the power of God.

Of course, there are still plenty of practical things to do! There's this huge ship to keep running, and floors to vacuum, and a crew of between 350 and 400 to feed and clean up for, and books to sell, and there's still a never ending battle against the corrosive effects of salt and water on wood and steel.

We arrived on Friday afternoon, with enough time to settle in to the cabins where we were staying, get some organizational details and to get a tour around the ship. When you get there, the ship feels like a maze of twisty passages, all looking the same, but after a few days, you start to get a feel for how to get from one place to another. One of the first hurdles was the sheer number of steps to go up and down! I found I had to be careful not to over-stress my knees. You eventually start to learn which stairs go to which areas in the ship, though if you don't have a porthole near by, it's still a challenge to figure out if you are headed forward or aft at any point in time.

Saturday was when our activities started in earnest. I had expected that we would be doing more activities together, but when we received our schedules, we discovered that we had quite different assignments, depending on our own skills and where we fit in. Remember: be flexible and available.

For our first full day (Saturday), some of the team was assigned to the “Visitor Experience Deck”, deck #4, which is the main book exhibit and visitor area. This area is designed for people coming through to buy books and to provide a place for the visitors and crew to interact. Some of the responsibilities there are practical, such as welcoming people and selling the books and making sure the flow of people keeps going in the right direction. Another job though was specifically to sit down with people as they are in the “International Café” and to start up conversations. This actually works quite well, since people have already gone through the book exhibit, and are usually happy to talk.

The I-Café is one of the most direct opportunities for interacting with visitors on the ship itself, but there are still plenty of other opportunities for getting out among the local people and interacting, either on the streets or in different ministries such as going to prisons or orphanages. Some of our team headed into the city with an “e-day” team. They visited in a park where some of the team set up a story-board to attract people and start them thinking. Others on the team then circulated around to hand out literature and start conversations.

To be continued...

Get Real

A young friend once said to me that she wished people could be more "real". It bothered me that I could never put my finger on what that exactly that meant. It just occurred to me that perhaps, being "real" isn't so much what we do or how we act, but rather the ability to see ourselves as we really are, or more to the point, how Jesus sees us, good and bad, strengths and weaknesses, failures and successes. We no longer have to put on the masks that other people make for us so that we'll fit in. We no longer have to polish our halos in order to make God appreciate us.

We got out the clay...

Another funny little twist: We had a "Spiritual Emphasis Week" here at the OM USA office, which involved a lot of time for team building and training... and just sort of mixing things up. Since OM has a substantial "Arts Link" department (http://omartslink.org/), they set up some tables in the main worship area with different kinds of art supplies, encouraging people to "get out of the box" and use the arts to worship, or just kind of exercise the other side of their brain.

Well, they had one table with drawing and painting supplies and another with colored paper and stamps and glue for making cards and pictures and another table with a huge pile of Lego blocks ... and another table with home made play-dough. Now, this was actually pretty good quality play-dough, but it's still not the same as REAL clay. I still had a 25lb block of air-hardening clay left over from when I did the kids ceramics class in our Sunday School a few months ago, so I asked if I could add that in. Well, once I got started with the clay, I immediately got absorbed. The team had scheduled lots of free times through the week (games down in the dining room and just time to get away...) and I started making things out of clay. Some of the families brought in their kids in, so I found I had an instant class room of anywhere from one or two, to a half dozen children, all VERY anxious to get their hands into the clay. I don't think I've been that happy in years! I was able to make some significant pieces during that time (I'll try to get some pictures soon), but the funniest thing was how surprised all the people in the office there were at seeing a totally different side of my personality. They all know (and appreciate) the technical side of my work there, and how I can do what they consider to be miraculous things with their computers, but they'd never imagined the artist lurking inside of me. Especially the real artists there in the group. I think they're already scheming about how to get me along on their next Arts Link trip to work along side of their musicians and dancers and painters and all... ;-)

Well Mom, I guess all those ceramics classes you sent me to at the Memorial Art Gallery during the summers when I was a kid really seem to be paying off! ;-)

Seven good reasons to switch to Windows 7?

Well, I read the WIRED article, Seven good reasons to switch to Windows 7, and unfortunately I found it to be pretty thin.Two questions in the opening paragraph really put me off:

"Do I really want to continue using an eight-year-old operating system?" -- Well, that's like asking, "Do I really want to continue living in a eight-year-old house?" If the house fits me, and is comfortable, and has all the things I need, then I'll be perfectly happy to live there for another eight years, thank you very much. Just because something is old doesn't automatically mean it's broken. (Of course, this is an article written in WIRED, so maybe that's the way that crowd thinks.)

"Don't I deserve better?" Uh, well, prove to me that it is better! Sure, maybe I deserve a Mac, or Linux, or whatever. Show me that something is better, and then I'll decide if I deserve it or not.

Then, there were the seven reasons themselves:

You Asked for This
- There's no question that Win7 is better than Vista. That isn't saying much. Microsoft got the biggest black-eye in its history for Vista (well, maybe not including Windows ME), and they hopefully learned an important lesson: People don't shell out hundreds of dollars for a new version of Windows just because it has a NEW NAME. Oh, and don't spit in the eye of your hardware vendors. They don't play well with that kind of attitude either.

Upgrading Won't Screw You Over
- Uh... Some time real soon now, Microsoft will hopefully give you a compatibility tool which will tell you how much money you need to pay to get basically the same functionality as you already have now. And, they will include (if you pay extra for the "Ultimate" versions) a "virtual XP" layer, which will basically inherit all the warts of old XP, so you can still enjoy all those security vulnerabilities while running Win7. (Yea, virtualization is supposed to isolate those things, but you can still attack the virtual XP environment, and how long do you really think it will take before the hackers figure out how to break out of Microsoft's cardboard box?)

Automatically Installed Device Drivers
- Hummm.... Ubuntu has been automatically detecting proprietary drivers and downloading them for years now. Glad that MS has finally figured out how to do this.

Piracy
- OK. This one totally baffles me: Windows 7 is an OS practically made for pirates. Want to display your movies, photos or music on your TV? Bam! Windows Media Player will do that out of the box if you have a Wi-Fi enabled TV, or an Xbox. Huh?? How many people do you know who have a Wi-Fi enabled TV? Um, playing to your XBox? Notice that that is another Microsoft product? How about to your Wii? What's the chance you can play MS streamed content on that? Oh, and even if you have legitimately purchased DRM shackled media, if you don't have DRM equipped hardware, then BAM! Windows will nicely downgrade the quality of your video stream so you can't see it at its full HD level. (That's to keep the pirates from snarfing their movies by intercepting the decrypted data stream as it goes to the display unit.) Just because you can plug into a network and see your pirate friend's shared disk drive, what makes you think you're going to actually be able to play that DRM'ed content??? What universe is this guy living in?

A Better Interface
- OK, so Microsoft moved everything around so you have to learn Windows all over again. Funny -- the interface looks a lot more like a Mac. They've got a 3D desktop. Ooooooooh. Shiny!

More Advanced Hardware Support
- OK, if Microsoft really delivers on their promise (unlike the flop that was known as Vista), then this will be the one real driving point to force people off of XP. XP has shown itself to be surprisingly resilient under the stress of change, but there will come a point when it's just not going to be able to keep up with the pace of hardware and driver change. Multiple cores. 64 bit. Optimizing for solid state drives. Supporting touch screens and multiple platforms (read: smart phones) out of the box. Better behaved device drivers. This is going to be the one thing that finally puts a stake in the heart of XP.

It Looks Sexier
- Well, this is WIRED magazine. 'Nuf said.


So, I'll say I am using Windows 7 (Beta), and I like it, but I don't think I like it enough to run out and pay $300 for a license. (I can buy an entire computer for less than that.) If it comes installed on your new computer, then great! If you have a specific need for it (especially new hardware), or you feel like you understand the interface better than old XP, then go for it. However, I don't think you're going to see a lot of owners of existing computers paying to upgrade, at least until 1012 when Microsoft quits issuing security patches for XP and finally signs XP's death certificate.

There are plenty of ways that Windows 7 is better than Vista, and even some reasons why it is better than XP, but this article didn't do a very good job of convincing me. ;-)

ChromeOS and what Google is really doing

The Web changes everything...

I thought this was a good article talking about what ChromeOS may actually accomplish. In particular, I thought this was interesting:

The most promising parts of Office 2010 are the strikingly rich Web versions of Microsoft's Office applications, which will run equally well on Microsoft Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox and Apple Safari (a close cousin to Google's Chrome). Similarly, with Exchange 2010, Microsoft is erasing IE's edge over other browsers and platforms for Outlook Web Access.

As Microsoft (along with everyone else) moves away from the desktop and toward the cloud, they are starting to loosen up on their dependence on trying to force everyone to use the IE browser. If the desktop really does become irrelevant (a big if), then it no longer makes sense to try to use IE as a leverage point to pressure people to use other Microsoft services.

With Chrome OS, Google is doing what other vendors should have done

2009 Tour de Cure

Well, after missing the 2008 Tour de Cure ride for the American Diabetes Association (due to being in the middle of moving from New York to Georgia), I was finally able to ride in the Atlanta/Northern Georgia TdC this year. As usual, I did the 100 mile route.

The short version is: Another well organized ride, though this time, it rained pretty much continuously from about the 40 mile mark. It was still warm enough that, as long as you kept moving, you were warm, but at a couple of the rest stops I got cold pretty quick! The ADA does a good job of organizing these rides, and they know what they are doing. They seem to do a good job of getting great volunteers too, and training them, since they always seem to know what they are doing. Thank you again to the ADA for a great ride!

Of course, since I've been doing the TdC in Rochester since 1993 (I have the century patch to prove it!), the natural thing is to compare the two rides. So, here is how this ride fared.

Route:
This is the first year I've done the TdC here, so I had NO idea what to expect. What I got was a very hilly route, though no real "killer" hills. Well, almost... This wasn't a mountain climb by any stretch of the imagination, but they had lots of long climbs, some of which got pretty painful at the end. I'm glad I did a lot of climbing practice over the past few months, since I was generally able to pass people up on the climbs. There wasn't very much flat terrain! In general, you were either going up or down. The traffic was pretty manageable on most of the roads, though there were some pretty narrow spots. Towards the beginning, when we were still in some big groups, they had police or volunteers manning intersections to stop traffic when we were going across. The markings were good on the roads, though I would still have liked to see an actual MAP of the course.

Compared to Rochester, the route was good, though a lot hillier. It was pretty confusing with the twists and turns, and seemed to endlessly loop around. They did double up quite a bit with the shorter (100K and 40mile), which can be good and bad.

Roads:
Something I've noticed about Georgia roads is that they tend to be reasonably good surface (no potholes!), but the shoulders are abysmal, or with the several inch drop-off into soft dirt, downright dangerous! You usually get 3 to 6 inches from the white line, and that's it!

On this route, the roads were fair to good, with some spots where it got pretty rough. I'd say I liked the Rochester and Finger Lakes roads better, though they had plenty of lousy sections too. Of course, with the rain, that made everything a little messy (mud and junk on the road), but not too bad. Overall, I think they did a good job of selecting good roads.

Organization:
Excellent as usual. Some of the rest areas were running a little short on either food or sports drink, but I was always able to get enough. Check-in was very fast. I got there a little later than I wanted to, but got through check-in in a couple of minutes. They either had more people working, or fewer riders, since the Rochester tour always seemed to take a lot longer.

Now, if they could only do something about ordering better weather.... ;-)

Volunteers:
As I told some of the volunteers on the ride, one of the things which always makes the TdC a great ride is the caliber of volunteers that they get. I don't know what ADA does, but they must really pump these people up! And then, they train them, and make sure they have what they need. It's great to hear them cheering for you, and they are always friendly and courteous.

Fund-raising:
Since so many people know the ADA, this ride tends to almost do the money raising for you. I was a little disappointed though in how much I was able to raise this year, but there are many reasons for that. Partly, it's just the sucky economy, partly it's that we just moved and we don't have so many people we know here, partly it's just that I was busy and didn't have a lot of time to spend on it. In the end, I did have about $270, so that's a good start for a new tradition of riding here.

I am, however, very grateful to those who did support my ride. They are the ones who really make it worth while!

Riders:
I really miss my team, "Wheezers and Geezers", from up North! :-( I didn't actually do a lot of riding with them (most of them are a lot less wheezerly than I am), but still, it's great to have a bunch of people who are pulling for you, and especially at the end of the ride. There were plenty of friendly riders out on the course, and people tend to talk pretty easily, but if you started to fall off the back, they weren't about to wait for you. I rode with groups for about the first 50 miles or so, but then as my knees started to get sore, I dropped back. I was able to link up with a couple of other riders, which was a huge help, but I did a lot of miles on my own. It wasn't until the last 12 miles or so I linked up with one young lady rider (very strong though), and we managed to ride together to the finish of the course.

I think it had a lot to do with the cold rain at the finish, but not very many people stuck around for very long once they got back, so I didn't feel like there were people to talk to. I had my massage, ate something, talked to a few people, and then headed home to a long, warm shower!

Mechanical:
That old Miata pulled through again! The thing is as old as dirt (and almost as heavy), but I rode without a single mechanical problem. Oh there were a couple of times it felt like the tires had turned to mush, but I think that was just my legs screaming in protest.

I saw a lot of very nice bikes out there, and a lot of them at the side of the road with mechanical problems, or flats, or broken spokes or whatever. Riding in the rain is rough on a bike, and some of these $1,000 or $2,000 prima donnas don't do so well in these conditions. Of course, some of it is lack of maintenance, or lack of a lot of real riding on these things, but it's impossible for me to tell. Almost all rest stops had mechanics set up (great advertising!), so there were people to go to if you did have a problem. I don't remember seeing any sag wagons on the course though, so I don't know how many of them there were, or what you would do if something happened out on the road

Massage:
One of the great things about the TdC is that the ADA brings in professional massage schools. I don't know if they do it in every city, but in Rochester and here (Atlanta/North Georgia) they did. These people are great! I really think it helps with your recovery the next day. The only problem I had this time was the little tents they were using, and when it started to blow and rain again while I was laying there, I got so cold I started to shiver really badly. I don't think that helped my cramping caves either! :-( Still, it was a great way to end the ride.

Food:
Food at the end was OK. It was warm! Overall, they have better food in the Rochester ride, but I was just glad to have something warm in my tummy. Food along the was was comprible -- lots of fruit, but not much by way of bagels or straight carbs. They did have various granola bars and such. Basically, it covered what we needed to keep going.


Overall, it was another great ride. I'm going to be stiff and sore tomorrow, but it was definitely worth it. It's great to be riding again!

Exchange OWA and Firefox

Very Interesting....

If you use Firefox to display Exchange calendars through OWA, then it should come as no surprise that Microsoft makes your "user experience" as painful as possible. I've found that, when you are in the "daily" view, the Exchange server sends wrong data for the "all day" events for that day. It looks like Exchange is incorrectly figuring the dates, and bleeds the events from one date over to the next date. (For example, if my event is on the 19th, it will show up on both the 19th and the 20th.)

If you switch back to the Weekly view, then Exchange actually sends the correct data for Monday - Friday, but events on Saturday and Sunday just vanish.

(Also, Exchange renders "weeks" on Firefox as Sunday-Saturday. On IE, it renders "weeks" as Monday-Sunday.)

So, if you use Firefox to view calendars, then Exchange dumbs-down the interface and scrambles the data for you.

Gotta love it.

:-(

Tales of the Tyrone Tryons -- February, 2009

This is a bit of information which Sue added into our last prayer letter:

Sue's Corner
What am I doing here in Georgia? I am working as a Human Resources Coordinator in the Support Services team of OM USA. (This is the same department that Chuck works in with the IT team.) I am serving US Operation Mobilization members with their benefits and helping meet many other needs. There has been a definite learning curve for me in this job, but my boss and I are finding ways to put my gifts and past experiences to the best use in this ministry.

For fun and relaxation, I have also started a Learn to Quilt class for OMers. We really enjoy this fellowship time together here in our home.

Last night, a huge storm with baseball sized hail roared through Tyrone. The Lord kept us safe, and even our lovely daffodils were left standing after the storm. In the storms of life, our Lord is ever with us, so we can stand! May He cover you, dear ones, as you seek shelter under His wings from troubled times.

Praises!

1. Logos Hope setting sail after 5 years of preparation! ( http://logoshope.org/ )

Prayer Requests:

1. That we would continue to encourage the many people we met at the conference
2. Consistent financial support
3. To keep learning our jobs and be a blessing at the OM USA office
4. Encouragement and provision for everyone reading this letter.

Logos Hope Sails!

The Logos Hope, which is the newest addition to OM's ocean-going ship ministry, finally set sail from Køge, Denmark on February 19^th, after nearly 5 years of conversion and outfitting. The first port of call will be Gothenburg, Sweden, and then ports in the Netherlands, UK, Faroe Islands and Ireland. International Co-ordinator for OM, Peter Maiden said: “As Logos Hope sails from Køge a great day has arrived in the history of OM Ships and, I believe, in the history of OM. It is both encouraging and challenging to think of the huge number of people who will meet with God on this vessel or through teams sent from this vessel in the years to come.” The Logos Hope will bring knowledge, help and hope to people in port cities all around the world, in the form of literature resources, aid supplies and an all-volunteer crew and Staff.

Ready, Set, GO!

Through the years that Sue and I have been together, we have had several times that really stick in our memories – times like going to the Urbana Missions conference together, driving across country with our family from NY to Yellowstone Park and back, the wedding of our daughter Melinda. We have now added another such memory in our trip to Germany to attend the OM GO! conference. The GO! Conference is OM's major training and orientation program for new members as they head out to their various fields and assignments. It's a time of transition, from the comfortable environment of our own home and culture, to another place, often foreign and uncomfortable, but guided by the Lord's hand on our lives. The conference deals with understanding who we are, both as individuals and cultures, and where we are going. It's a time to asses why we are following the Lord into His work around the world, as well as thinking about some of the specifics of what we will be doing.

For us, this was a time to meet people from around the world, and make new friends – a time to break out of our cultural boxes, and even sometimes to laugh at ourselves. It was a time to really get serious about our commitment to God and what He has called us to do, and to think seriously about the price we are willing to pay to see His Gospel carried to every people and tongue.

There were somewhere around 120 participants at the conference (not including staff), from around 20 different sending nations, headed out to 15 or 20 different fields and projects. Of course, some of them were headed to the two ship ministries of OM – the Logos Hope and the Doulos.

We have many stories from the conference, but a couple of the things that really impacted us were the many people we met there, and the day of prayer.

How do you spend all day praying?

Well, that was probably the question on the minds of a lot of the people at the conference on the one day which was set aside almost totally for individual prayer. However, at the end of the day, we all wondered where the time had slipped away. The main conference room was set up with a dozen or so different “stations”, each with a particular focus in prayer. One spot focused on the fears we faced going into ministry. Another focused on freedom from different sins that may have been hounding us. Another focused on praise and worship, and had recordings of the Psalms. Another focused on forgiveness and releasing others who have wronged us. In another area, there were stations covering different unreached nations, or issues like the continued slave trade and the exploitation of children and women, or different world religions. The day was spent in quiet prayer and reflection, with people moving from one area to another at their own pace, stopping to learn about all of the different needs, and then praying. Part of the day was also spent in more collective prayer, with one large room divided up into a dozen different fields represented at the conference. Everyone would pick one of the areas (there was room for about five or six people at each place), and then spend about five or ten minutes hearing about that particular nation or region, getting a list of specific prayer requests, and then spent another ten minutes praying together. Then we would get up and move to another area, and repeat.

What I felt during the day was a sense of beginning to get close to God's heart, not so much for big countries, or broad ideals, but for the very real people who were represented by each of these times of prayer. It's all well and good to have loud, exciting times of praise and worship as a group, but the real foundation of our Faith is built in the quiet moments we learn to spend with God.

Pray the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers...

One thing that really hit us was the number of people, from college age to retired couples, who were there, ready to leave behind their comfortable homes and jobs, to say goodbye to their friends and family, and to head out to every corner of the globe. Many were headed to the two OM ship ministries, the Logos Hope and the Doulos, but others were headed to countries like Ireland, Bosnia, Afghanistan, Vietnam, South Africa and India. The excitement was palpable, but it was more than just the emotions of going off to see new places and learn new cultures. They were filled with a desire to see the Good News of Jesus brought to the people of these nations, to serve them through medical missions, youth outreaches, teaching, sports programs, and any number of other activities, to build relationships with people, and to see the Gospel make an impact on their lives. Probably very few of them really knew what they were going out to face, but they were ready to follow the Lord, wherever He might take them.

The OM "GO!" Conference

Well, we just got back from the OM "GO!" conference in Mosbach, Germany. This is OM's training and orientation conference for new members as they get ready to actually head out to their fields. There were about 120 people from at least 20 countries, headed for around 20 different places around the world.

It was a great time of teaching, worship and praise, prayer, and a time to get to meet and interact with different people from all kinds of different cultures and backgrounds. There was a wide variety of ages, though the majority of the people were younger. I sort of felt like the "parent" as I was talking to all these young people, but they all made Sue and me feel welcome and appreciated. We made some friendships that I think will last a life time.

The schedule was pretty insane, and not surprisingly, a lot of people were tired and struggling with colds. We managed to keep healthy during the conference itself, but the cold/cough/fever that was going around finally managed to catch up with us on the day we got home. Thankfully, we can take a little time to crash and get some rest!

I'm still "processing" as they called it there -- thinking through and internalizing all the ideas we were exposed to there through the different sessions, so I plan to have more posts here as time allows (and when I'm not suffering from coughing fits! :-/).